英语访谈对话 498 First Job

 　　Todd: Hey, er, Mark, could you tell me about the first job you ever had?

　　Mark: I think it was when I was at university, well my first long term part time job was when I was at university and one night a week I used to work for 12 hours from 6 pm ‘til 6am in a printing factory and we were actually making television guides to be distributed throughout the whole country.

　　Todd: So you worked from 6am, I mean 6pm ‘til 6am?

　　Mark: Yep, overnight. I felt that it was probably better to work just one long block of time than rather have a part time job 2 or 3 nights a week. So I kept that up for 2, 2and a half years until my final year of university. Then I decided¹ that study on Friday was more important than the part time job, but for 2 and a half years I really enjoyed it.

　　Todd: So for this job what exactly did you do? What were your duties?

　　Mark: We used to take the TV guides from the printing presses and bundle them up and get them ready for distribution to the various convenience stores and gas stands and bookstores throughout the whole country and then make sure that each or the shops and regions got the right number of guides.

　　Todd: So a job like that would be manual labour, versus² say a customer service job where you are always talking with people. Which type of job do you think is more enjoyable for a young person?

　　Mark: Because of the hours we worked, it was all overnight, there was a combination of other university students and also quite a few housewives who were doing it for extra income, so we actually had quite a good team. There were probably 10 to15 of us. We used to enjoy a good laugh while we were doing it as well.

　　Todd: Sounds fun!

　　Mark: It was tiring, especially lectures on Friday mornings but we used to stay awake. I don’t think I ever slept in the lecture afterwards.

1 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

2 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。