In South Korea this week, tens of thousands of union members staged a one-day strike to demand better benefits and protections for temporary and contract workers.

本周在韩国，数万名工会成员举行了为期一天的罢工，要求为临时工和合同工提供更好的福利和保护。

And in the United States, a record nearly 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August, according to the Labor Department, and more than 10 million positions were vacant — slightly down from July, when about 11 million jobs needed filling. The shortage of workers has led to a growth in wages that has surpassed many economists’ expectations, and seems to have discombobulated bosses who are used to employees leaping at their every demand.

在美国，根据劳工部的数据，8月份有创纪录的430万人辞职，有1000万多个职位空缺，略低于7月份的1100万个。工人短缺导致工资增长，这超过了许多经济学家的预期，似乎让习惯了员工急于接受所有要求的老板们感到困惑。

There are many potential reasons for workers’ reluctance to work terrible jobs. People who are flush with unemployment assistance and stimulus money might be holding out for better jobs to come along. Workers who spent the last year and half on the front lines of dangerous jobs in thankless industries — for instance, enforcing mask rules for belligerent customers in shops and restaurants — could be burned out by the experience. 

工人们不愿从事糟糕的工作有许多潜在的原因。获得失业补助和经济刺激资金的人可能会坚持等待更好的工作出现。在过去一年半的时间里，那些在吃力不讨好的行业从事危险工作的工作者——比如负责在商店和餐馆里试图让好斗的顾客遵守口罩规定——可能会因这一时期的经历而疲惫不堪。

And many workers continue to fear for their health in an ongoing pandemic, while a lack of child and elder care has added costs and complications that have rendered many jobs just not worth the trouble.

在持续的疫情中，许多工人一直担心自己的健康，而儿童和老人的护理缺乏增加了成本和困难，使得许多工作不值得费力去做。

All of this makes sense. But there might also be something deeper afoot. In its sudden rearrangement of daily life, the pandemic might have prompted many people to entertain a wonderfully un-American new possibility — that our society is entirely too obsessed with work, that employment is not the only avenue through which to derive meaning in life and that sometimes no job is better than a bad job.

所有这些都说得通。但也可能有更深层次的东西在酝酿。通过对日常生活突如其来的重新安排，大流行可能促使很多人接受一种奇妙的、非美国式的新可能——我们的社会过于迷恋工作，就业并不是获得生活意义的唯一途径，有的时候，没工作要好过坏工作。

“The pandemic gave us a kind of forced separation from work and a rare critical distance from the daily grind,” Kathi Weeks, a professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Duke University, told me. “I think what you’re seeing with people refusing to go back is a kind of yearning for freedom.”

“疫情让我们在某种程度上被迫离开了工作，与日常工作保持了一种难得的关键距离，”杜克大学(Duke University)性别、性行为和女权主义研究教授卡蒂·威克斯(Kathi Weeks)告诉我。“我认为，你看到的人们拒绝回去上班是一种对自由的渴望。”

And yet, a lot of times my job can feel like an all-consuming hell. I’ve got a wife and kids and two lovely cats, but work is the first thing I think about every morning and the last thing I worry about every night. My job has dibs on my mind and my time, it gets the best of my attention and creativity, and it is the subject of my deepest neuroses and my most intractable stresses.

然而，很多时候，我的工作感觉就像一个吞噬一切的hell。我有妻子、孩子和两只可爱的猫，但工作是我每天早上想到的第一件事，也是每晚担心的最后一件事。工作占用了我的精力和时间，占用了我最佳的注意力和创造力，也为我带来最深层的神经衰弱和最困扰的压力。

I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t really realize how much work ruled my life until the pandemic — until this huge meteor took aim at our lives and forced me to reconsider what I was doing.

我很不好意思地说，在疫情之前，我并没有真正意识到工作是多么严重地主宰着我——直到这颗巨大的灾星瞄准了我们的生活，迫使我重新考虑我在做什么。