Words from Catherine O'Flynn
凯瑟琳·奥弗林的心底话
Although I'd been, as a customer, in shopping centres, you know, many times, you know, through my life, it was the first time I'd worked in one. And there was something about that place that just really affected me. I found it a place of strange contrasts:
虽然在我的一生中，我以一名顾客的身份去过购物中心很多次了，你也知道，但这次是我第一次在一家购物中心里工作。而那个地方有某些东西真的触动了我。我发现它是一个充满了奇怪反差的地方：
You know, the contrast between the way it was in the daytime when it was absolutely packed with customers, and at night when I would be locking up the shop and it was entirely deserted and quite 13)eerie.
你知道，这种反差就在于，在白天这里绝对挤满了客人，而到了晚上当我准备锁门时，这里就变得空荡荡的，相当阴森可怕。
The contrast between the way it was for customers—you had quite a luxurious experience with, you know, palm trees and leather seating areas—and the way it was for staff where the conditions were very bad, and, you know, there were rats in the kitchens and it was all very unpleasant.
这种反差在于，它对待顾客是一种方式——你能体验到奢华一流的感受，你知道，棕榈树和皮座椅休息区——但它对待员工又是另一种方式，条件非常差，而且厨房里老鼠肆虐，一切都让人非常不愉快。
And also the contrast between what it was when I worked there, which was this glittering shopping centre, and what it had been only 10 years before, which was a steel foundry. You know, it had been an industrial site, and when the industry went, the land was redeveloped as a shopping centre.
这种反差还在于，我那时所工作的地方是一座光鲜亮丽的购物中心，而在那之前，十年以前它还是一座炼钢厂。你知道，它曾经是一个工业基地，但当工厂倒闭以后，这个地方被重新开发，成了一座购物中心。
And also the contrast, I guess, between the inside—this glittering, wonderful place—and the outside, which was an area that had been destroyed really by the loss of that steel foundry, you know, the immediate area was really suffering the economic consequences of the loss of that industry, and it almost seemed like a cruel twist of fate to land this big consumer palace in the middle of these people who actually couldn't really afford to shop there. All the people who went there went in by car from surrounding cities.
我猜想这种反差还在于，商场的内部环境——这个光彩夺目、精彩纷呈的地方——和它的周边环境的差异，这片地方由于炼钢厂的消失而被破坏殆尽，你知道，由于工厂的消失，临近地区的经济遭受了严重的影响，那几乎就像是对这片土地的命运的残酷扭曲，这座巨大的消费者圣殿就坐落在那些实际上根本无力在那里购物的人们中间。所有到那里去的人都是从周边城市开着车去的。
So those kinds of things really got under my skin while I was working there, and I'd go home at night and find myself wanting to write notes about it, just to get it out of my system really. I think I liked the idea of writing all this stuff and then one day in years to come, when I wasn't working there, look back and laugh at how awful it had all been. And they weren't fictional at all; they would just be notes about conversations with customers or with colleagues, or descriptions of the staff room or descriptions of the service corridors, things like that.
所以当我在那里工作的时候，那些情形确实让我刻骨铭心，然后晚上我回到家以后，发现自己想要记下这有关的一切，只为了让它真的从我心里宣泄出来。我想我乐于这样做，记下所有的东西，然后在日后的某一天，当我不在那里工作的时候，可以回顾过去，并尽情嘲笑过去有多么糟糕。而它们都并非虚构的，它们有可能只是我与顾客或同事的对话记录，或是对员工室的描述，或是对商场工作通道的描述……诸如此类的事情。
