我难搞,但我很骄傲

Last week I had a disagreement on a matter of principle with a man at work. When I got home, I gave my daughter a blow-by-blow account of the bust-up, expecting her loyal support. Instead she rolled her eyes.

前些天，我在工作中跟某人就一个原则性问题吵了一架。回到家，我将吵架的过程一字不落地讲给我闺女听，指望得到她的力挺。不料她翻了个白眼。

“Poor X,” she said, siding with my adversary.

“对方真可怜，”她说，跟我的对头站在一边。

“Poor X?” I repeated, thunderstruck.

“真可怜？”我重复道，很是吃惊。

“You can be very difficult,” she explained. “I don’t think you realise it.”

“你很难搞，”她解释说。“你自己还不觉得。”

She is right about the second point. I do not see myself as difficult — I am perfectly reasonable. To check this was the consensus view, the following morning I conducted a survey. I bearded the first colleague I saw and demanded: “Am I difficult?” He looked uncomfortable at being put on the spot when he had barely taken his coat off. “Yes,” he said. I asked three more people. All gave the same answer.

她后半句说得没错。我没觉得自己难搞——我明明很讲道理。想看看别人是不是也这么认为，第二天一早我做了个调查。我逮住见到的第一位同事审问：“我难搞吗？”刚脱下外套就被人当面质问让他看起来很尴尬。“是的，”他说。我又问了三个人。他们也都这么回答。

Being difficult at work is not generally thought to be a good thing. On Amazon there are 1,387 titles on how to deal with difficult people with titles such as Since Strangling Isn’t an Option. I failed to find a single volume called What to do When the Difficult Person is Me. Or How to be Difficult and Influence People.

难搞在工作中通常不是什么好事。亚马逊(Amazon)上有1387本书教人们怎么对付难搞人士，比如《对付难搞人士不用纠结》(Since Strangling Isn’t an Option)。但我却找不出哪怕一本小册子叫做《我很难搞怎么办》(What to do When the Difficult Person is Me)或是《怎样成为有影响力的刺头》(How to be Difficult and Influence People)。

As a columnist, being difficult is part of the job — if you do not enjoy sometimes getting up the noses of readers, you are too bland to be any good. Indeed, as a journalist, being personally difficult can serve you rather well. I can think of one or two writers who are so impossible their text is never tampered with. Their words invariably command pride of place because no editor can face the fuss that would result from doing otherwise.

作为一个专栏作家，难搞是工作的一部分——要是不喜欢时不时惹恼一下读者，那未免太乏味了而且也写不好专栏。事实上，作为一名记者，个性难搞还能帮上大忙。我能想到一两个作者，他们难搞到极致，所以稿子从来没被修改过。他们写的东西总能登在最好的位置，因为否则的话，由此引发的鸡飞狗跳没有哪个编辑能招架得住。

Being difficult has other advantages too. It means that people tend not to lean on you for small favours. As one of the most important tricks to survival in the corporate world is to avoid grunt work, this makes it a powerful weapon. Being difficult also means you are likely to be better at getting your own way. It is a balancing act — you must be difficult enough to insist that things are done as you see fit, without being so difficult that people refuse to work with you.

难搞还有其他好处。比如别人不会拿鸡毛蒜皮的小事找你帮忙。最重要的企业生存法则之一就是要避免吃力不讨好，因此难搞可以说是纵横职场的一大利器。难搞还意味着你更能坚持自我。这是一种微妙的平衡——你得难搞到足以坚持按你的主意办事，但也不能做过头让别人都拒绝和你共事。

There are lots of different sorts of difficult. The books list various common varieties, all of which are unattractive: narcissists, psychopaths, victims, gossips, blamers and people who fly off the handle.

难搞的人也分很多种。书上列举出一些常见的分类，他们的共性是不讨人喜欢：自恋狂、变态、被害妄想狂、长舌妇、怨妇还有那些脾气火爆的家伙。

Yet there is a further sort of difficult that I cannot find in any book, and is not at all unattractive. That is being a woman. Women are far more likely to be called difficult than men. Google reveals twice the matches for “a difficult woman” as for “a difficult man” — and most of the references to difficult men don’t count because they continue with “to pin down”.

然而，还有一种人很难搞却没见哪本书提到过，而这些人一点也不讨人厌。那就是女人。人们认为女人的难搞程度远胜于男人。在谷歌(Google)上搜“一个难搞的女人”显示出的结果比“一个难搞的男人”多一倍——而且与难搞的男人相关的搜索结果多数都不能算数，因为这些搜索结果紧接着就是“去搞定”。

Equally, most of the people calling women difficult are men. The four colleagues I consulted first thing were all male. Later I put the same question to four FT women. “Not especially,” was the consensus view.

与此同时，说女人难搞的大部分人都是男性。我一大早询问的四个同事都是男的。后来我又问了四位FT的女同事。人家就一致认为我“不是特别难搞。”

The difficult label is applied to any woman who is sometimes prepared to be contrary, who does not always agree with other people, and who fights her own corner. All of that is vital if you want to get things done or change anything at all. Prime Minister Theresa May, according to former cabinet minister Ken Clarke is a “bloody difficult woman” — and one sincerely hopes he is right, given the size of the challenge that faces her.

如果有位女性有时打算反驳别人，或并不总是和大家意见一致，又或者为了自己的立场而抗争，那她就会被贴上难搞的标签。而如果你想做些事或者改变点什么，就必须做以上所有。英国首相特里萨?梅(Theresa May)，被英国前内阁大臣肯?克拉克(Ken Clarke)称为一个“难搞得要死的女人”——考虑到首相面临的巨大挑战，本人倒真希望如此。

To settle the matter in my case I asked a male colleague who, being thoroughly difficult himself, has never been known to deviate from the truth. “No,” he said. “You aren’t difficult. You are immovable, determined, stubborn and sometimes impossible.”

为解决我自己的问题我又问了一位男同事，此人本身就难搞无比，而且讲话总是命中真相。“不，”他说。“你不是难搞。你是顽固、犟筋、死心眼，有时还不可理喻。”

All of which makes me long to be merely difficult. Indeed the badge “difficult woman” is one I am inclined to wear with pride. Stripped of baggage, it is a compliment that means “requiring skill to understand”. Proust is more difficult than Enid Blyton.

这让我很是希望自己仅仅只是难搞。其实被称作“难搞的女人”让我还挺受用的。除去感情色彩，这个词本身也是一种恭维，它意味着“人们得有一定水平才能理解我们”。普鲁斯特(Proust)就比伊尼德?布莱顿(Enid Blyton)难以理解得多。

There is another point about being difficult. It is a perk that comes with position. When you are junior, being difficult is likely to result in the sack. The more senior you become, the more scope there is for you to be difficult — and more of a call for it, too.

关于难搞还有一点。它是地位提升的特权。如果你的职位很低，难搞很有可能导致被炒鱿鱼。而你的职位升得越高，让你发挥难搞的空间也就越大——同时你也越需要变得难搞一些。

This summer I will leave journalism and start all over again, training to be a maths teacher. Being difficult with my new colleagues will be out of the question, so I am going to enjoy it to the hilt while I still can.

今年夏天，我将告别新闻业重新开始一项新职业，受训成为一名数学老师。我将不得不跟新同事们好好相处，所以我要充分享受自己尚能难搞的时光直到最后一刻。