12、向往已久的美國總公司

12、向往已久的美國總公司

Nancy和Johnson到美國出差，每天的行程都安排得滿滿的，除了和headquarter的同事們見面溝通以外，還要參加其他的social activities（社交活動）。在這些活動中，Nancy感受到了美國文化和社交方式的不同，她甚至感到了明顯的culture shock。

Johnson這次好像不是她的老板，而是她的companion（同伴），一直幫Nancy解釋各種她不理解的現(xiàn)象。比如，在他們經(jīng)過城市的不同blocks（區(qū)域）時(shí)，Nancy發(fā)現(xiàn)了architecture style（建筑風(fēng)格）和衛(wèi)生狀況的差異，她覺得這看起來很exotic（有異國風(fēng)情的）。可Johnson告訴她，不同的群體往往聚居在不同的neighborhood（小區(qū)）里，比如拉丁美洲后裔、中國人、日本人和俄羅斯人等等，都會聚居在城市不同的地帶。在各個neighborhood之內(nèi)，人們會保持本民族的生活習(xí)慣，很多人甚至只用母語和他人交流。這讓Nancy聯(lián)想到她的一個大學(xué)同學(xué)，在大三的時(shí)候去英國讀書，三年后回到中國，英語講得卻不比她好多少，據(jù)說是因?yàn)槠綍r(shí)只和中國人打交道，每天只講漢語?？磥硭那闆r還真不是個案呢。Nancy不禁感慨，人一定要有開放的心態(tài)，積極地接受外界新鮮事物，才能不斷地提高自己，豐富自己的人生。

根據(jù)事先的行程安排，Nancy和VP及總公司的幾位同事要在第四天參觀一個potential partner（可能的合作伙伴）的廠區(qū)——一家全球知名的high-tech enterprise（高科技企業(yè)）。這家企業(yè)的總部在Long Land，在那里也有規(guī)模很大plant（工廠），這個plant是他們用了近五年的時(shí)間建設(shè)起來的，布局合理，運(yùn)作效率很高，Innovo早就希望能夠過去參觀、學(xué)習(xí)一下了。周一一早，一行人趕著早班飛機(jī)飛往Long Land，對方公司的Marketing Director Susanna 接待了她們。

Susanna先向客人們介紹了公司的一些基本情況：

Our head office is in Long Land. This is where most of our senior managers work. We also have four regional headquarters: in Tokyo, serving Asia and Australia; in New York, serving the whole North America; in Buenos Aires for South America; and in Frankfurt, for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. We have local offices in seventeen other countries, and in countries where we do not have our own people we usually have local agents.

Of course, we make a wide range of products but recently we have closed some factories and reduced the number of products being made at others. However, distribution is still as local as possible and we have warehouses, depots and distribution centres in almost every country in which we operate.

We have also closed some of the smaller research and development centres and moved many of our best scientists and technicians to two major centers in Germany and the United States.

We think that staff development is essential to our present and future success and we run more than 3,000 courses for our employees in the sixty offices which we have across the world.

Well, that's all I want to say about our presence worldwide. Now, if you would like to follow me, first of all I'll show you the training center and then we'll start the tour of the plant.

隨后Susanna帶著一行人參觀了training center（培訓(xùn)中心）和plant。這家企業(yè)的整體運(yùn)作很impressive。Innovo的同事都對雙方未來的合作有了很大的興趣和信心。

參觀完plant之后，Nancy和VP趕往機(jī)場，他們的business trip（出差）接近尾聲了。在回程的飛機(jī)上，Nancy突然感到自己和Johnson的sense of distance（距離感）已經(jīng)在不知不覺間消失了。在此行之前，Johnson作為老板，經(jīng)常給她一種無形的壓力和威嚴(yán)，然而這次trip中，Johnson一直在充當(dāng)guide和companion的角色，對她很照顧。Nancy現(xiàn)在覺得這個老板其實(shí)是很可愛的。