PassageTwo

Questions51 to 55 are based on the following passage.

   It is the season for some frantic last-minute math--across the country,employees of all stripes are counting backward in an attempt to figure out justhow much paid time-off they have left in their reserves. More of them, though,will skip those calculations altogether and just power through the holidaysinto 2017: More than half of American workers don t use up all of theirallotted vacation days each year.

   Not so long ago, people would have turned up their noses at that kind ofdedication to the Job. As marketing professors Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia,and Anat Keinan recently explained in Harvard Business Review (HBR), leisuretime was once seen as an indicator of high social status, something attainableonly for those at the top. Since the middle of the 20th century, though, thingshave turned the opposite way--these days, punishing hours at your desk, ratherthan days off, are seen as the mark of someone important.

   In a series of several experiments, the researchers illustrated just howmuch we've come to admire busyness, or at least the appearance of it.Volunteers read two passages, one about a man who led a life of leisure andanother about a man who was over-worked and over-scheduled; when asked todetermine which of the two had a higher social status, the majority of theparticipants said the latter. The same held true for people who used productsthat implied they were short on time: In one experiment, for example, customersof the grocery-delivery service Peapod were seen as of higher status thanpeople who shopped at grocery stores that were equally expensive; in another,people wearing wireless headphones were considered further up on the socialladder than those wearing regular headphones, even when both were just used tolisten to music.

   In part, the authors wrote in HBR, this pattern may have to do with theway work itself has changed over the past several decades.

   We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status maybe linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economics. In such economies, individuals whopossess the human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are expected to be in high demand and short supplyon the job market. Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all thetime, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances ourperceived status.

   Even if you feel tempted to sacrifice your own vacation days for fakebusyness, though, at least consider leaving your weekends unscheduled. it's foryour own good.

What do most employees plan to dotowards the end of the year?

How would people view dedication towork in the past?

What did the researchers find through aseries of experiments?

What may account for the change ofpeople's attitude towards being busy?

What does the author advise us to do atthe end of the passage?