Our quarrel with efficiency is not that it gets things done, but that it is a thief of time when it leaves us no leisure to enjoy ourselves, and that it strains our nerves when we try to get things done perfectly. In building bridges, American engineers calculate so finely and exactly as to make the two ends come together within one-tenth of an inch. But when two Chinese begin to dig a tunnel from both sides of a mountain both come out on the other side. --The Chineses firm belief is that it doesnt matter so long as a tunnel is dug through, and if we have two instead of one, why, we have a double track to boot.
The pace of modern industrial life forbids this kind of glorious and magnificent idling. But, worse than that, it imposes upon us a different conception of time as measured by the clock and eventually turns the human being into a clock himself. Nevertheless, such efficiency is what makes life so hard and full of excitement. A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five oclock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already. Every American adult is arranging his time on the pattern of the schoolboy - three oclock for this, five oclock for that, six-thirty for change of dress, six-fifty for entering the taxi, and seven oclock for arriving at the destination. It just makes life not worth living.
1. The writer objects to efficiency mainly on the grounds that it ____.
A) entitles us to too much leisure time
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