In 2016, Agent, a British company, tested five-hour working days for a month. The hope was that the people in the company would feel happier with reduced working hours. However, the results of the experiment were mixed.

“Lots of good things happened,” says Agent CEO Paul Corcoran. “We looked at tasks in terms of time: Do this in 15 minutes and that in half an hour. We wasted no time. People were missing the worst of the traffic because they were coming in at 10 a. m. instead of 8:30 a. m.”

Problems, however, quickly came up. “People used to have eight hours to finish their jobs. Now, they only had five hours,” Corcoran explains. “The idea was to give people more freedom, but they ended up feeling more stressed.”

In most companies around the world, an employee works for eight hours every workday. But many researchers have looked at the links between working hours and productivity (生产效率). They found that most people could only be productive for five hours each day.

Some companies have been experimenting with shorter working days. In these companies, people work from 8 a. m. to 1 p. m. with no breaks. In order to have the afternoons to themselves, they become much more focused than before. Their productivity increases by 50 percent.

But just like Corcoran, many managers have seen problems with reduced working hours. In addition to the added pressure to complete tasks on time, people are losing something on the relationship level. Since they no longer have time for small talk, it has been harmful for team culture.

It’s hard to say how long the perfect working day should be. Reduced working hours sound great, but having to do more work in less time is tiring. Which would you prefer, five-hour working days or traditional eight-hour ones?

【小题1】When Agent decided to test five-hour working days, it expected ________ results.

A．encouraging

B．mixed

C．lasting

D．harmful

【小题2】What problem did people in Agent face when the company tested five-hour working days?

A．They had much more work to do.

B．They suffered from the worst traffic.

C．They had to spend more time communicating with each other.

D．They were under more pressure to complete their jobs on time.

【小题3】The underlined word “employee” probably means ________ in Paragraph 4.

A．a person who receives a reward from a company	B．a person who does a research for a company
C．a person who is asked to learn from a company	D．a person who is paid to work for a company

【小题4】What is the writer’s attitude towards “reduced working hours”?

A．Supportive.

B．Negative.

C．Neutral (中立的).

D．Uninterested.