In the company in which I work, each of us is afraid of at least one person. The lower your  
  1   is,the more people you are afraid of.  2   all the people are afraid of the twelve men at the top
who helped   3   and build the company and now own and  4    it.
      All these twelve men are   5    now and drained(耗尽) by time and success of energy and
ambition. Many have   6   their whole lives here. They seem friendly, slow and    7   when I come
upon them in thehalls and always courteous(谦恭的) when they     8  with others in the public lifts.
They   9   work hard. They hold meetings, make promotions (推销活动), and  allow their  10   to
be used on announcements that are prepared and issued(发布) by somebody else. Nobody is sure
  11   really runs the company, butthe company does run.
      In the  12    course of a business day I am afraid of Jack Green because my department is part
of his department and Jack Green is my   13  ; Green is afraid of me because most of the work in my
department is done for the Sales Department, which is more  14   than his department.
       Green distrusts me sometimes. He makes   15  clear to me every now and then that he wishes to
seeeverything  16    out of my department before it's shown to other departments. I know he doesn't
really mean this. He is  17   busy with his own work to pay that much attention to all of mine, and I'll
bypass(避开) him on most of our assignments (任务) rather than  18   his time and delay their 19   to
people who have an immediate  20  for them.