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【完形填空】Cloze: The Last Shift at Diamond Hill
The siren at Diamond Hill went off at 6:40 a.m., and Zhou Lan already knew that something had (1) wrong.
She had worked on the nursery line for eleven years, (2) cloth through the pad machine and checking every diaper before it dropped into the packing chute.
The factory stood at the edge of a county road in Fujian, a grey block of concrete with rusted shutters.
In 2018 it (3) 1,240 people. By last March, the payroll listed only 311.
Zhou, 44, was one of the last hires still (4) at the intermediate station, and she had begun to hate the quiet.
A quiet line meant orders had dried up. It meant the company was (5) through its own reserves.
"Attentive," her supervisor, Chen Wei, used to tell the new recruits. "You miss one defect, and the whole shipment gets (6)."
He was 52, gregarious in a way that wore people out, and he carried a grudge (7) the head office that he never quite hid.
What damaged the plant was not one decision but a (8) of careless ones.
In 2016, management signed a contract with a distributor in Lagos, and the margin looked incredible.
To meet it, they wasted money on old equipment, (9) that the overseas market would not notice a slight difference in absorbency.
They were wrong. A 2019 audit found that 18 percent of exports failed the leak test.
The company tried to fix the defect by adding a cheap layer of pulp, which only made the product feel like paper.
Customers complained. The brand lost its credit with three major retailers.
Chen Wei showed Zhou a confidential memo in which a vice-president wrote that the company should "gently step away" from the baby-care sector and (10) toward industrial wipes.
Zhou read it twice. "They are selling us," she said. Chen did not answer.
He simply spat on the floor and walked toward the loading bay.
Choices
(1) A. come B. gone C. turned D. fallen
(2) A. feeding B. feed C. fed D. to feed
(3) A. employing B. employed C. employs D. employment
(4) A. remained B. leaving C. standing D. staying
(5) A. taking B. going C. drinking D. putting
(6) A. spoiling B. to spoil C. spoiled D. spoil
(7) A. to B. at C. against D. with
(8) A. series B. range C. set D. sequence
(9) A. to reason B. reasoned C. reason D. reasoning
(10) A. misorient B. reorient C. orient D. disorient