Neil's difficult summer job in Canada | Practise your listening with Real Easy English

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• conversation
• adjectives
• discovered
• intriguing
• particular
• vocabulary
• expression
• personally

Transcript: 87 sentences

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1. 0:00 Hello Neil.
2. 0:01 Hi Georgie.
3. 0:01 How are you?
4. 0:02 I'm very well, thank you.
5. 0:03 How are you?
6. 0:04 I'm excellent, thank you.
7. 0:05 Good.
8. 0:05 Neil, have you ever had a bad or difficult job?
9. 0:09 Oh yes.
10. 0:10 There's one in particular that I remember.
11. 0:14 Ooh, that's intriguing.
12. 0:16 I'm sure we're going to hear about it a bit later because that's what we're talking about today in Real Easy English - bad or difficult jobs we've had.
13. 0:24 Yes, and people should remember that they can get a free worksheet for this podcast at bbclearningenglish.com.
14. 0:32 That's right.
15. 0:40 So Neil, tell us all about your bad or difficult job.
16. 0:45 Well, what happened was I found a job picking beans on a student holiday
17. 0:56 while I was in Canada.
18. 0:58 Ooh.
19. 0:58 On a farm?
20. 0:59 Yeah, but we had to travel a long way.
21. 1:03 And when we got there, we discovered that you got paid by the amount that you picked.
22. 1:10 OK.
23. 1:11 And it cost $10 to get to this place on the coach and we worked really hard all day.
24. 1:17 And then I got my beans and weighed them.
25. 1:20 And I got paid $8.
26. 1:23 Oh wow.
27. 1:24 Was it a full day's work?
28. 1:25 Oh yeah.
29. 1:26 Hard, hard work in the heat, in a field.
30. 1:29 Was it fun, at least?
31. 1:31 Were you with friends?
32. 1:32 It's a good story now...
33. 1:34 OK.
34. 1:35 ...but at the time, it was very annoying.
35. 1:40 Exhausting, it sounds.
36. 1:41 It was exhausting.
37. 1:42 All day in the heat.
38. 1:44 I had quite a difficult job - it was just a temporary one.
39. 1:49 I was working in customer service, so I had to pick up calls from customers
40. 1:55 who were needing help or were unhappy about the service they had.
41. 2:01 OK.
42. 2:01 That sounds interesting.
43. 2:02 What didn't you like about this job?
44. 2:05 Well, the company was having a difficult time, so many or most of the customers that were calling were unhappy about the service,
45. 2:16 and so I had to talk to people who were very angry,
46. 2:21 and it felt like they were angry with me, even though it wasn't my fault.
47. 2:28 The company changed the warehouse where they kept the products and the delivery company at the same time,
48. 2:35 so it was just all a big mess and I found it really stressful.
49. 2:41 Yeah, you say stressful.
50. 2:43 How else did it make you feel?
51. 2:46 It made me feel very anxious because I took it too personally.
52. 2:53 Like I said, it felt like they were angry with me, even though I had nothing to do with it.
53. 2:58 If you heard somebody else talking about this kind of job, what advice would you give them?
54. 3:06 Ooh, I would say, don't take it to heart.
55. 3:10 As I said, I was taking it too personally, but you need to realise that you can only do your best.
56. 3:17 And at the end of the day, you can go home and enjoy yourself, relax, and tomorrow is a new day.
57. 3:25 That's a very positive attitude.
58. 3:27 Yes.
59. 3:28 What advice would you give to people doing the job that you had in Canada?
60. 3:34 I think it's really important to do some research before you say yes to a job, if you're lucky to be able to choose.
61. 3:45 So, probably find out how much you're going to get paid, what it means, and how much you have to pay to get to the place to do the job.
62. 3:57 Yeah, that's very important.
63. 3:58 And that's some good advice.
64. 4:06 OK.
65. 4:07 So, let's recap the vocabulary that we used in the conversation.
66. 4:11 Good idea.
67. 4:12 We had a few adjectives to describe work.
68. 4:15 You said that your job was stressful.
69. 4:18 I did.
70. 4:19 So, you can describe something as 'stressful', and the emotion that you feel is 'stressed'.
71. 4:26 You said that your job was exhausting, so it was very hard work, so you got very tired doing it.
72. 4:33 That's 'exhausting' and the feeling is 'exhausted'.
73. 4:38 Yeah.
74. 4:38 And I think I also said my job was annoying.
75. 4:42 Yes.
76. 4:43 And if something is annoying, it makes you feel annoyed.
77. 4:48 Yes, that's right.
78. 4:50 I also used the expression 'take something personally', which is when you feel that someone is angry with you when they're actually angry at the situation.
79. 4:59 Yeah.
80. 4:59 And you used another expression with a similar meaning - 'take something to heart'.
81. 5:05 If you take something to heart, just as you explained, you feel bad.
82. 5:10 You feel someone is attacking you, but it's just the job.
83. 5:14 OK.
84. 5:14 Well, that is the end of this episode of Real Easy English, but Neil we'll be back next week, won't we?
85. 5:20 We will.
86. 5:20 Thank you for listening and goodbye.
87. 5:22 Goodbye!

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