I Need An Assistant!

Marco: Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

Amira: I'm Amira.

Marco: Hey Amira, how are you today?

Amira: I'm doing great. What about you?

Marco: I'm doing pretty good. I'm excited about this lesson that you have for us today.

Amira: Yes, it's actually a very, very useful lesson. It's about someone asking his boss for an assistant.

Marco: Oh, okay, an assistant. What's an assistant?

Amira: Well, it's someone who helps you with your work around the office.

Marco: Okay, great. So let's listen to this dialogue and when we come back, we'll take a look at all the interesting and useful vocabulary that you'll find.

Dialogue (First Time)
Boss: Like I told you before, we just don't have the resources to hire you an assistant. Tony: I understand that, but the fact is we're understaffed. Boss: The timing is just not right. The economy is bad and it's too risky to take on new staff.Tony: Yeah, I guess you're right. Here's an idea. What if we hire an intern? She would take some of the weight off my shoulders. Boss: She? Tony: Yeah, you know, a recent graduate. She could give me a hand with some of these projects and we could keep our costs down. Boss: That sounds reasonable. Let me see what I can do... Boss: Tony, I'd like to introduce you to your new assistant. Tony: Okay, great. Let's meet her. Adam: Hi, I'm Adam. Tony: Oh... hi, I'm Tony.

Amira: And we're back. Tony, he's surprised, huh?

Marco: Yeah, he's... I don't know why though he's surprised. I think we should talk about that a little bit later.

Amira: Yes, for now, let's look at some interesting vocabulary and phrases here. Marco, I know you've chosen one for us.

Marco: Yeah, the first one that I want to take a look at is resources. Resources. Resources. Resources. And that means in this text, basically money.

Amira: Right. So, the office doesn't have enough money. Now, another word we heard is understaffed. Understaffed means they don't have enough workers or employees working there.

Marco: Perfect, okay. The next one is the timing is just not right. The timing is just not right. Let's listen to how we can use this entire phrase in a different situation so then we can understand what it means. Let's listen.

Example 1:

I was gonna sell my house, but the timing is just not right.
Example 2:

Honey, I think we should have a baby.
The timing is just not right.
Amira: Okay, great. I guess that makes it clear. Yes, actually it's very obvious that it means that it's just not a good time.

Marco: Right, perfect. I have another interesting phrase for you which is weight off my shoulders. Weight off my shoulders. So to take weight off my shoulders is another way of saying to help me with my work or to take some of my work away from me. If you have a lot of things to do and I come and help you, that means that I took some of the weight off your shoulders.

Amira: Yes. Let's look at the next phrase that we have here and it's give me a hand. Give me a hand. Okay, now this is not literal. It's not that I'm gonna give you somebody's hand, right? Let's listen to some examples and then we can come back and explain what it means.

Example 1: Can you give me a hand with these boxes? Example 2: Neil, I'll need you to give me a hand with the sales reports. Example 3: Here, let me give you a hand with your suitcase.
Marco: All right, "give me a hand" is another way of saying help or to help out.

Amira: Exactly, to help out. Right. Perfect. Now, the last phrase we're going to look at here in this dialogue is keep our costs down. Keep our costs down. So, to keep our costs down means to try and not spend so much money.

Marco: Exactly. Many companies, for example, now control how much printing you do to keep the cost down of paper.

Amira: Yes. So, in other words, they do not want to have unnecessary spending. Perfect. Okay, I think it's time for us to listen to this dialogue one more time, but I want everyone to listen and see why Tony is surprised at the end when he meets his intern, when he meets his assistant.

Dialogue (Second Time)
Boss: Like I told you before, we just don't have the resources to hire you an assistant. Tony: I understand that but the fact is we're understaffed. Boss: The timing is just not right. The economy is bad and it's too risky to take on new staff.Tony: Yeah, I guess you're right. Here's an idea. What if we hire an intern? She would take some of the weight off my shoulders. Boss: She? Tony: Yeah, you know, a recent graduate. She could give me a hand with some of these projects and we could keep our costs down. Boss: That sounds reasonable. Let me see what I can do. Boss: Tony, I'd like to introduce you to your new assistant. Tony: Okay, great. Let's meet her. Adam: Hi, I'm Adam. Tony: Oh, hi, I'm Tony.

Amira: Well, you know Marco, I think that Tony was really surprised because he was kind of hoping to have a female intern.

Marco: Yeah, I think that's exactly what he was expecting. Maybe this guy is a little bit sexist. He thought that an intern should be a girl, but instead he got Adam. Exactly, and it looks like Adam is really big and really tall because he's got that deep voice.

Amira: Right. An intern, Marco, do you want to elaborate on that?

Marco: An intern is someone working at a company with a very low salary or sometimes no salary at all, but what you're gaining is experience and you are learning a lot of things.

Amira: Everyone who has been an intern or had an intern knows that sometimes they are not treated all that well. Sometimes they just serve coffee or they have to do paperwork.

Marco: Or like photocopying things. Exactly. Yeah. But some internships are really, really cool and some are really good experiences for learning.

Amira: Yes, definitely. Actually, I know a friend of mine, she used to work as an intern in one of those really big companies and she told me that she has gained so much experience doing that.

Marco: Yeah, I mean even if you don't get paid, the experience that you get is really good and that just opens doors for maybe getting another job, or sometimes the interns get hired by the company to stay because they do such a good job.

Amira: Yeah, I think that's mostly the case.

Marco: Yeah, that happened to me once. I started working as an intern and after three months I was hired by the company, so it does happen.

Amira: So you did a good job!

Marco: Yeah, of course. Alright folks, we're out of time today. I hope that you enjoyed our lesson and we'll be back tomorrow with another really cool and really interesting lesson from EnglishPod. Don't forget to come to our website at EnglishPod.com where you'll find some really great and interesting resources to help you learn and improve your English even more.

Amira: Yes, you should definitely do that and Marco and I would love to receive your comments and suggestions that you can leave on our community forum. But for now it's time for us to say bye!

Marco: Bye!