Name: Speak Smart And Fluent English | Advanced English Phrases To Complain | Slang Words & Expressions
Uploaded: 2020-03-10T23:52:40.000Z
Duration: 15 min 40 s
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Modal verbs - A2

Have you been thinking lately about how should you complain at your office? If you're not

To-infinitive

satisfied with your work and you want to tell your boss or tell the people around, what

Gerund

problems are you facing at your workplace, then I have some suggestions for you. I think

if you are getting to do some extra work, you could tell them that “your co-workers

are not pulling their weight around and that's why you need to pick up the slack.” Well

I think it was hard for you to understand this one right? Well the reason is because

here I have used some slang words in English that are used to complain and these are some

very smart ways to complain in English which you will often hear native speakers and advanced

speakers of English use. So if you want to learn some interesting ways to complain, then

make sure you watch this entire lesson with me, where today we are learning “smart English

for complaining”, so my name is Michelle and keep watching. Okay so as you can see

that we have a couple of sentences on the board okay, each one of these is a complaint

that you can make at your workplace, so let's start with the first one and try to understand

how you can complain using this and for which situation, so this is, “my co-workers don't

pull their weight” okay… and “I'm always picking up the slack” okay, now I'm sure,

that these two were very hard for you to understand because as I told you that these are slang

words, okay? So what do we mean by ‘pulling their weight’? Of course they cannot pull

their body weight, so what it means here is that they are not pulling up their work weight,

which means that they are not doing their own share of work. So when somebody is not

doing their own share of work, they are not pulling their weight. So you could say that

John I think you need to pull your weight, otherwise I will have to complain about you

to the boss. Which means that you need to do your own share of work. So let's write

that here, ‘pull their weight’ means do their share of work. Alright, now let's look

at the next one, ‘I'm always picking up the slack’, what do we mean by picking up

the slack? So picking up means that you're on the ground, picking up something and here,

‘slack’ here means that you're always doing the extra work. So ‘picking up the

slack’ means, to do the extra work, okay? Now think about this, if your co-workers don't

do the work that's assigned to them, then who will do it? Most probably all that work

will fall back on you and you will have to do extra work. So in such a situation if you

are doing extra work at your workplace and you want to tell that to your boss or to somebody

else you could say that, “I'm having a really tough time, I've got no time for myself because

I've been picking up the slack at work”… which means that I'm doing a lot of extra

work which I am not supposed to do. So if this is your situation then you have learned

two slang expressions to use if you are not satisfied at your workplace. Okay now with

this we move to the second sentence that you can use to complain at your workplace… “I

can't stand the office politics” okay, “It seems like kissing up”… can we do that?

Oh! “Kissing up to the people” okay “who called the shots is the only way to move up

the ranks” okay, this seems very interesting, we have got ‘politics’, we have got ‘kissing’,

we've got ‘shots’ and the ‘ranks’… so what do all these expressions mean? Well

if you want to complain at your workplace, if you are in such a situation where you need

to please some people at work or you need to do some activities to make them happy,

then you're in this situation. So let me decode it for you, ‘I can't stand the office politics’,

so office politics is a situation where you, where there are people who use their position

to influence others, as in if you have a supervisor, just because he's a supervisor he might ask

you to pick up the slack, which means the work that he is supposed to do, he might give

you some responsibility so that he can be free of it. And such people create the office

politics, which means that they use their position to dominate others, okay? Office

politics means to use position to dominate others. Okay now with this let's see what

does this complain say further, ‘I can't stand the office politics’ so possibly this

person has other people around them who is you know asking them to do a lot of work and

using their position to dominate him or her… ‘It seems like kissing up to the people’,

okay so kissing, we all know what kissing is, but how would you kiss to the people in

the office? Kissing up to the people in the office means, pleasing people okay which means

to do things for them that make them happy. So if your supervisor expects you to get a

coffee, you go and get it for them. If they want you to share your lunch, you share your

lunch with them. If they call you at night and ask you for some extra favour for the

next day, like maybe you know designing a PowerPoint presentation, you do it for them

and why would you do it? So that you can be in their good books, okay? So kissing up to

the people means to try to be in someone's good books, okay? Try to be in someone's good

books. So it seems like, ‘kissing up to the people who call the shots’, okay ‘call

the shots’ are the people who make the important decisions, okay? Calling the shots means those

people who make the important decisions at work. So making important decisions is called,

calling the shots. So what the person is trying to say here is that it seems like trying to

be in someone's good books who makes important decisions is the only way to move up the ranks,

now moving up the ranks means getting a better rank which means to get a better position

at work. To get a better position  and you could also say ‘to move up the ladder’

which has the same meaning as moving up the rank. So if you are having a hard time at

your workplace because of the office politics as in people dominating you and you have to

please people to be in their good books because they take important decisions and you don't

like to do that because that's the only way to get a better position then maybe you need

to quit because you're not enjoying your workplace and you have to face a lot of office politics.

So this is another way to complain at your workplace and now let's move to the next one,

“my boss loves to micromanage and I can't do my best work when she is constantly breathing

down my neck.” okay now this is pretty interesting, do you know the meaning of micro? Micro means

very, very tiny, okay? Tiny. And managed means to handle something. Okay so my boss loves

to tiny handling? No! What it actually means is that your boss likes to see all the details

of what you are doing. Okay so if you are making a file they want to stay updated about

the file that you're making. If you are calling some clients they want to know which clients

have you called and how has the deal proceeded. So these are those kind of bosses who don't

like to just sit up there and you know give activities, you do this, you do that but these

are those bosses who like to find out what their employees are doing. So if you have

a boss like that you can say that my boss loves to micromanage and I can do my best

work which means you can't perform your best when she is or he is constantly breathing

down your neck. Okay just imagine this feeling, think of yourself in a public place okay and

you have this person standing behind you and you can almost feel their breath on your neck,

isn't that so terrible? Such a strange feeling to have someone breathing at your neck? Well

if you work with the person who likes to micromanage then that person is breathing down your neck

and if you have a boss like that you can say that, “it's so unpleasant to have a boss

who's constantly breathing down your neck” which means who is constantly looking at what

you are doing, okay? So tiny handling means to you know see all the details and breathing

down the neck also has a similar meaning which means to see the details. Alright so if you

have a boss like that who likes to see all the details and all the work that you're doing

and makes it very uncomfortable for you to be at your workplace then you can use this

to complain about that situation. Okay now the next one we have is “the job itself

is rewarding”. Okay rewarding “but the salary and benefits leave a lot to be desired”

okay now this is very interesting because we have two expressions the first is ‘rewarding’

so in this case somebody thinks that their job is actually good okay rewarding comes

from the word reward which means you know a prize. So if you like your job and if you're

happy if you're satisfied and you feel good at your job you'll say that it's rewarding.

For example I think content writing is financially very rewarding, which means it pays you very

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Speak Smart And Fluent English | Advanced English Phrases To Complain | Slang Words & Expressions

constantly

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