Real English Conversations: The customer is always right, right?

Posted on March 10, 2007
Filed under British vs. American English, General silliness, Intermediate, Real English conversations |

 
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Introduction
Hi, Lori here welcoming you to another episode of Real English Conversations at BetterAtEnglish.com. Today my British pal Michael and I compare working in an office with working at home, and talk about how difficult it can be to put up with rude treatment from nasty customers when you work in a job providing service. As usual, we end up touching upon some of the differences between British and American English vocabulary.

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If you have a job where you have to look busy all the time, or where you have to tolerate rude customers, I encourage you to post your stories in the comments section on the website! It would be fun to hear what you have to say.

Before moving on to the conversation, I’d like to thank everyone who has donated since the last episode. Michael and I really appreciate your generosity, thanks so much! I also wanted to let you know that because of illness the past few weeks, I’ve not been able to keep up up with my email as well as I’d like to. Fortunately, I’m feeling a bit better now, so if you’d emailed and not received an answer, you will be getting one soon.

Right then, on with the conversation! [Download transcript from links above]

Final words
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Real English Conversations. Before I sign off, here are this week’s announcements.

First, because I really want to post more frequent episodes for you, I’ve been looking for ways to streamline my work process. So from now on, I am not going to put the transcript on the web page itself. I’ll just provide PDF and Microsoft Word documents for you to download from the website. Not having to format the html for each episode will save me between one and two hours per podcast. I’m curious to know how you react to this, so if you have strong feelings one way or another, please let me know. I’ve put a new poll up in the sidebar of the website to make it easy for you to have your say.

Second, thanks to everyone who has voted in other poll on the website. It appears that close to 80% of you are learners of English, 9% are teachers, and another 9% are both. About 2% of you are neither teachers nor learners of English.

That’s it for this time! As always, the transcription and vocabulary notes for this podcast are available at our website, www.betteratenglish.com. And remember, if you enjoy our show, please consider leaving a donation. We really appreciate your support. Bye for now!

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Comments

16 Responses to “Real English Conversations: The customer is always right, right?”

  1. maximo on March 11th, 2007 00:27

    I can’t download the word file :(

  2. Lori on March 11th, 2007 00:41

    Thanks for letting me know, Maximo. There was a typo in the URL, but it should work for you now :)

  3. Taz on March 11th, 2007 12:27

    Hi Lori,

    I have had some trouble getting to the comment section, but that might be my own fault…I like to read along while listening to the Podcast so I am fine with the changes. I just bugs me that the word file doesn’t automaticaly opens in a new screen. But that’s just me ;-)

    Greetz Taz

  4. Lori on March 11th, 2007 13:56

    Hi Taz,
    Thanks for your feedback! What kind of trouble did you have with the comments section — was it that you couldn’t find the comments link, or that the comments function just didn’t work properly in your browser? Or something else entirely?

    As for getting Word docs to open directly in your browser, I think there are plugins you can install that will let you do that. The same goes for PDFs. But it all depends on which browser you have and how you configure it.

  5. Taz on March 11th, 2007 17:21

    Hi Lori! About the comment section: At first it wouldn’t function properly for me, but now I tried again and everything seems fine…So order has been restored in the universe ;-)

    Greetz Taz

  6. Kristof on March 12th, 2007 09:09

    Hej Lori,

    Great job on the revamping of B@E! I absolutely love it (and that means a lot coming from my mouth).

    @Taz: it’s not supposed to open in a new browser window ;) That’s called “hijacking the browser” so Lori’s right on the spot there ;)

    Web geek signing off …

    *bzz* forgot: great convo once again, Lori!

  7. Taz on March 12th, 2007 14:43

    @ Kristof: I know, but it just bugs me for some strange reason..I’m lazy I guess ;-)

  8. Thomas on March 12th, 2007 18:32

    Hi Lori,

    Transcripts in Microsoft Word documents would be fine. It’s what most people use anyway, I guess. Besides, They’re better than PDF documents in that they’re more easily edited for appearances ….at least for me.

    BTW, that convo pic would’ve been better in its original without getting edited :)

  9. Lori on March 13th, 2007 00:52

    Tazzie, glad the comments are working. I’ve tested the new site on various browsers here at B@E central, but you never know what kind of issues users will run into on their own systems. Grateful for any bug reports so I can squash the little buggers! BTW, my beautiful fez is just for you :)

    Kristof, thanks! Glad you like the new site. I’ll be launching some companions sites soon, and they’ll all have a uniform “flavor.” It makes everything easier to manage. Sorry to say I did have to resort to a table for the footer to keep everything in place across browsers. I’m sure there is a workaround somewhere, but WTF! Fixing it in two minutes was more appealing to me than spending hours diddling around with browser hacks.

    Tomas, thanks for your comment! It’s no problem to post a Word (or Open Office) doc, because that’s where I write the drafts. The real problem is converting everything to html/css (that fits the website template) AFTER I’ve already done it once in Word. The pdf gets generated directly from Word or Open Office, so that’s a dawdle as well. And btw, I’m not sure what pic you mean, as there was no pic in this episode. I sure hope you’re not referring to my beautiful FEZ! ;)

  10. Tullio on March 20th, 2007 16:12

    Hi Lori! I think B@E is simply wonderful, especially for someone like me who hasn’t too much time to spend learning a new language…. I’d really like to be able to read the transcript from my iPod screen while listening to the conversation, is that possible?

    Greetings
    Tullio

  11. Lori on March 20th, 2007 17:12

    Hi Tullio,
    I’m glad to hear you’re finding B @ E useful; thanks for letting us know.

    Recently I changed the way our podcast feed is generated, and now I *think* it should be possible to get the transcript into the mp3 so that you can read on your iPod. I really just need to figure out which of the id3 tags I should past it into. Hopefully I’ll have it figured out by the next episode — you are not the only one who has asked me for this feature, and it’s been frustrating to not be able to provide it. Wish me luck!

  12. Claire on March 21st, 2007 12:18

    Great new page design, I simply love it! :0)

    After listening to this podcast I am so glad that I haven´t had such horrible experiences so far. I once had a part-time job (lasted for about 5 months), I helped my mother´s friend whose daughter was hopeless at learning English, so I was asked to help out, she was like seven years old and didn´t listen to anyone, didn´t follow advice, nothing, so I quit…couldn´t stand it :( (don´t get me wrong, I like kids, just now particularly this one)

  13. Lori on March 24th, 2007 11:27

    Claire: Glad you like the new site! There were some display bugs in IE, but I think I’ve got most of them fixed by now (thanks to the help of our ever-alert readers!).

    I agree with you, having to try to teach someone who has no desire to learn is like hell on earth. Even worse, nowadays teachers are so brainwashed into the “reflective practitioner, learner-centered” ideology that it can be really hard not to blame yourself and feel like a total failure for not being able to “inspire” or “reach” a particular student. Some students just plain SUCK, but as a “learner-centered, reflective practitioner” you’re not allowed to say that.

    You can see you pressed one of my hot buttons!

    Anyway, thanks for your comment!

  14. manoj on July 7th, 2008 04:58

    thanks for providing this service

  15. Junior on November 11th, 2008 17:51

    Hi, Lori.

    Thanks for sending me out these audios and transcripts links.

    I’m trying to base my learning on listening conversational English. I record your audios in my mp3 player and print out the transcripts because I don’t got my own computer, and that’s why I’m sending you out this message, the thing is, that I haven’t been able to copy into word your transcription CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT, so would you please send me a copy or something?
    Thanks,
    Best regards.

  16. Lori on November 13th, 2008 22:01

    Hi Junior,

    You can download the word doc here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/betteratenglish/customer_right.doc

    It is password protected and read only. But you can still open the file and print it. If you want to reformat the text your own way for printing, just open the document, do ctrl+a to copy all the text, then create a new document and do ctrl+v to paste in the text.

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