79 Using English at Work

Lesson 10 - Socializing with Coworkers

cream. There are many different types of dip. We use the chips to pick up a little bit of dip and then we eat the chip and the dip together. I love chips and dip!

When I see a lot of deep-fried foods and chips and dip, I load up and go back to the table. "To load up" means to put a lot of something on your plate, or perhaps in a container, or something that can hold other things. For example, if I'm moving from one apartment to another, I would load up my car with things from my old apartment to take to my new apartment. I'm putting as many things as I can into my car. When I get to my new apartment, then I would "unload," or take those things out of my car and put them in the apartment. In this lesson, I'm loading up by putting a lot of food on my plate. Then I go back to the table where my coworkers are and I say, "I'm going to eat this all by myself. You can't have any!" No, I don't say that! I'm a nice person so I let them eat the food also.

One of the guys, or male coworkers, is Brian. We use the word "guy" to informally refer to a man. Brian starts to grumble about work. "To grumble" means to complain quietly, or sometimes not so quietly, about something. You're not saying it very loudly so that everyone can hear you, but you're indicating that you are unhappy by the things you say. In this case, Brian is grumbling, probably talking about the reasons why he doesn't like his job. Brian also starts to bad-mouth the boss. "To bad-mouth (someone)" means to say bad things about another person. It's never a good idea to bad-mouth someone, because that other person may hear you, or people that you are talking to might tell that person - especially if that person is your boss!

When Brian starts to grumble about work and bad-mouth the boss, I'm in no mood to talk about work. If someone is "in no mood" to do something, it means that he or she does not want to do something, they're not interested in doing something. If you feel sick, for example, you probably are in no mood to go outside and play in the snow, or simply to go outside. I'm in no mood to talk about work, meaning I don't want to talk about work since it's Friday and it's the beginning of the weekend, so I change the subject. "To change the subject" means to say or do something that gets people to stop talking about whatever they're talking about now and begin talking about something else. If your wife or husband asks you to do something that you don't want to do, you may change the subject so perhaps they'll forget about it. That's what I'm doing here; I'm changing the subject so we can talk about something else, not work.

To do that, I ask my coworkers about their plans for the weekend. Diana says that she's planning to kick back and relax. "To kick back" means to stop working and start having fun. I like to kick back after a long day by sitting on my couch and watching a baseball game, at least during the summer. "To kick back" is a

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