Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 720, Buying Office Furniture.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 720.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
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Not great, but pretty good.
Let's get started.
Is that the office shop catalog?
Yeah, I'm in charge of furnishing the new offices on the second floor.
They need everything.
Desks, file cabinets, bookcases, you name it.
That sounds like fun.
I love shopping for new furniture.
Can I help?
Yes, definitely.
I've picked out a few things already, but I'm having a hard time deciding among all of these office chairs.
Get this one.
They're on casters and are fully adjustable.
Okay.
What about desks?
Everybody has a different idea about office desks.
I like this one.
It's got a keyboard tray, file drawers, and space for lateral files.
See?
Alright, I guess that one is as good as any.
But what about this one with a hutch?
This desk has an optional hutch.
If the new employees want a hutch, they can order one later.
Okay, last but not least, we need bookcases.
These are solid wood and look sturdy.
What do you think?
A dialogue begins with Natalia saying, Is that the office shop catalog?
Office shop is the name of some store that sells office material, not a real place.
A catalog is a printed book with many pages that usually contains photographs and descriptions, pictures and text that about what a particular company sells.
So you might have a clothing catalog that shows all the latest dresses and shirts pants, that sort of thing.
You could have a office furniture catalog that shows things that you can buy for your office.
Catalogs are becoming less common because people now sell on the internet and you don't need to send them a book.
Kay says, yeah, I'm in charge of furnishing the new offices on the second floor.
To furnish F-U-R-N-I-S-H is a verb meaning to buy furniture, things like desks and chairs for a certain place, for a house or, in this case, for an office.
The noun furnishings, plural, refers to furniture.
But the verb to furnish means to go and buy, select and buy furniture for a particular place.
Kay says that the second floor offices need everything.
Desks, file cabinets, bookcases, you name it.
A desk is a large piece of furniture like a table that you are able to write on or put your computer on, and other objects paper pencils, that sort of thing.
Desks can be very small, like a school desk where a student sits, or it can be very large, like what the president of the company might have.
File cabinets, sometimes called filing cabinets they're the same thing are large, typically large pieces of furniture that have big drawers in them boxes, if you will, that pull out and you can put into them pieces of paper that are put into cardboard files.
A file is a large piece of cardboard that is folded in half and you put papers in it just like you would put meat in a sandwich.
And then you put these files together into a drawer, a large box, and then that drawer goes into the file cabinet.
A cabinet is a general term for a place to store things, to keep things.
So here we are keeping the files.
It's a file cabinet.
Bookcases, one word, are large pieces of furniture that hold books, of course.
A bookcase has straight, flat pieces of either metal or wood, usually two or three, sometimes more.
These are called shelves.
Individually, it's a shelf.
S-H-E-L-F and you put the books on the shelves.
Kay says, They need desks, file cabinets, bookcases, you name it.
This is an expression.
When someone says you name it, they mean that they have given you a list of possible things, but there are even more things that they could say.
It's as if you are starting a list, but then you stop because there are so many things on the list.
You use the things that you say as a sample, as an example.
Natalia says, that sounds like fun.
I'm not sure if she's joking or being serious there.
I love shopping for new furniture, so I guess she's serious.
She does think this will be fun.
Can I help?
Kay says, yes, definitely.
I've picked out, I've selected a few things here, a few things already.
But I'm having a hard time, I'm having a difficult time deciding among all of these office chairs.
A chair of course is what you sit on.
An office chair would be a chair that you would typically find in an office.
Often office chairs are adjustable.
You can make them taller or shorter depending on what you want.
Natalia says, get this one, meaning buy this one.
They're on casters and are fully adjustable.
Casters C-A-S-T-E-R-S are small wheels that you put on the bottom of a chair or any very heavy furniture so that you can move it back and forth easily.
You might have a desk on casters, possible.
You probably wouldn't have a bookcase on casters, but you might have a small filing cabinet on casters so you could move it back and forth easily.
Natalia says that the chairs... that he should buy should be adjustable.
Adjustable means you can move it in different positions.
As I was saying earlier, you can make it higher or lower, for example.
Kay says, okay, what about desks?
Everybody has a different idea about office desks.
Natalia says, I like this one.
It's got a keyboard tray, file drawers, and space for lateral files.
See?
A keyboard tray is a small flat piece of wood or metal that goes underneath your desk and you can pull it out and type on it.
Put your keyboard there so you can enter information into your computer.
The reason that some desks have keyboard trays is because the desk is too tall and, in order to have a comfortable position for typing, you want the keyboard to be lower than the top of the desk.
A file drawer is similar to what we talked about when we discussed file cabinets.
A file drawer is a drawer that you put files in that's in a desk.
A file cabinet is separate from the desk.
Lateral files are a kind of file drawer file system where the files are facing either left or right.
Normally when you have a file cabinet, you pull out the drawer and And the files are all facing you.
In other words, they are in a direction so you can read them easily.
To have a lateral file means that the files are basically at 90 degrees from where you are, so that they don't face the same direction as the drawer pulling out.
They face in a perpendicular direction, if that makes any sense.
Kay says, all right, I guess that one is as good as any, meaning that's good enough.
But what about this one with a hutch?
A hutch, H-U-T-C-H, is something that goes on top of your desk.
It's usually something that has some places for storing things.
So it's like a storage cabinet that goes on the top of a desk, usually at the back of the desk.
Sometimes it can be a place to put your computer.
Sometimes it's a place for other equipment.
It depends on the desk and the hutch.
Natalia says this desk has an optional hutch.
Something that is optional means that it doesn't have to go with the desk.
You can choose it or not.
It isn't required.
Natalia says if the new employees want a hutch, they can order one later.
They can get one after they first start using the desk.
Kay says okay, last but not least, meaning this is the last thing we need to do, but it's not necessarily the least important.
We need bookcases.
Natalia says, these are solid wood and look sturdy.
Solid usually means strong or well-built, something that is firm, something that is stable.
Solid has some other meanings in English as well.
Take a look at our learning guide for those.
Sturdy S-T-U-R-D-Y also means strong well-built, something that won't fall down or fall apart easily.
Natalia says, what do you think?
Kay says, I think there's one person who's cut out for this job, and that person is not me.
To be cut out for something means to be well qualified to do something or to be well prepared to do something.
You might say, I'm not cut out for this. doing heavy lifting, or I'm not cut out for painting.
It's not something I would do a very good job at.
That's what I tell my wife all the time.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Is that the office shop catalogue?
Yeah, I'm in charge of furnishing the new offices on the second floor.
They need everything.
Desks, file cabinets, bookcases, you name it.
That sounds like fun.
I love shopping for new furniture.
Can I help?
Yes, definitely.
I've picked out a few things already, but I'm having a hard time deciding among all of these office chairs.
Get this one.
They're on casters and are fully adjustable.
Okay, what about desks?
Everybody has a different idea about office desks.
I like this one.
It's got a keyboard tray, file drawers, and space for lateral files.
See?
All right, I guess that one is as good as any.
But what about this one with a hutch?
This desk has an optional hutch.
If the new employees want a hutch, they can order one later.
Okay, last but not least, we need bookcases.
These are solid wood and look sturdy.
What do you think?
I think there's one person who's cut out for this job, and that person is not me.
Our script writer is cut out for writing wonderful scripts.
That's our own Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2011 by the Center for Education and Development.
