Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast, number 1068, an expiring business lease.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 1068.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
Take a look at our ESL podcast store.
That has some additional courses in business and daily English.
I know you're going to love.
This episode is a dialogue about a business that has to renew or sign a new contract or lease for a place that they rent.
Let's get started.
Our lease is up at the end of this year, and we need to negotiate a new one.
I know, but if I bring it up first, the landlord will think I'm desperate to renew.
We are desperate to renew.
We've built our business here and it would be really difficult to uproot it and reestablish it elsewhere.
I know, but given our antagonistic dealings in the past, I'm afraid the landlord is going to jack up our rent and we'll be forced out.
It's in the best interest of the landlord to keep a steady business leasing his property.
He might not see it that way.
He might see this as an opportunity to bring in a higher paying tenant.
Or he may realize that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Or he might think, out with the old and in with the new.
You won't know until you contact him.
Right, but I think I'll let him stew just a little longer.
Jane begins our dialogue.
By saying to Monty, our lease is up at the end of this year.
Your lease, L-E-A-S-E, is your contract that... deals with something that you are renting.
You could lease a car, for example.
You could lease a house.
You could lease an apartment.
You could lease an office.
All of these are things that you can sign a contract about and use, if you pay the person who owns those things some money.
So when you lease an apartment, you are renting an apartment.
When you lease a car, you are basically renting the car, but we don't use the verb rent R-E-N-T for cars.
We usually use the word lease.
For a business, you can use either rent or lease.
These are verbs that indicate that you are paying money to use something.
Lease is also a noun referring to the contract itself, the legal agreement that you and the owner sign regarding the property or the thing that you are renting.
Jane says that their lease is up.
When we say something is up...
We mean it's expired.
It's ended.
It's at the end of some period of time.
In fact, in school sometimes teachers will say times up or your time is up when they are giving an examination, a test to their students.
Teachers will tell their students, times up, meaning you can no longer work on the test or the exam.
Well, here we're talking about a lease that is up, meaning it is about to expire.
E-X-P-I-R-E.
To expire means to end, in this case.
To expire can also mean to die.
Informally, people will say he expired.
The nicer way of saying that someone died is that he passed away.
Here we're not talking about a person, but a lease that has expired.
Jane says we need to negotiate a new one, meaning a new lease.
To negotiate means to try to reach an agreement with someone, usually over something involving money or something of value.
You could negotiate an agreement between two countries, for example.
An agreement between two countries is usually called a treaty, T-R-E-A-T-Y.
Here we're talking about negotiating a lease.
Monty says, I know, but if I bring it up first, the landlord will think I'm desperate to renew.
Monty is worried about bringing something up.
To bring something up here means to mention something that the other person hasn't talked about yet.
To raise an issue or to introduce a new topic that the other person hasn't been talking about or hasn't referred to yet.
Sometimes people will say I hate to bring this up, meaning I hate to mention this because it's perhaps something unpleasant.
But to bring something up doesn't mean that it's unpleasant, that it's something that's going to cause a problem.
You can bring up anything as a topic of conversation, whether it's positive or negative.
Monty however, is worried about bringing up the topic of the lease renewal because he thinks the landlord will think he's desperate to renew.
A landlord L-A-N-D-L-O-R-D.
Is a person who owns a building office home, condominium or apartment and who rents that property out to another person, who leases the property to another person.
The landlord will think that Monty is desperate to renew if Monty brings up the topic first.
To be desperate.
D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E is to be in a difficult situation, a difficult problem with very few options, with very few choices.
Someone who is desperate is someone who is in a lot of trouble and doesn't know what to do or doesn't have many options in terms of getting out of the trouble that he's in.
Monty doesn't want to seem desperate to renew his lease.
To renew means to sign a new lease, to extend the period of time of the rental or of the lease.
Jane says, we are desperate to renew.
We've built our business here and it would be really difficult to uproot it and reestablish it elsewhere.
Jane is saying, well, we are desperate.
We really do want to renew the lease.
The word desperate is sometimes used as it is here to mean desperate.
Not exactly that you have no options, but that you really, really want a certain thing to happen.
Jane really wants them to renew their lease because they have built a business there.
At this particular location they may have a store or a restaurant, and it may have been there for many years, so they don't want to move it somewhere else.
They want to stay there.
They've built their business there.
She says it would be difficult to uproot it.
To uproot U-P-R-O-O-T means to move from one place to another, especially from somewhere where you are comfortable and want to stay.
Monty says I know I understand, but given our antagonistic dealings in the past, I'm afraid the landlord is going to jack up our rent and and will be forced out.
Antagonistic, A-N-T-A-G-O-N-I-S-T-I-C, dealings, D-E-A-L-I-N-G-S, are interactions or conversations with another person that... are negative or that involves some sort of strong disagreement if you fight a lot with another person you are antagonistic toward that person you don't like them Dealings has to do with conversations or interactions, we would also say, between one person and another.
So if you have antagonistic dealings with say, the landlord, you have had a lot of disagreements and arguments in the past.
We would use this expression antagonistic dealings when we are talking about a work situation or a business situation like this.
Monty is afraid the landlord is going to jack up the rent.
To jack J-A-C-K up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to increase rent, but to increase dramatically, to increase something a lot.
If the landlord jacks up your rent, he or she increases it by a significant amount.
You were paying $500 a month, and now you're going to pay $1,000 a month.
That would be jacking up your rent a lot, significantly.
The rent here as a noun refers to the money that you pay every month or every year to lease the property.
To be forced out is a phrasal verb meaning to have to leave somewhere even though you want to stay.
If a landlord forces out a person renting from him, He's making that person leave, even though the person doesn't want to leave.
The person who rents from a landlord, by the way, is called a tenant.
T-E-N-A-N-T.
And we'll come across that word in a second.
Jane says, It's in the best interest of the landlord to keep a steady business leasing his property.
If you say something is in the best interest of someone, you mean that it's a good situation for that person.
It benefits that person.
In this case it is in the best interest of the landlord, meaning it would be a good thing for the landlord to keep a steady business leasing his property.
Steady S-T-E-A-D-Y means without changing.
If you have a steady customer, you have a customer who always comes back to your store every week or every month.
A steady tenant would be someone who leases from a landlord for a long period of time.
All landlords know that It's better to have someone paying you some money for your property than no money.
And so landlords like to keep tenants as long as they can, so at least they are getting money.
Monty says however, that the landlord might not see it that way, meaning the landlord may not necessarily have the same opinion of the situation.
He says...
He might see this as an opportunity to bring in a higher paying tenant, someone who will give him even more money.
Jane disagrees.
She says or he, again the landlord, may realize that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
This is an old expression.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, B-U-S-H.
The word bush here doesn't refer to one of our former U.S. presidents.
It refers to a small shrub.
It's like a plant, but it's a plant that has a lot of branches and leaves on it typically.
The expression a bird in the hand is worth two in.
The bush means it's better to keep something that you have and you know for sure will give you some benefit than to try to get something new with the possibility that you won't get anything better if you give up what you already have.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say that you are working at a job and you are making twenty dollars an hour.
You have an opportunity to leave that job and get another job that will pay you thirty dollars an hour.
However, you might not get the job.
You have to quit your first job in order to apply for the second job, So you would have to lose your job, your certain 20 an hour for the possibility of getting a better job, but it might not work out.
You might not get the job.
And so if that happens, you would be without any money.
A bird in the hand, meaning if you're holding a bird in your hand, That's worth more than two birds that are sitting over there that you don't have.
Of course, to get the two birds you have to let go of the bird in your hand and run over and try to grab the other two birds with your hands.
So that's kind of the background of that rather complicated expression.
Monty comes back with another expression.
He says...
Out with the old and in with the new.
This is another common saying or expression.
It means to get rid of the old things in your life and bring in new things in your life.
Because the new things will be better or more exciting.
Jane says you won't know until you contact him.
Jane is telling Monty that he won't know the real situation until he actually talks to the landlord.
Monty says right meaning.
Yes, I understand, you are correct, but I think I'll let him stew just a little longer.
The verb to stew S-T-E-W means to think and worry about something, especially without telling anyone else that you are worried about it or that you are thinking about it.
It's a negative thing.
If someone says, I've been stewing all day over my presentation.
He means he's been thinking about this all day, but he hasn't talked to anyone else.
He hasn't gotten any help from anyone else.
He's just been there thinking and worrying about it.
Usually, if you stew about something, the idea is that you're worrying about it, but you're not really helping yourself.
You're wasting your time thinking about it.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Our lease is up at the end of this year, and we need to negotiate a new one.
I know, but if I bring it up first, the landlord will think I'm desperate to renew.
We are desperate to renew.
We've built our business here and it would be really difficult to uproot it and reestablish it elsewhere.
I know, but given our antagonistic dealings in the past, I'm afraid the landlord is going to jack up our rent and we'll be forced out.
It's in the best interest of the landlord to keep a steady business leasing his property.
He might not see it that way.
He might see this as an opportunity to bring in a higher paying tenant.
Or he may realize that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Or he might think, out with the old and in with the new.
You won't know until you contact him.
Right.
But I think I'll let him stew just a little longer.
If you're desperate to improve your English, you've come to the right place.
Thanks to the scripts from our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr Lucy Say, you can start improving your English today.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
