Hello and welcome to this English lesson about work adjectives.
Uh this week at work someone used the word streamlined.
The process was very streamlined.
And so I thought to myself this would be a good opportunity to do an English lesson about work adjectives.
Adjectives you would use to describe things at work.
Whether you work in an office or a factory.
In this lesson we'll look at 25 adjectives and that you would use at work.
And I think you will enjoy this lesson.
So once again, welcome to this English lesson about work adjectives.
Efficient.
When something is efficient, it is working well without wasting time, energy or resources.
So the example I have for this is a sewing machine.
If you compare sewing by hand and sewing with a sewing machine, this is more efficient.
This is an efficient way to sew things together.
If you do it by hand, it takes a lot longer.
If you have a machine, it is more efficient.
We also use this to describe when things use less electricity or less gasoline.
This car is very efficient.
This motor.
This electric motor is very efficient, meaning it uses less electricity or power, or gasoline, depending on the device that you are using.
But efficient, working well, wasting time, energy, or resources.
You can also describe people as efficient.
Most of the people I've worked with in my life are very efficient.
Sometimes though I have to work with someone who isn't and that is challenging.
Wasteful.
Using more time, money, or materials than needed.
So when you are at work, if you are wasteful, it means you print out things too often and you use too much paper.
It might mean, if you work on a construction site, that you have lots of leftover pieces because you didn't think about how you were cutting up the pieces of wood.
When I worked for my uncle when I was a teenager, on the construction site, he would always try to produce as little waste as possible.
If we had a piece of wood and if he was going to cut um that piece of wood, he would want to make sure he got one or more useful pieces out of the piece of wood or out of the section we were cutting off.
So, when you are wasteful, it means that you waste things.
You are using more time, money, or materials than needed.
Um I'm trying to think about this.
At work.
I think it's wasteful.
If sometimes I print and it prints a blank page at the end, I think to myself that was wasteful.
I do put the paper back in again, but yeah, if you have you ever had that where your document has one extra page at the end, it is wasteful inefficient, not working well and wasting time or effort.
Now I have nothing against this computer.
In its day it was very, very efficient.
But if you were to use a computer like this at work today it would be inefficient.
Sometimes your computer at work or the machine you are using at work gets old and there are newer machines that can do the job faster, that are more efficient, and so your computer or your machine becomes inefficient.
It becomes less useful.
It becomes kind of a waste of time.
Like you, the amount of work you would get done in an hour is far less than if you had a new machine.
So When something is inefficient, it is not working well and wasting time or effort.
By the way, those were pretty cool computers way back in 1995, maybe 93.
I'm not sure exactly when.
Well run, organized and managed smoothly.
So this factory or this warehouse looks well run.
Everything looks very, very organized and it looks like if you need something from this warehouse, you can get it very easily.
I also think this might be an AI-generated photo.
I have a funny feeling.
I normally set it to no AI images on the licensed software I have for getting photos, but to me this looks great.
It looks too organized and it looks too put together for it to not be, but anyways, when something is well run, it is organized and managed smoothly and it also implies that a person is running it well okay.
If you say that's a well-run organization, it means the boss and the managers are also very organized and they manage things very, very smoothly.
I love it. that I work at a well-run school.
I really appreciate how the principal and the vice principal and the administrative team work.
They are very, very efficient.
It is a well-run organization and that makes happy workers.
Productive, producing a lot of useful work or results.
So of course, robots are very productive.
They are more productive than humans at certain jobs.
Humans have to eat. they need to sleep.
They need to take breaks once in a while or their work becomes poorly done, but robots are very, very productive.
They can work 24 hours a day.
They do need to be fixed every once in a while.
They do need to have maintenance done to them, like they need to be oiled or greased or those types of things.
But certainly if you were to compare, for certain jobs robots are more productive than human beings.
They are producing a lot of useful work results.
Car factories primarily use robots to put cars together.
I shouldn't say primarily.
I'm not an expert on this, but car factories generally have a lot of robots and they are very, very productive on the assembly line.
And then of course sorry I have robots in the productive picture and unproductive.
I have some some gentlemen working on the road.
Not producing much useful work.
So a common complaint when that, when they are doing road work, that there are way too many people and they're very unproductive.
So here you have one, two, three, four people standing around.
I'm sure they're probably planning what to do.
You do need to talk about work before you do the work.
Um, but yes, could argue though, that it there isn't a lot of work getting done, that they are being unproductive, not producing much useful work.
I'm not sure of the exact situation.
But my guess is they're being they're certainly not being productive right now.
They are being unproductive.
Streamlined.
So this is the word that made the lesson possible.
I heard the word streamlined.
It means simplified, to remove unnecessary steps.
Let's say, at your work, you have a job to do and there are 17 steps from the beginning until the end of the job and you realize that step 14, 15 and 16 can be combined into one step and it can be much faster.
You would be streamlining the process.
You would be making it more streamlined.
When I also worked on the farm for my dad and when I worked in construction, my dad and my uncle were both really liked to have things streamlined.
They didn't want you to walk too far back and forth when doing a job.
They didn't want you to um.
You know, if you had a tool that you needed in two spots, they would have a tool at each spot, so you didn't have to carry it back and forth.
They made things simplified more efficient so that you could get more work done.
When a place of work is streamlined, it is more productive.
You are more efficient.
All of the positive words that I've taught you so far.
Chaotic.
So, when something is chaotic, it is very disorganized and hard to control.
This is my least enjoyable work environment.
If I work with people who are disorganized, who are inefficient, who are not, who are unproductive, usually that means that the workplace is also a bit chaotic.
They might be very messy people.
I did one time teach in the same classroom as someone.
So, they taught the first class of the day.
I taught the second class in the same room and they were extremely messy and their students were extremely messy, and so the classroom was very chaotic when I arrived to teach my class.
I did not like that.
It was very disorganized And then chaotic.
When you say hard to control might relate to people as well.
I know sometimes students are talking and throwing things and they are acting in a chaotic way.
You would then describe the classroom as chaotic.
You can use this for other workplaces as well.
You can see this workplace is a bit disorganized.
It's somewhat chaotic.
I'm sure there's a reason why it looks like this, but chaotic, very disorganized and hard to control run.
Managed badly and not organized.
So this again reflects on the boss or the manager or your supervisor.
The people who are deciding how the workplace goes every day are not doing a good job.
So you would say it is poorly run.
There is nothing more frustrating than having a boss or a supervisor or a foreman or a foreperson or a manager who is runs things poorly.
When your workplace is poorly run, it causes you to be frustrated as a worker and you might even end up being inefficient and unproductive because of how the person above you is running things.
If something is poorly run, it is managed badly and not organized.
Not a good situation.
Time saving.
When you have something that is a time saving device, helping you do something faster.
This is probably the best example and my favorite example of something that is a time saving device.
This is a bread machine.
You put all the ingredients in and then three hours later you have bread.
I don't know if all of you have made bread by hand.
Whether you've done it in the way that's time consuming.
But making bread by hand without a machine is can be very enjoyable, but it also takes a lot of time.
So, helping you do something faster, time saving at work.
It is always nice to discover time-saving methods to do something, or to buy a machine that is a time-saving device Um, a good example would be um, if you have a photocopier at work from 10 years ago, a new photocopier would be time saving.
It would help you make copies faster, and maybe you have a machine like a drill press uh, or some type of saw, and it's really, really old.
A new one might allow you to be more productive because it will be a time saver.
You'll be able to do your job half an hour instead of an hour, because the machine is more efficient and it will save you time.
Time consuming.
Taking a lot of time to finish.
So whenever a job takes a long time we say it is time consuming.
When I have a stack of student work that I need to read and give a grade to.
When I need to grade it.
It is very time consuming.
After students write an exam.
That is very I that is a time consuming job to uh to grade all of those exams.
You might have things that you do at your work.
Maybe you build things and the initial process of make cutting all the parts or making all the parts is very time consuming.
Maybe assembling assembling the item takes two hours, but maybe it takes two days to make sure you have all the parts and to make all the parts.
It can be very time consuming.
So, time-consuming, taking a lot of time to finish.
Fast-paced, moving or changing very quickly.
You can see here this gentleman is working at a newspaper print shop.
So that is a huge printer that is used to print newspapers.
When you work for a newspaper, it is a fast-paced job.
Things move quickly because you are reporting on the news.
As soon as you are done with putting out one paper, you immediately start working on the newspaper for the next day.
So, it is a fast-paced world.
If or a fast-paced job as well.
If something happens in your city and you are a journalist, you need to go and find out what happened and quickly write a story so that it can be in the next paper.
It is a fast-paced job.
High quality.
I this is as close as I'll ever get to a Rolex, but my understanding is this is a high quality watch.
It is made very well and meeting high standards.
At work, if you do high quality work, it will be easier to sell your products or services.
If you are someone who fixes houses or you build a houses for people.
If you build high quality houses, then people will eventually know that you do high quality work and they will want you to work for them.
So high quality, made very well and meeting high standards.
This is a high quality mug.
I really enjoy this mug.
This was from Miroslav a few years ago.
I think it's actually Jen's mug.
Does it say, it says Jen the Canadian?
Yes, on it.
That was a very nice gift, a very high quality mug, no dense, dense, no chips in the mug, even though I have used it quite a bit.
Precise, very exact and accurate.
So this is a multimeter.
This is for measuring voltage or amperage or resistance in ohms.
This needs to be very exact and accurate.
If your battery is putting out twelve point eight volts, want to know exactly that it's putting out twelve point eight.
You don't want it to say eleven or twelve.
You want to see the decimal points.
So, when something is precise, it is very exact and accurate.
And you can do precise work.
If you were building furniture like if you were building a couch like my new couch here.
You would want to make sure that everything is cut exactly and precisely so that it fits together.
You want to be precise in the work that you do.
You want the holes in the right spots.
You want the boards or the wood to come together perfectly.
You want to do precise work so that the finished product looks really, really good.
So precise, very exact and accurate.
Let me just check where I am here moving along durable, strong and able to last a long time.
So, this is a multi-tool.
This is a Gerber multi-tool, one of the better types of multi-tools that you can get.
When I was a tech support person, I had one of these.
I bought it because it was durable.
It doesn't break easily.
Strong and able to last a long time.
This, by the way, is a set of pliers.
It is a screwdriver.
There's like a little saw and a kind of like a Swiss Army knife on steroids.
I don't think I've ever taught that phrase before.
Um, weightlifters can take steroids to make their muscles grow faster, and we use that phrase to talk about things as well.
If they are better than the normal ones, like a Swiss Army knife, is a nice, a very nice pocket knife with blades.
This is a Swiss Army knife on steroids.
So it is a pair of pliers and A saw.
There's probably an awl which you use for poking holes in things, etc etc.
But it's made, I'm pretty sure it's a Gerber.
It's very durable, strong, and able to last a long time.
Defective, this is kind of the opposite.
Having a problem and not working properly.
So this tire to me is flat, but it also looks somewhat new.
So, if this happened to me, I might think the tire is defective.
Let's say I bought a brand new set of tires for my car and when I got home from the garage, this happened.
I don't think I would think I drove over a nail or something.
I think I would immediately think that new tire must be defective.
It must have a problem and it's not working properly.
And then I would go, I would call the garage and get my vehicle brought to the garage so they could fix it.
It's not very nice when you buy something that is defective right out of the box.
It can be very, very frustrating and very, very, very annoying.
So anyways, this tire is defective, something that is having a problem and not working properly.
Reliable.
Working well, consistently and can be trusted, own Windows PCs and I also have at school a MacBook for work.
I find that most computers these days are reliable, but I actually I I don't prefer one over the other, but I do find MacBooks are very reliable.
Like if someone said to me what's your favorite thing about your MacBook, I would say it's very reliable and Um my Windows PCs that I use here, like for editing and stuff as well.
Um there's a computer there with all this junk by it.
They're very reliable as well.
But this MacBook for some reason like I don't restart this every day.
I just open it, use it, shut it, charge it and it just keeps working.
It is very reliable and working well consistently and I can trust it 100%.
It is a very trustworthy laptop to use.
Labor intensive, requiring a lot of human effort.
Now you could have bought a machine or rented a machine to do this, and that would be more efficient.
But sometimes when you dig a ditch or I would actually call this a trench it is labor intensive requiring a lot of human effort.
It simply means you need to use your muscles to do the work or you need to use your brain to do the work.
There are a few things that I can think of on the farm that are labor intensive.
In the spring, Jen plants a lot of roots in the ground and she has to dig in the ground with a shovel.
It's very labor intensive.
It's also very time consuming.
If you could, let me use a word that I taught earlier in the lesson, but Uh, labor intensive requiring a lot of human effort.
Automated.
Run mainly by machines or computers.
So I don't think anything in the world is fully automated.
When you look at this picture you see it as a bottling plant.
They are putting looks like Coca Cola in bottles.
This is not a sponsored video by the way.
Um but you still have some people but the majority of the process is automated.
I think people are here just to make sure the machines are doing what they're supposed to do.
So if there is a job that you do by hand like, let's say, you fill the bottle, you put the cap on and you go like this.
If you then start to use a machine to do it, we would say it is now automated.
They have automated the process so that it can be done by a machine.
And, by the way, I don't know when to say process or process, because in Canada we use both pronunciations.
So, you can automate the process or you can automate the process.
I blame my British and American cousins for Canadians sometimes not knowing when to use which pronunciation.
Understaffed, not having enough workers.
So when I have been, At the times when I've been in a hospital for whatever reason, I have noticed sometimes that there aren't enough nurses and doctors.
It is understaffed.
So they're in my opinion when I watch how much work they have to do.
I feel like they are understaffed.
I feel like they do not have enough workers for the jobs that need to be done.
So understaffed not having enough workers.
At my school, we are not understaffed.
We have exactly, in my opinion, the right number of teachers and teacher aides for the number of students we have.
But if we suddenly had five teachers quit, we would be understaffed because we wouldn't have enough teachers for the number of classrooms.
So understaffed, not having enough workers.
Overworked, working too much or too many hours.
So when you are understaffed, One of the problems that happens is you eventually are probably overworked.
You end up working too much or too many hours.
I also notice this in our healthcare system.
We have a great healthcare system in Canada.
I am not saying it's a bad healthcare system, but I do when I see it, when I observe it and I use my brain, because I like things to be efficient and streamlined and well run and productive and I don't like it when it's poorly run and chaotic and they're doing things that are time consuming and it's inefficient and wasteful.
Um, I think you know, we just need to spend a bit more money and get a few more people, a few more doctors, a few more nurses and people would be.
Then it wouldn't be understaffed and people wouldn't be overworked.
Safe, not dangerous.
So, you can use this word to describe the workplace.
Is your workplace safe?
If you work in a factory, are there guardrails?
Does everyone wear eye protection and a hard hat and a safety vest?
Um is it safe or of course, is it dangerous or hazardous?
So, my workplace by its very nature is quite safe.
Um, some schools are a little more dangerous, depending on yeah, I don't wanna make too many comments, but um, there are a variety of schools.
Most are very very safe.
Um but let's say you are a police officer.
There might be parts of the city that are not safe and that wouldn't be enjoyable.
Then we would say uh is your workplace safe and you could say sometimes depends where I am.
But of course, if something is safe, it means it's not dangerous.
Hazardous.
Dangerous or risky.
You can see this tank or pipe has three different warnings on it.
I think it means you could get electrocuted.
You could fall and it's an enclosed space.
So, it's dangerous or risky to work there.
Um when something is hazardous, um you need to usually wear protective gear to work in that area.
Um but it usually means so dangerous is kind of a general term I say hazardous I usually think of there's lots of machines moving or there's chemicals or you have to wear like you have to wear a face mask or you have to have filters on your face mask if it's hazardous.
So it's like a to me dangerous is here and hazardous is like more dangerous than dangerous.
Does that make sense?
Consistent.
The same over time.
This is my favorite kind of workplace.
Uh one that is consistent.
So you see here I have a little picture of an assembly line.
So there's sub assembly and a conveyor belt and a lifting system and assembly stations.
This is so they can produce something that is consistent.
They want it to be the same over time.
Let's back up to the bottling factory.
When they bottle soda, they want it to taste the same.
In every bottle, in every country, in every part of the world.
They want it to be as consistent as possible.
The same ingredients, the same recipe, the same method for preparing it.
They want it to be extremely consistent.
So consistent, the same over time.
Rigid, very strict and not flexible.
You might have a boss who has very rigid rules, where sometimes you don't feel like wearing your hard hat or sometimes I don't feel like doing my attendance.
But if your boss is very rigid, they are very strict, not flexible, and they will enforce the rules.
They will make sure that you do what you have to do in that workplace situation.
I actually prefer a workplace that is rigid.
More than a workplace where it's kind of chaotic.
I like it when there's rules and they're enforced and everyone does what they're supposed to do.
So, thanks to all my bosses who have been that way.
It's made my workplace much more enjoyable.
