Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 848, An Unscrupulous Partner.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 848.
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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This episode is a story, not a dialogue, about someone who has a partner who is not very honest.
Let's get started.
My friend Charles, convinced me to go into business with him about a year ago.
I wish I had had the benefit of hindsight to say no.
I was too trusting and that was my downfall.
At first everything was fine.
We worked our butts off to get the business off the ground.
But as soon as it looked like the business was going well, Charles turned on me.
I had never been so deceived.
We never signed a formal partnership agreement.
Since we were old friends, we relied on a verbal agreement that we would own the business 50-50.
One day, out of the blue, Charles said that, as the owner of the business, he had decided that my services were no longer needed.
I told him he was crazy.
I was co-owner and he couldn't just fire me.
He said that that was never the agreement and he was the sole owner.
And that is how I got cheated out of being co-owner of a successful business.
My old friend Charles turned out to be unscrupulous.
From now on, I'll be watching my back and looking out for my own interests.
No one will ever stab me in the back again.
Our story begins when I say my friend Charles convinced me, persuaded me to go into business with him about a year ago.
To go into business with means to work together, usually as co-owners of a business.
You both own the business.
I wish I had had the benefit of hindsight to say no.
The benefit, B-E-N-E-F-I-T, of something is the advantage of something, something that can be helpful in is hindsight, H-I-N-D-S-I-G-H-T.
Hindsight is the ability to look back at what happened, to know about something that happened in the past and to really understand it.
Of course, in the real world, we don't have the opportunity to go into the future and look back.
And that's the origin of this expression.
The benefit of hindsight means, if I had known then what I know now.
We have another example.
Expression hindsight is 2020.
2020 is when you have perfect vision, when your eyes are working perfectly.
Looking back at something, you can always understand and see it clearly.
But of course, when you make a mistake you don't necessarily know what's going to happen in the future.
And that's what happened to me in the story.
I say, I was too trusting, and that was my downfall.
To be trusting means to believe that another person is telling you the truth.
You don't demand any proof.
You don't ask for any evidence.
You just say, oh, well, I can trust that person.
He's a truthful person.
I say that I was too trusting.
And that, being too trusting, was my downfall.
A downfall, one word, is a reason why something fails.
It's the source of a problem, the reason why something goes bad.
At first, at the beginning, I say everything was fine.
We worked our butts off to get the business off the ground.
To work your butt, B-U-T-T, off, is an informal expression meaning to work very hard.
You're working so hard you can't work anymore.
You're very tired because you're working so hard.
To get a business off the ground.
To get anything off the ground means to get it started.
To, in this case, start a business and make it successful.
As soon as it looked like the business was going well however, Charles turned on me.
To turn on someone means to suddenly change your relationship or your attitude towards another person so that you begin to attack that other person.
You begin to become mean or aggressive toward that person.
That's to turn on someone to suddenly, after being perhaps friends with someone, become their enemy.
The expression turn on actually has a couple of different meanings.
Some of those are in our learning guide.
So Charles and I started this business.
It became successful.
And then Charles changed.
He turned on me.
I say that I had never been so deceived.
To deceive D E C E I, V?
E means to lie to someone, not to be honest with someone.
We also have the expression to trick, T-R-I-C-K, someone.
That's to deceive them, to get them to believe something that isn't true, usually so that you have some sort of benefit.
Something good happens to you by lying to them.
I continue the story by saying that Charles and I never signed a formal partnership agreement.
The word formal here just means official on a piece of paper typically.
An agreement is when two people sign something basically like a contract.
It's a formal legal document signed.
Partnership refers to two people working together.
So when you have a business in the United States, it's possible to form a legal partnership where the two of you sign an agreement, a piece of paper saying that you will work together and that you will split the company.
You will divide the company in a certain way.
I say that Charles and I, since we were old friends, because we had been friends for many years, relied on a verbal agreement.
Verbal, V-E-R-B-A-L, means the same as spoken, not written down, not written on a piece of paper.
A verbal agreement is, of course, very difficult to try to do something with in the future, since you could say oh, I didn't say that.
If you have a written document, you can actually look at the piece of paper and see what it says.
The verbal agreement that Charles and I had was that we would own the business 50-50.
50-50 means 50% for him, 50% for me.
We might also say half and half.
We each own half of the business.
One day I say out of the blue, meaning unexpectedly and very suddenly Charles said that, as the owner of the business, he had decided that my services were no longer needed.
In other words, Charles said that he was the owner of the business and that he no longer wanted me to work in the business.
I told him he was crazy.
I was co-owner.
Co-co-owner is someone who owns the business with you.
This prefix co-, is used when two people are working together or two people have the same interest or the equal amount of interest in something.
For example...
We could talk about co-workers.
These are people who work together.
We could also talk about co-authors, two people who write a book together.
That's the prefix co- and how it's used.
I said that I was co-owner and Charles couldn't just fire me.
He said, Charles, that that was never the agreement and that he was the sole owner.
Sole, S-O-L-E, means only.
In this case, single, without anyone else.
He's the only owner.
He said that he was the sole owner.
And that is how I say I got cheated out of being co-owner of a successful business.
To get cheated C-H-E-A-T-E-D out of something means that you are tricked out so that you do not get what you are supposed to get.
You are deceived in such a way that typically you lose money or you lose something of value.
My old friend Charles turned out to be unscrupulous, I say.
To be scrupulous, S-C-R-U-P-U-L-O-U-S, can mean to be very careful about something.
It could also mean to be too careful, to be too worried about things.
But to be unscrupulous means to not be careful.
But really, we use it to mean dishonest.
To be unscrupulous means not to worry about what's right or wrong, just to do things that are good for you.
I say from now on, from this point forward, I'll be watching my back.
To watch your back means to protect yourself against other people, to be looking for dangers that other people might present to you.
I also say I will be looking out for my own interests.
To look out for your own interests means to do what is most beneficial to you, without caring about what happens to other people.
Of course, that's not a very good way to react to this situation, but that's how I react in the story.
I decide I'll be looking out for my own interests.
I won't care about what happens to anyone else, just about what happens to me.
I say no one will ever stab me in the back again.
To stab S-T-A-B means to take a knife or a very sharp object and put it into someone's body.
To stab someone in the back means to hurt someone, to deceive someone in such a way that they didn't see it coming.
They didn't realize what you were doing and suddenly they did.
It doesn't mean to actually kill someone with a knife although it could but it means, more commonly, to be deceived or cheated by another person, especially a person that you had trusted and therefore didn't expect to deceive you.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
My friend Charles convinced me to go into business with him about a year ago.
I wish I had had the benefit of hindsight to say no.
I was too trusting and that was my downfall.
At first everything was fine.
We worked our butts off to get the business off the ground.
But as soon as it looked like the business was going well, Charles turned on me.
I had never been so deceived.
We never signed a formal partnership agreement.
Since we were old friends we relied on a verbal agreement that we would own the business 50-50.
One day, out of the blue, Charles said that, as the owner of the business, he had decided that my services were no longer needed.
I told him he was crazy.
I was co-owner, and he couldn't just fire me.
He said that that was never the agreement, and he was the sole owner.
And that is how I got cheated out of being co-owner of a successful business.
My old friend Charles turned out to be unscrupulous.
From now on, I'll be watching my back and looking out for my own interests.
No one will ever stab me in the back again.
Our script writer, who's always honest and would never deceive you, works her butt off every week to give you the very best scripts on the internet.
Thank you, 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 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
