Ep.27: Mini Storytime From Scotland

In this episode, I am talking about a very short story that happened while I was working in Iceland. Enjoy :)

Also, you can find the vocabulary and comprehension quiz under the transcription!

(Česky: Najdete seznam slovíček a krátký kvíz porozumění pod přepisem)

Link for the episode:

WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode, comprehension quiz, and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast.

Today I will share with you just a little story from the time I worked in Scotland. If you want to know more about that time - how we found that job and our daily routines there, I have already recorded an episode about it, it is episode number 7 so feel free to listen to it if you haven't yet.

Those who have listened to that episode know that we (by we I mean my boyfriend and I) worked in Scotland in a hotel restaurant as a waiter and waitress. And if you remember, we were late on our first day of work because we overslept.

Well, it wasn't the only time we were late to work. The first time was on our first day. If you are late once, everything is okay, you just get a little warning but then you just start working and everything is fine. Our superior- a person who manages the kitchen and can give us orders- was not very happy and let me tell you, she was a little scary.

Anyway, after the first day, we always came on time, so it was fine. But then the scary lady, our superior, went on a holiday. She came back after about two weeks. And the first day she was back at work, that was the second day we "decided" (in quotes) to come late.

So the first time it was our first day and the second day it was her first day after a holiday. She must have thought that we were terrible at coming on time. Which is painful for me considering the fact that I am such a punctual person. A punctual person is a person who always comes on time.

However, if it is your second time coming late to work, there are consequences. Consequences are the results or effects of some previous actions. Here, the specific consequences were that at the end of the shift, you had to set as many tables for the next days, as many minutes you were late. So if you were 5 minutes late, you had to set 5 tables and so on. To set the table means to prepare the plates, the cutlery, the napkins and everything. Usually, all of us were setting all the tables and if you do it in a team, it is quite a quick thing. But if you have to do it alone, it always takes a lot of time.

Back to the day that we came late. We were just chilling in our room because we thought that our shifts started later when one of our coworkers came to get us and told us that we were late for work. I immediately jumped up, put on clothes, and ran to the kitchen as I knew about the fact that the later we came, the more we would have to do at the end of the shift. But my boyfriend wasn't as quick as me. I was about 15 minutes late to the shift but my boyfriend came almost 10 minutes after me.

Our superior was angry and she told us that we would be setting about 40 tables - which was like half of the dining room - a lot of tables. And the thing was that we couldn't even start setting it up when we had time at the end of the shift. We had to wait until everyone was finished and left and only then we could start. What a stupid rule.

So when everyone was gone, at around 10:30 pm, we slowly started setting up the tables. It went slowly and took us some time but finally, we were finished.

I already turned off the lights in the dining room and was getting ready to leave the kitchen since it was very late and every shift was quite tiring, I was exhausted.

But my boyfriend said that he wants to prepare also trays with wine glasses that were sitting in the kitchen and usually they have to be in the dining room. Because before the end of every shift we had to have polished wine glasses prepared for the next day.

I said okay and I asked him if he wanted some help or if I should turn on the light in the dining room so he could see properly. He said no, that it was fine. He confidently took two trays of glasses on top of each other and headed out of the kitchen.

When the doors shut behind him, I heard the loudest noise of breaking glass. And then, it was silence for like five seconds. I closed my eyes and sighed. Then my boyfriend came back to the kitchen and told me: "Okay, maybe we should have turned on the lights".

I went to the dining room to inspect the situation. Glass was shuttered everywhere. Shuttered glass is a synonym for broken glass.

We were just scared that someone would hear the sound of the glasses breaking and would come and we would be in even more trouble so we started cleaning it up QUICKLY. I collected the broken glass while my boyfriend went to get the vacuum and started vacuuming. It took us another 20 minutes just to clean that up.

The whole time I was just praying that our superior wouldn't come back to see why we were there for such a long time.

Anyway, we just finished cleaning and got out of the kitchen as quickly as we could. Thankfully, there were a lot of trays of wine glasses so no one found out that two of them were missing. Still, our manager was very surprised in a few weeks, why the wine glasses were disappearing so fast. It is a mystery to this day…

Alright, and that is all for this episode. It was a shorter one but I hope that you enjoyed it anyway and I thank you so much for listening to this episode and don't forget that you can find the transcription, vocabulary list, and comprehension quiz in the notes. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and I will see you next time, bye-bye.

VOCABULARY LIST:

oversleep (past tense: overslept) - zaspat

superior- nadřízená (nadřízený)

she must have thought- musela si myslet

punctual- dochvilný

consequences- následky

we were chilling- odpočívali jsme

setting tables- prostírání stolů

trays- tácy

shuttered- roztřískané

mystery- záhada