Introduction
Imagine you’re at work and you have loads to do. But then someone asks if you can help with another task. Pippa and Phil talk about some common business jargon to help you talk about your workload.
Vocabulary
bandwidth
the time or capacity you have to deal with something
(lots of) balls in the air
lots of tasks to complete at once
(lots of) spinning plates
lots of tasks to complete that could easily go wrong
in the weeds
have lots of work, or, too focused on insignificant details
swamped
very busy with work
catch up in the slower time
finish your tasks when things are less busy
a heavy lift
an extra effort
putting out fires
dealing with lots of problems or unexpected tasks
Transcript
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.
Phil
Hello and welcome to Learning English for Work. I’m Phil.
Pippa
And I’m Pippa. This week, we’re talking more about business jargon and looking at how people talk about the amount of work they have to do.
Phil
Now, you can find a transcript for this episode on our website, that’s bbclearningenglish.com.
Pippa
So, Phil, you know what it’s like. You’re at work, you’ve got loads to do and then someone comes up and asks if you could do something for them or do you have time for a meeting. What do you do? It’s a nightmare, isn’t it?
Phil
Yes. I mean, some days the only thing that happens is you have meetings and it’s like you can’t actually get any work done.
Pippa
Yeah and it can be really awkward when somebody asks if you’re busy and you are busy because you want to kind of be available when you’re at work. You often kind of want to help people. You don’t want to look like you’re turning down work or you’re being lazy, so it’s really tricky.
So, we need to be able to talk about our workload, that’s the amount of work that we have to do. And there’s actually lots of jargon phrases that could help us here, Phil.
Phil
Yes, so the first one we’ve got is bandwidth. And that just means the amount of space you have for a new task, which could actually be time, or just how much your brain can keep track of. It comes from the world of technology. How much information can be sent between two devices like computers is bandwidth. So you could say I’m not sure I have the bandwidth to read the full report, can you give me a summary?
Pippa
Yeah, and I quite like the word bandwidth because it doesn’t just mean whether you have time to do something, it’s whether it’s kind of worth the amount of effort and the brain power that you’re going to use to do it. So, if you’ve got a lot of different projects on, it’s actually not helpful to have another thing added on because it’s too many things for you to keep track of. You don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to do it.
So, the next one we’ve got here is balls in the air. Do you know what that means, Phil?
Phil
I do. And the best way to think about this is to think of a juggler.
Pippa
Right.
Phil
When they’re juggling, you see them in the circus, they throw lots of balls up in the air, and try and catch them, and keep them in the air, and try not to drop them.
So, this is about when you have lots of tasks all at once, and you’re trying to pay attention to all of them, and not drop any of them.
Pippa
Right, yeah and we have a similar circus phrase which is a lot of spinning plates. And there’s kind of a sense of danger here that all the things that you have to do, all the balls in the air, or all the spinning plates, need a lot of your attention and time. You can’t let one drop because, you know, the plate would smash, or the ball would hit someone. So, it’s kind of this idea that you’ve just got a lot of very chaotic things going on and you really need to pay attention to them.
Phil
Yes. OK, the next one sounds like something from my garden here: in the weeds. And this has got a couple of different meanings. So, we can use in the weeds to talk about when you have too much work to do. If you’re in the weeds, you have so many problems or so much work to do that you’re becoming a bit stuck.
Pippa
Yep, but we can also use in the weeds to talk about being too deep into one task or project. So, you’re so focused on the details of something that you forget about the bigger picture, the whole task. So, I might say, oh, I don’t want to get too in the weeds, and that means I don’t want to spend too much time talking about or worrying about an insignificant detail in a task that I’m doing.
Phil
Yes. And then the last one we’ve got here is another kind of natural one. I’m swamped. I like the image there. A swamp is like something really muddy that you might sink into or get stuck into.
Pippa
Yeah, and this is just an informal way to say that you’ve got loads to do. So if you’re swamped with work, it means that metaphorically you’re stuck in that muddy swamp. There’s loads to do and all the work’s kind of around you, you’ve been swamped by it.
I quite like that one. So, if someone says, Oh, you know, how’s your day going? I’ll go: I’m swamped actually, I’ve got loads to do.
Phil
And these are some phrases, but we’ve actually been asking you for the jargon phrases you hear all the time at work.
Pippa
Yes, and Saloni sent this one. Catch up in slower time. This is another one about workload. So, if you catch up in the slower time, this means you finish your work when the workplace is a little bit less busy. So the slower time is when things are less busy.
I guess what might be annoying about this phrase is that sometimes it is never slow, sometimes it’s always busy. So you never get a chance to catch up.
Phil
Yes, I know that feeling. The next one is a heavy lift. This one was from Anne and it’s to talk about a difficult task that might need some extra effort or more people to work on it. It’s a heavy lift.
Pippa
Yeah, so if… if a boss said we’ve got a heavy lift with this client, that means you need to kind of put more time and energy into working on that particular project.
The next one we’ve got here is putting out fires and William sent this one in. So, if you’re putting out fires it means that lots of things are going wrong at work, or you have lots of unexpected tasks. So, you could say I’ve been putting out fires all day and it means you’ve been working on lots of unexpected problems. Of course, they’re not real fires usually, unless you work in some sort of fire-related industry.
Phil
Yes.
Pippa
That’s it for this episode of Learning English for Work. Find more programmes on our website to help you with your business English. bbclearningenglish.com.
Phil
And next time we’ll talk about the jargon around technology at work. Bye for now.
Pippa
Bye.