📙 Part 2: Describe an occasion when you met someone complaining about something

This episode's vocabulary

Eavesdropping (noun) - the action of listening to someone's private conversation from close by without them knowing.

To moan (verb) - to make a complaint in an unhappy voice, usually about something that does not seem important to other people.

Checkout (noun) - the place in a shop, especially a large food shop, where you pay for your goods.

Fortunately (adverb) - happening because of good luck.

Till (noun) - the drawer in a cash register (= a machine which records sales in a shop, and in which money is kept) or the cash register itself.

Unmanned (adj.) - used to refer to a spacecraft, or a place where military guards work, that has no people present to operate or be in charge of it.

Solid (adj.) - continuing for a period of time without stopping.

Good-natured (adj.) - pleasant or friendly.

Resolution (noun) - the act of solving or ending a problem or difficulty.

Row (noun) - a noisy argument or fight.

To hold something out (phrasal verb) - to offer a possibility, solution, hope, etc.

Questions and Answers

R: I don't usually make a habit of eavesdropping, but sometimes at my local supermarket, people moan a fair bit about the quality of the service provided at those automated checkouts. Even just yesterday, when I was there, I heard a man complaining to a member of staff about it. I could see where he was coming from, actually. Fortunately, as could the member of staff, the tills are unmanned, so people are expected to scan things for themselves. But with some items like alcohol or energy drinks, you have to wait for a member of staff to approve this, and it can take them ages to come since they're busy in other parts of the store. In this particular case, the person who was complaining, the man, had been waiting for about five minutes solid before someone finally got to him, and all he wanted was some cans of energy drinks for later in the day. And it's funny, because these tills are supposed to make things more convenient, but I think he would have been served a lot faster at a regular till, rather than an automated one. Anyway, the lady who came to help him apologized and offered him this gesture of goodwill, and the guy seemed pretty happy with that. They were both very good-natured about the whole thing, but surely it would be a good idea for someone in charge of monitoring things on a more regular basis to save time. Better yet, maybe they could bring back the old-fashioned tills to save time. Actually, those aren't just my suggestions. Those are the ones that I heard the person making. I'm not sure how effective they would be, but it would make a lot of difference to him and a big difference to the other people who go there. Either way, it was nice to see a resolution that ended well, rather than people having a row over the whole thing. And hopefully, it'll happen less often in the future, although I'm not holding out a great deal of hope for that.

M: And do you often hear people complaining?

R: I'm not really aware of them doing it a lot, to be honest.