📙 Part 2: Describe an occasion when you wasted your time

This episode's vocabulary

Rant (noun) - a long, angry, and confused speech.

Former (noun) - of or in an earlier time.

In advance - before something happens.

Aware (adj.) - knowing that something exists, or having knowledge or experience of a particular thing.

Complaint (noun) - a statement that something is wrong or not satisfactory.

Go to great lengths (idiom) - to try very hard to achieve something.

Exclusively (adverb) - only.

Backbone (noun) - the foundation or most substantial or sturdiest part of something.

Feedback (noun) - reaction to a process or activity, or the information.

Animated (adj.) - someone who is animated or who is having an animated conversation is lively and is showing their feelings.

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Questions and Answers

Maria: Rory will describe an occasion when he wasted his time. He'll say where he was, when it was, what he did and why he thought it was a waste of time. Could you start speaking now, please?

Rory: I've decided that I'm going to have a bit of a rant, actually, so I apologize in advance, but hopefully I'll feel better when I get this off my chest. So I'd like to talk about the time I wasted trying to help a former colleague of mine. So this was around three years ago when I was working as an assistant director of studies for International House Moscow, which, as we were all aware by now, is Moscow's worst language school. There were a series of complaints about teacher, and I volunteered to go and take a look at the classes and see what could be done. I already had something like 30 hours of classes myself, plus administrative work, training sessions and a million other things to be getting on with. But it seemed like the right thing to do since no one else wanted to do this and the school wanted to keep the class and didn't want the students to leave. I went to great lengths to prepare this particular teacher for the observation that was coming with emails explaining everything and why I was coming. And then I arrived at the school late in the evening after being up since about 7:00 in the morning. So I was a bit tired only to discover that this teacher had not prepared anything for the class and taught exclusively from the book. So it was a very backboned lesson and they were also about as personable as a block of wood. So basically zero effort made. After that we arranged a time and place for feedback or we had arranged a time and place for feedback, which he never showed up to. He actually cancelled at the very last minute at about nine o'clock in the morning, the day that we were supposed to meet, saying that he had forgotten that he had something else to do. To say that I was in sense would have been an understatement. And I quickly let him know that I would not be wasting my time any further with trying to support him. And he was fired shortly after. So the moral of the story here is do not help people who are so clearly uninvested in their time and who clearly undervalue yours and undervalue the effort that you made. I don't often get angry. I'll get animated with annoyance, perhaps sometimes, but rarely have I been so mad and hopefully I never will be again.

Maria: And what about your colleagues, what did they say?

Rory: Oh, my colleagues fully supported my decision because it was the correct one.

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