📘 Part 3: Companies

This episode's vocabulary

To enforce (verb) - to make people obey a law, or to make a particular situation happen or be accepted.

To fine (verb) - to charge someone an amount of money as a punishment for not obeying a rule or law.

Penalty (noun) - a type of punishment, often involving paying money, that is given to you if you break an agreement or do not follow rules.

Catch-22 (noun) - an impossible situation where you are prevented from doing one thing until you have done another thing that you cannot do until you have done the first thing.

To exploit (verb) - to use something in a way that helps you.

Palatable (adj.) - acceptable.

Promotion (noun) - the act of encouraging something to happen or develop.

Job stability (noun) - the fact of an employee, or a group of employees, being able to keep the same job for a long time.

Liability (noun) - the fact that someone is legally responsible for something.

Cumbersome (adj.) - awkward because of being large, heavy, or not effective.

Bureaucratic (adj.) - relating to a system of controlling or managing a country, company, or organization that is operated by a large number of officials.

Stagnant (adj.) - not growing or developing.

Conservative (adj.) - not usually liking or trusting change, especially sudden change.

Tap into sth. (phrasal verb) - to manage to use something in a way that brings good results.

Established (adj.) - accepted or respected because of having existed for a long period of time.

Norm (noun) - an accepted standard or a way of behaving or doing things that most people agree with.

Procedure (noun) - a set of actions that is the official or accepted way of doing something.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory, should big companies be punished more seriously than small companies, if they break the law.

R: I don't see why they should, to be honest. The law is enforced in proportion to the crime, not the body that commits it. It's a bit like saying, like, fat people should be fined more than skinny people for committing crimes. If a big company commits a small crime then it should pay the same penalty as the small business that did the same.

M: Should big companies donate more to charities do you think?

R: If they want to. Again, I don't, I like, I don't see why not. Though they often find themselves in sort of like catch-22 situations when things like this come up, don't they? Either, they pay a lot and they're seen as trying to exploit the charity to make their image more palatable and sort of public friendly, or they don't donate and then they get it in the neck for being selfish. I don't see how companies are supposed to win in this respect.

M: What are the benefits of working for a big company?

R: Well, I suppose with greater size, theoretically comes like much greater access to resources and opportunities for promotion, and greater job stability, although arguably these could all be undone quite easily, couldn't they? I mean, I think as companies, over time companies become progressively less stable.

M: What are the differences between big companies and small companies?

R: I think I just described them there, I suppose you could probably sum it up as having more. More resources, but greater liabilities, more employees, but a larger number of problems. And I think business, big business tends to be more cumbersome in a bureaucratic sense too, doesn't it?

M: Is it hard to get a promotion at a large company?

R: Well, truth be told, it might actually be easier if the company is large and expanding, then there should be a larger number of opportunities to take advantage of, though, that's assuming the company isn't sort of stagnant and conservative. Um, I used to work in a place that would never employ Catholics, for example. It's hard to get a promotion when you kind of get a job to begin with, isn't it?

M: Are there many big companies in your country?

R: I would say it's probably proportionate to the size of the population in the country. Um, we definitely have fewer large companies than in America or Russia, for example. But we've got more than Wales or Liechtenstein. I think that's true for most reasonably stable countries, isn't it?

M: What help do young employees have from old employees?

R: Well, they can sort of tap into the wealth of experience of the older employees. And they can learn from the mistakes that they've made. The other, the older employees have made. And they can tap into the knowledge of how a company works outside of its established and published norms and procedures. That can definitely help them get ahead, I think.

M: Rory, thank you very much for your answers.

R: Let's talk about grammar and vocabulary for big company, shall we?

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