Mason: Rahim! Are you leaving?!

Rahim: I sure am! It’s such a beautiful day, I’m going to hop on my bike and cycle over to the park.

Mason: Oh boy, I’ve really messed up. I promised my boss that I would get this done by Friday. I thought I could do it all by myself and really impress her. Now I have 10 reports to finish before 5pm and I can’t possibly do them alone. I hate to ruin your plans, but could you please stay and help me? Please, Rahim …

Rahim: It’s Friday afternoon, I’m halfway out the door and Mason needs my help. He should have asked me sooner, not at the last minute! Ughh… I really don’t want to stay at work, but I would feel so bad if I left him alone to do all the reports. What should I do?

Conor: Welcome to today’s episode of Talking on the job. My name is Conor and, as always, I’m your host and business English mentor.

I’m here to help you deal with some common challenges that you might face in the workplace. And we’ll be doing all of this in English! A fitting title for today’s episode would be, Last-minute deal.

Rahim is not just Mason’s colleague, he is also Mason’s mentor. If he agrees to help Mason, he needs to make sure that Mason has learned from his mistake and make a deal that is fair for them both.

Rahim’s first step, as Mason’s mentor, is telling him that this sort of last minute request is not very professional. He could say…

Rahim: Mason, it’s Friday afternoon, you need to think about other people’s schedules when planning your tasks.

Conor: Mason is still a trainee, so maybe he needs some extra help with time management. Rahim could offer some advice here.

Rahim: If you get a new task, you can always check with me about how long it should take.

Conor: Then, Rahim needs to start laying out or explaining some conditions.

Rahim: I will help you, but only if you promise that you won’t let this happen again.

Conor: Rahim wants to support Mason, but that doesn’t mean doing Mason’s work for him! So, he adds two more conditions to their deal.

Rahim: If you prepare the reports, I will check them. And if there are errors, you will correct them.

Conor: Ok, let’s see if these guys can figure out a deal that suits them both, or a win-win as we like to say.

Mason: Oh boy, I’ve really messed up. I promised my boss that I would get this done by Friday. I thought I could do it all by myself and really impress her. Now I have 10 reports to finish before 5pm and I can’t possibly do them alone. I hate to ruin your plans, but could you please stay and help me? Please, Rahim …

Rahim: Mason, it’s Friday afternoon – you need to think about other people’s schedules when planning your tasks. I know you were trying to make a good impression, but nobody expects you to do everything alone.

Mason: I know, I know, I realize that now.

Rahim: If you get a new task, you can always check with me about how long it should take. Then we can make a plan and even tell your manager that the deadline is unreasonable and you need more time.

Mason: Ok, thanks, that would be great. So, eh, what about this task today. It’s too late to extend the deadline, isn’t it?

Rahim: Well, yes. Ughh… ok, I will help you today, ughh… but only if you promise that you won’t let this happen again. Ok?

Mason: Yes, awesome, phew!

Rahim: Err, not so fast, I have some more conditions.

Mason: Yes, right, of course.

Rahim: You said 10 reports, right?

Mason: Yep!

Rahim: Ok, if you prepare the reports I will check them. And, if there are any errors, you will correct them.

Mason: Sounds like a plan, cool.

Rahim: Finally, if I help you with this, you will sing with me at the company BBQ next week!

Mason: Yeah, sure Rahim, it’s the least I can do. Are you a fan of K-pop? There’s this really cool, new track that we could sing, but of course we would need to find out if it’s on the tracklist…

Conor: So, dear listener, did you notice how Rahim expressed his conditions?

“If you do this … I will do that”. Or, the other way around: “You will do this … if I do that.” That’s what we call the first conditional. We have an entire lesson on this in our app, you can find it in the grammar section.

I think the big question is: will Rahim and Mason perform a K-pop duet? Tune in next time for the last episode of the season to find out.

Now, if I could only get that duet with Ed Sheeran happening…