1. Which person (1-5) is most likely to do each of the five things (a-e)?

1 A software designer in an Internet company. Has to be in the office.

2 An office worker in a large, traditional manufacturing company.

3 A manager in a department store in a large city. Lives in the country.

4 A construction worker on a building site where work goes on 24 hours a day.

5 A technical writer for a city computer company. Lives in the country.

a work in shifts

b work under a flexitime system

c telecommute

d commute to work

e clock on and off at the same time every day

2. Read what people talk about their jobs. Think what type of job or working hours they mean.

1 I’m Alicia. I work in a public library in the afternoons from two until six.

2 My husband works in an office from 9 am to 5.30 pm.

3 Our daughter works in a bank from eight till five every day.

4 One week it’s six-to-two, the next it’s nights.

5 I’m David and I work in a café from 8 pm until midnight.

6 My wife works in local government and she can have this job for as long as she wants it.

7 I get in at nine o’clock and go home at five.

8 Our son is working on a farm for three weeks.

9 Our daughter is working in an office for four weeks.

10 I joined the company 10 year ago and I guess I’ll be here for another ten.

3. Complete the text with appropriate prepositions.

Rebecca lives in London and works in public relations. She leaves home ____ work at 7.30 am. She drives ____ work. The traffic is often bad and she worries about getting ____ work late, but she usually arrives ___ work at around nine. She finishes work quite late, at about eight. ‘Luckily, I’m never ill,’ she says. ‘I could never take the time ___ work.’ she loves what she does and is glad to be ___ work. Some of her friends are not so lucky: they are ____ work.

READING

1. Read the text and fill in the gaps with suitable words from the box. Working conditions

absenteeism holiday satisfaction

colleagues leave security

contracts manual sick pay

duties maternity workforce

flexitime morale vacation

My working conditions? I’d say they’re really good. The working hours are very reasonable - 38 hours a week, Mondays to Fridays only, and I get four weeks paid (1)......... . I always go on a two-week (2) ......... in the summer and I like to take another week to go skiing in the winter. That still leaves a few days if I want to take time off for something else. I think we're even allowed to take unpaid (3) ......... if it's really necessary. They introduced a (4) ……… system last year, so I can start at

any time between 7.30 and 9.30 in the morning, so I sometimes leave at 4 in the afternoon. Of course this means we now have to clock in and clock out, so we have to do the right number of hours.

Women get generous (5) ......... leave, although that doesn't concern me yet, and there are a lot of women employed half-time or part-time here, so they have time for their children.

Of course I’m a full-time white-collar worker, hoping to make a career here. My (6) ……… and I have permanent (7) ......... . At least we think so, it’s hard to be sure about job (8) ……… these days. We are consulted if they want to change our (9) ......... or anything.

The entire (10) ......... is well-treated, not just us. The company's blue-collar workers, doing (11) ......... jobs, also have good conditions of employment.

It all makes a change from when I was a student, when I did casual, unskilled, seasonal work for a fruit company, paid by the hour, with no (12) ......... or holiday pay or anything. They treated workers really badly, so (13) ......... was low, nobody was motivated, productivity was minimal, and there was a lot of (14) ......... and high turnover - I used to see new people almost every day. There was no job (15) .......... and nothing changed if our performance was good or bad, so we all did the minimum.