Self-employment

1. Before you read the text discuss the following questions with your partners:

1. What do you understand by self-employment?

2. What advantages might there be in self-employment?

3. What disadvantages might there be?

2. Make sure you know the following words and phrases.

off the beaten track - в стороне от оживленных мест, дорог

afford sth or doing sth – позволить себе что-л.

go from strength to strength – библ. приходить от силы в силу; постоянно расти, улучшаться

touch and go (attr.) – рискованный, критический, опасный

Catch 22 – ловушка 22 – взаимопротиворечивые условия; положение, из которого трудно выйти; бюрократические препоны на пути к цели (выражение из одноименного романа американского писателя Дж.Хеллера (1961)

financial track record – кредитная история

order/buy on credit – заказывать/покупать в кредит

stock – запас, ассортимент товаров

run a business – вести дела, управлять предприятием

get over / overcome / cope with difficulties - справляться с / преодолевать трудности

extortionate – непомерный, грабительский

rate of interest / interest rate – процентная ставка

3. Read the interview of a small business owner and get ready to answer the questions that follow.

It's a small bookshop in the centre of Brighton. A place called George Street. It's a little bit off the beaten track, not in the main shopping street, because when we were first setting up, we didn't have the money to afford the rent on such premises. We sell books to students of English as a Foreign Language, and teachers in their schools. We've been open for about four years now.

The reason we set up the shop in the first place was because both of had been teachers for many years and we had the desire to be self-employed rather than working for someone else all the time.

We've just gone from strength to strength, really. It was the first six or eight months which were touch and go, trying to get new customers, but now we're very busy. We've got two other people working here.

Setting up the shop in the first place, as with all small businesses was very difficult, because it's sort of Catch 22. You have no financial track record in running a business yourself, so nobody wants to lend you any money. And you've never previously ordered goods on credit from anyone, so nobody wants to supply you any goods on credit.

So the most difficult thing is to get your potential suppliers, in our case educational publishers, to agree to supply you with your opening stock and wait for their money. And the other one is to find some friendly bank manager who's willing to lend you cash at an extortionate rate of interest, which is always the case with business loans.

Having got over those two problems, and found a property that we could operate from, the rest of it seems to have been comparatively easy. The business is going so fast now, we're beginning to wonder whether it's the business which is running us or us running the business. That's the problem.

The other thing is that you don't escape from being told what to do when you become self-employed. Because when you're an employee, your boss tells you what to do. And when you're self-employed, it's your bank manager or your accountant or most of all your customers who tell you what to do. So you still find yourself tipping your cap to someone or other.

4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the speaker’s business? What does he sell? In which town?

2. Why isn’t his shop in a main street?

3. Why did he and his wife start the shop?

4. Have they been successful?

5. What were their first months in business like?

6. What are the common problems with setting up a small business?

7. What did the speaker need:

a. from educational publishers?

b. from a bank manager?

8. Do they feel themselves free from others’ dictatorship now when they are self-employed?

9. Who tells the self-employed person what to do?

10. What do you think ‘tipping your cap to someone’ means?

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31