Speakout Street Interviews 2

H = Hina     W1 = 1st woman etc.     M1 = 1st man etc.

H:     Hi, I’m Hina. I work for the BBC in London as a researcher. I’ve learnt a lot of skills in my job and I’ve made some good friends at work. Sometimes my job gets too busy and I don’t get enough time to relax, or even to tidy my flat. What do you do?

W1:  I’m an administrator in an Economics department of a university.

M1:   I’m an accountant.

M2:   I work in advertising.

M3:   I’m a filmmaker.

M4:   I’m a mechanical engineer for an energy company in Australia.

W2:  I work in an office.

W3:  I’m a singing teacher. I teach singing lessons.

M5:   I’m a private investigator. I run a private investigation company in Germany.

M6:   I am a charity worker, so I travel to different places in the world.

M7:   Well, I’m semi-retired now, but I worked for many years for a publishing company. Book publishing.

W4:  I am the Director of Sales for a software company called B-line.

W5:  I’m a college professor. I teach communication and journalism at Jackson University.

M8:   I work as an expedition leader.

W6:  I’m a fashion photographer and I work for a fashion agency.

W7:  I work part-time in a music store.

H:     Where do you work?

M2:   I work in London.

W1:  It’s University College London. Also known as UCL.

M3:   I work from home in central London.

M4:   I work about 8 hours’ drive from where I live in Brisbane.

W2:  I work in London.

M5:   I mostly work in Berlin.

M7:   The head office is in London, so although I work mostly from home now, I travel down to London maybe 2 or 3 times a month.

W4:  I work here in the City of London.

W3:  I work from home and then I also work in schools.

M8:   We mainly operate in continents like Asia, Africa, South America, so I spend a lot of my time abroad, maybe about two-thirds of my time is spent outside the United Kingdom.

H:     What are the best things about your job?

M2:   The best things about my job are the different people that I meet from all around the world.

W6:  I get to travel and… lots of different people every day and every day is different.

W1:  The flexibility.

M1:   The variety of work that I have. Meeting people throughout the day.

M3:   The best thing is that no day is ever really the same.

M4:   I get to be hands-on with everything.

W2:  Working with my colleagues and friends.

M8:   I’ve made some really good friends over the years, from the locals and natives, from the local crews I work with.

M6:   Seeing people’s faces when you do something for them and seeing little kids being very happy and laughing – I really love that.

H:     And the worst things?

W2:  The worst thing about my job is that it can get very stressful.

W1:  As much as I love my job, there are times when I need to take work home to meet deadlines. I’d say that’s, that’s probably the only bad thing I can think of right now.

M6:   When you see people who are very poor and very sad and don’t have much opportunity. And there is not much that they can do about it, then that hurts you a lot.

M2:   The worst thing about my job is the hours we work – we can be there until ten, eleven o’clock.

W6:  Long hours. It’s tiring and you’re ‘on call’ quite a lot of the time.

M3:   You never know what you’re going to be doing from one day to the next, so sometimes it’s hard to make plans.

M4:   Just the distance … being away from my family.

M8:   You miss family, you miss friends. So I think spending a lot of time out of the UK can have its disadvantages.