Difficult Times With the recession hitting the Irish economy, unemployment has become a popular topic of every-day conversations. In English there are many ways of saying that somebody has lost their job. In the dialogue below we present a few such examples together with some other words and expressions, which might come handy in these relatively difficult times. The text is followed by a crossword, which features the underlined words and expressions from the dialogue.

Sean: Hi Aoife, where is John?

Aoife: You haven’t heard, have you? He was sacked yesterday.

Sean: Why? What happened?

Aoife: They said it was because of him

coming late to work on a regular basis. Normally they have to follow the procedure of two written warnings and so on, but, because he was still on probation period , they just fired him straight away. They didn’t even give him a week notice.

Sean: I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more people laid off.

Aoife: I wouldn’t either. Somebody said

they want to make 20 people redundant over next few months.

Sean: Well I hope I won’t be among those

20 guys. I don’t think I would find a job easily with the unemployment rate being so high.

Aoife: To be honest, I wouldn’t mind.

I’ve been working for the company over 6 years, so I can expect a nice redundancy pack. The money would probably do me for a couple of months, so I could go traveling.

Sean: And what would you do later?

Aoife: Well, I would move back to live

with my parents, and I would apply for the unemployment benefit of ‘course. Anyway the recession can’t last for ever. I’m sure the economy will get better soon, and there will be more jobs on the market.

Sean: I wish I could be such an optimist,

but when you have a family and a mortgage to pay off every month, it’s quite hard.

CROSSWORD

ACROSS→
1. The first few months of employment is usually called the _________ period. 6. Unemployment _________ is the money you get from the government if you don’t have a job. 7. ‘To ________ somebody’ is a synonym of the expression ‘to fire somebody’ 8. If you are ________________, you don’t have a job.

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2. By law they have to give me two week ________, if they want to make me redundant 3. He was late e few times and his boss gave him a written _________ . 4. I lost my job but at least I got a good __________ pack. 5. In the ____________, the economy slows down and lots of people lose their jobs. 8. In order to _________ for this benefit, please fill in the form A56.