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

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; по-

ложение, из которого трудно выйти; бюрократические препоны

на пути к цели (выражение из одноименного романа американс-

кого писателя Дж. Хеллера (1961)

financial track record – кредитная история

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

us had been teachers for many years and we had the desire to be self-em-

ployed 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 any-

one, 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 interviewee’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 they need: a. from educational pub-

lishers? 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?