Real ESL

In the ten years I’ve lived in Los Angeles, I’ve always been amazed at people who work in the post offices. The people tend to be quite (very) rude (impolite, not nice) and paranoid (worried that someone’s going to hurt them), so don’t take it personally (don’t think the person is rude because of you or something you did) if this happens to you.

In this lesson, I go to the post office and talk about what the postal worker asked me to do. I also give the grammar behind requests:

to ask someone to do something
to get someone to do something
to have someone do something (Note: No infinitive for this one!)

Partial Transcript

I’m outside the post office.

I’m sending a package to my family.

a bit odd (strange)

They have bulletproof glass. (glass that stops a bullet)

People aren’t so paranoid there. (worried about someone hurting them)

They have an expression that’s called ‘go postal‘. (be angry and aggressive toward people)

There have been postal workers who come with their guns.

You have to open a door, stick it in (put it in) and close the door.

If we both have our doors open, I could take out my gun and boom-boom-boom (sound to shoot people with a gun).

She got me to do it, she had me do it, she asked me to do it. (Note - all these mean the same thing.)

She had me do it. It goes directly to the base verb.