AT THE OFFICE

It's impossible to imagine a company, no matter it is large or small, without an office. An office is a place where business is done, a service is provided, and some written work is done in connection with a business. There are large and small companies, busy and not very much.

Mr. Blain is the president of the Acme Insurance Company. His company is very large and always very busy.

Mr. Blain has a staff of energetic employees who work for him. His receptionist answers the phone. The secretary types letters. Computer programmers operate the computers, back up the data and shoot the troubles.

The head of administration makes appointments with representatives of other firms, arranges conferences, meetings and travelling.

Now let's have a look at one of the offices. This is a marketing department office. It's on the second floor. There are several desks in it. On the desks you can see in- and out-trays, telephones, and PCs. The computer is one of the greatest wonders of the world along side with Internet and WWW, which enables you to communicate easily and in no time with people all over the world using e-mail or chat site.

To the left of the window there is a stationery cupboard with some paper, pens, pencils, envelopes, scissors, staplers, rulers, paper clips, and other things in it. Near the window there's a photocopier to make copies of the documents. Nearby you can see a fax machine, it enables you to communicate with people easily. It's unbelievable that when you watch your paper going into the fax, at the same time, on the other side of the world the paper with the same information is coming out of somebody's machine. If you are a little tired and want to have a sip of coffee, pay you attention to the coffee machine.

There are 4 windows in the office, making the room light. If it gets stuffy or too cool in the room you can switch on the conditioner. So, everything in the office is at your disposal to make the work more efficient, creative and pleasant. Some people think the office work is boring, but I can argue, that it's not true, there is always some work for translation, arranging meetings, booking hotels, dealing with letters, solving some problems.

World-Wide Web - всемирная "паутина" (глобальная гипертекстовая система в сети Internet)

Text 12

Most people say that Saturdays and Sundays are their favourite days of the week - but not everybody. For some people weekends are not much fun...