Office English / Cold calls

Do you ever have to call or email people you don't know at work?

That can be a little bit daunting, especially when you don't know how busy they are. I always try and be quite positive and overly polite. If they do respond in a way which is like annoyed, then that's on them. It's not on there.

I really hate having phone calls, especially when it's out of the blue and you haven't prepared or you don't know what they're going to say.

Today on Office English, we're talking about the language to use with strangers at work.

Hello and welcome to Office English. In this series, we talk about the words and phrases you need to work well in English. I m Pippa.

And I'm Phil. You can find a transcript for this episode and all the language we discuss on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

We heard from BBC Learning English colleagues at the start of the programme that calling or emailing people you don't know can be difficult. How do you find it, Phil?

Yeah, it can be difficult, especially phoning people, I think.

Yeah, I think phoning is much more difficult than emailing. I'm OK if I email someone that I've never emailed before, because you can prepare and you can write it out nicely. But I find the idea of speaking to someone on the phone, especially somebody that I want something from, really difficult because you can't really practise too much. You don't know what they're going to say.

Having said that, when I do it, it's usually much easier than I ever thought it was going to be. It's usually fine.