The vocabulary of paying somebody else
Eight words that appear whenever work is arranged rather than done. Most of them cost money, and one of them decides whether the job is finished.
Eight terms. Match each to what it means.
Four people arranging things
Four texts. Nobody in them is thinking about grammar; they are thinking about money, dates and whose fault it is. Read for what happened, then read again for who did the work.
A · From a renovation forum
We are having the kitchen done in March and I am already regretting it. We had three companies out for quotes and the spread between them was eleven thousand, which tells you something about the industry. We went with the middle one, mostly because they were the only ones who would put the lead time in writing.
Three things I have learned. Get everything specified before anybody starts — we had the units changed twice on site and both times it cost us. Have the electrics checked separately, by somebody who is not doing the fitting, because a fitter who finds a problem has just found himself more work. And get the snagging list agreed in writing on the day they finish, not a fortnight later when everybody has moved on to the next job.
B · A voicemail, and the reply
Voicemail: Hello, this is Aisha calling from the practice about your appointment on the fourteenth. Mr Okonkwo has looked at the X-ray and he would rather have the crown replaced than repaired, which means a longer appointment, so we will need to move you to a Thursday. He also said to tell you there is no rush at all — if you would prefer to have it done after the summer, that is completely fine. Give us a ring back when you can.
Reply, by text: Thanks — Thursday the 22nd if you have it. I would rather get it done before I travel than have it fail somewhere I do not speak the language.
C · Two emails and a boiler
Nadia → the landlord: Dear Mr Hale, the boiler has now been out for nine days. I have had two engineers look at it and both said the same thing: it is the pump, it is out of warranty, and it needs replacing rather than repairing. I am not asking you to have it replaced this week. I am asking for a date.
The landlord → Nadia: Nadia — sorry, been away. I’ll get someone out on Monday. If they can’t do it Monday I’ll have the whole thing swapped out; it’s fourteen years old and I should have had it done last winter. Bear with me.
D · An insurance claim, from a forum
Short version: I had my bike stolen from outside the library, in the middle of the afternoon, with two locks on it.
What nobody tells you is that the claim is a second job. I had to have a crime reference number issued before they would even open the file, find a receipt from a shop that closed in 2019, and have the frame number confirmed by the manufacturer, who took eleven days to answer an email. Six weeks in total. I got about sixty per cent of what it was worth and I am told that is a good outcome.
The thing that still annoys me is the language. Every letter is written as though the bike removed itself.
Eight statements. Decide which text each is true of. A text may be the answer more than once.
A The renovation forum
B The voicemail and reply
C The boiler emails
D The insurance claim
1. Recommends having one stage of the work checked by somebody with no interest in the outcome.
2. Uses the construction for something nobody arranged.
3. Says that changes made after the work has started are the expensive kind.
4. Offers to postpone the whole thing indefinitely.
5. Asks for a date rather than for the work.
6. Admits the work should have been arranged a year earlier.
7. Prefers to get something done at home rather than risk it abroad.
8. Objects to writing that removes the person who did something.
Count them. Text A has five, text B has three, text C has five, text D has three. Sixteen in four short texts, and not one of them is there for effect — this is simply what English sounds like when somebody describes a fortnight of ordinary life.
Note the two odd ones. I have had two engineers look at it names the people and drops the to. I had my bike stolen is the same grammar as I had the kitchen done, and nobody was hired.
A fifth text, with four sentences missing
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
I had the car serviced in September and it failed its MOT in October, which I am told is not unusual at all. [1]
The garage rang with a list of five things. Two were failures and three were advisories, and the difference between those two words is the whole game. [2] An advisory is a note saying it will fail next year unless somebody does something about it.
[3] So I had the two failures fixed there, on the grounds that the car was already up on the ramp, and got a quote for the other three from somewhere cheaper.
The quote came back at less than half. [4]
None of which I would have known if the man on the desk had not explained it, unprompted, while I was paying. I have had four cars and nobody has ever told me that before.
A year of arranging things
Eight gaps. More than one option is grammatical in most of them — choose the one that describes what actually happened.
When I moved abroad I found out how much of adult life consists of arranging for other people to do things. In the first month I , because nothing is accepted in English. Then I by a notary, which took two visits and a stamp the size of a beer mat. I twice, because the first set of photographs was the wrong size. The flat needed work before I could move in, so I , and when the meter turned out to be reading high I as well. Somewhere in the middle of all that I outside a supermarket. And when the landlord stopped answering emails I , which worked where eleven emails had not. By June I than I had signed in the previous ten years.
Eight sentences. Seven need work; one is correct as written.
1. I cleaned my suit for the wedding. — the dry cleaner did it
2. We had the surveyor to look at the roof.
3. She got the garage fix the brakes.
4. I had stolen my phone outside the supermarket.
5. We are having done the kitchen in March.
6. He had his passport renewed in four days. — correct as written
7. They made me to wait three hours.
8. By the time we moved in we had everything replaced. — it was all finished before the move
The last thing you had done
Task card · Speaking · Threes · 12 minutes
One arrangement each, told properly: something you paid somebody else to do in the last year, from the first phone call to the moment it was finished — or the moment you gave up.
Three minutes each. The listeners have one job, and it is not listening politely.
- Tell it as a story: what needed doing, how many quotes, what the lead time was, what went wrong, what it cost in the end.
- Listener 1 writes a one-sentence summary using have or get plus a past participle, and reads it back.
- Listener 2 answers one question out loud: who actually did the work? — by name or by trade.
- If Listener 2 cannot answer, the story left the person out. Add them and tell that part again.
Notice what the summary sentence does. It keeps you as the subject — you arranged it, you paid, you are the one it happened to — while leaving the plumber, the notary or the dentist out of the sentence entirely. That is not evasion. It is what the construction is for.
What the summaries showed
Two questions.
1. Could your listeners say who actually did the work?
2. What did the summary sentence keep, and what did it drop?
Sixteen in four texts
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Why were there sixteen causatives in four short, ordinary texts?
2. What is odd about I had my bike stolen?
Next. The forms taken apart: have against get, the two shapes that name the person, and what happens when the whole thing has to move into another tense.