2.4. Grammar exercise. Conditionals.

GIOVANNI: This really is very depressing. If I were on the dole, I would be very sad.

TEACHER: Don’t worry, we won’t be here long, if we hurry up. I only have to go to a quick appointment with the ‘Job Club’.

MARIA: What’s the Job Club?

TEACHER: Well, I have been ‘officially’ unemployed for eight years. The government will only continue to give me money, if I attend job interviews. In the Job Club they help poor, unfortunate, unemployed people like me to look for work.

GIOVANNI: This is very depressing, these poor people cannot get jobs. My father works twelve hours a day in the fields in Italy, six days a week. But for these poor people the situation is far worse!

TEACHER: What rubbish! If you had a brain, you would be dangerous. Most of these people like it here. Let me explain. But first, we have to go back to my flat. I need to take off these nice, smart clothes and put on some older, nastier horrible ones.

MARIA: Why? Are you going to repair the car?

TEACHER: No, I have a job interview.

GIOVANNI: I would wear a smart, elegant suit, if I had a job interview in Italy. I don’t understand you Englishmen at all.

TEACHER: The Job Club wants me to go for an interview with a company. If I don’t go, they won’t giveme my dole money, because they will think that I don’t want to work. If I get the job, I will also lose my dole money completely.

MARIA: If you get/got the job, it will/would be great!

TEACHER: No, it won’t! It’ll be a complete disaster. The job will be awful. At the moment they give me £150 a week dole money, and they pay my rent money. In other words, a total of £400. If I get the job, they will pay me £410. In other words, £10 extra for working forty hours more than I do now. Plus I would lose my UB40 and the right to cheap entrance to the theatre, cinema, art galleries, concerts, cheaper international flights etc, etc. I do not want the job. You understand?