"OFF" Phrasal Verbs - Business English

London, London, London. Hi. James, from EngVid. Secret London. I was actually born here. Beautiful

place. Love it. Now, I want to teach you a lesson today on phrasal verbs. We're going

to work on five phrasal verbs.

But this is specific. These are business phrasal verbs, so if you're in business or you're

learning about business, these terms will come up regularly. Now, phrasal verbs and

idioms in English are used, and you're expected to know them like that. So let's go to the

board and see where's Mr. E.

Mr. E wants to teach us something today about "off". Well, the first thing we have to learn,

specifically, "off" has about five meanings. But today, we're going to concentrate on two.

And all of these ones here are basically going to, you know, relate to those two meanings.

"Off" either means to move away from something or to go down. All right? To make smaller

or reduce in size. And these phrasal verbs are used in business quite often. If you know

anything about what's happened in the last five years, you're going to go, "Oh, my gosh.

That's what they were talking about."

So let's talk about the first one, "take off". If you're like me and you work a lot --

I don't work a lot. Okay. I don't work lot. I'm being honest. But sometimes, you need

a vacation, and I take vacations. So you need to "take off". But in English, what we say

in business, when you go to your boss, and you say, "Boss, I would like some time off."

They will say, "Would you like to take some time off?" Or you might say, "I want to take

some time off in the summer. I want to take off a month." So you'll hear this phrase, "take off"

"take off". And it means for vacation. But there's also another meaning, which is really,

really good. And this is -- remember; we're talking about "away from" when we're talking

about "off" because of "take off". You can see the airplane. The airplane takes off.

That's for your vacation because I know you're going somewhere sunny like Canada in January.

Anyway. Don't come here in January. It's not sunny; it's cold.

But another thing -- see how the airplane is taking off, so it means it's leaving? Airplanes

go up. When somebody goes up and things are going really well, they say, "My business

is taking off." It means it's doing well. So your boss might say -- or he or she might

say, "I really want this idea to take off because it will be good for the company."

It means they want the idea to be successful. If something takes off, it's successful. "We

started a new water brand, and it's taking off in Italy." They love it. Canadian water.

Who knew? Okay? And it "took off". It means it's successful. It's doing really well.

Now, let's look at another one. This is close to my heart because recently, I found out

there's a company across the sea -- imagine a country called "India" -- where they actually

took everything about me except my face and my name, and wrote my bio out. It's called

a "rip off". But we'll get to that.

If you have a store and you have products --books or markers, okay -- and you see someone

come in, and then they take it, and they run out of your store, and they don't pay you,

you would say, "I wasn't paid." You can say, "That person ripped me off." That means that

person stole from me. And we use that for when someone takes physical objects and takes

them without paying from a store. So you can say, "The store was ripped off" because the

product was taken and no money was given for it." Okay? That's one form of "to rip off".

Another is if you were the customer or client. If you go to my store and I sell this water

for five dollars, and then you walk to Mr. E's store and see the exact same water but

more water inside going for one dollar, you'll say, "I was ripped off." It's similar to being

stolen from because what it means is, "I paid more than the value of the object." The object

is only worth a dollar, but these people made me pay five. I feel ripped off. Something

was taken from me, and it wasn't fair. I didn't get the value. Rip off. Water is a rip off.

It's free, people. Check the clouds. It comes down regularly. Anyway. Next.

The next thing for "rip off" is to steal an idea. Told you this was business phrasal verbs.

Lots of times, McDonald's says, "Burger King's got a new burger. Let's rip it off." And they

make the same product, and they call it the McSomething.

Burger King did it first; McDonald's steals it.

I'll give you a great example. Samsung and Apple. Okay, people. Don't sue me. It's in

the papers. It's real. Apple had a product where you could touch the screen and move

everything. Brilliant. Millions of people bought it. Samsung looked at it and went,

"That's a damn good product. We like it." So they took the idea. They didn't ask Apple.

They didn't pay Apple. They stole the idea. Now, remember; the first stealing is to take

physical objects. In this case, they stole the idea, and they made the Samsung. People

love the Samsung. In fact, they ripped it off, but they made it better. But Apple sued

them -- that means took them to court -- and said, "You must pay us." And Samsung had to

pay because they stole the idea. So someone rips off your idea; they steal the idea from

you. It's yours. And you know, it's like a book. And they tear a page out of the book.

They take that page and steal it. It belongs in the book, not to them. Okay?

So that was "off", and that's how we talk about "away from", "to take something away

from something else".

Now, let's talk about phrasal verbs "off" and "going down". Here, if I'm off-screen

for a second -- I'll come back. I promise you. Here's Mr. E. He's going to look down,

and you will see. Look. "Sell off." If you have too many -- "I have too many. I don't

want this many. I need to sell them off." If I ask you to buy for five dollars, you

say "no", and I keep them. So then, I say, "If I reduce the price" -- make the price

go down --" I can sell them. At five dollars, nobody buys. But now, I say one dollar. I

sell them all. It's a sell off." It means to reduce the price by a large amount in order

to get people to buy them so you can get rid of them. Right? You don't want them anymore.

You want to sell them. Reduce the price, and you say it's a "sell off", meaning, "We want

to get rid of it, and it's a price lower, better for you, the consumer or the client

or customer." So to reduce the price, to reduce the number that you have, so everything goes down.

What's another one? Well, another one we want to talk about is "lay off". My man here is

saying, "I want to work." There's a problem. "I want to work?" Why is he saying that? Well,

a "layoff" is when a company, for some reason, must reduce its workers because they don't

have money or materials to work with. Maybe they make cars, and there's not enough tires,

wheels for the cars. So they can't make any. They have to tell some people, "Go home. There's

no work for you. And because there's no work, we can't pay you. So you can't work here."

So the worker is asked not to work, not because they did anything wrong -- that's being called

"fired". They're not fired. They've done everything okay. The company has no money or materials

to work with, so they're laid off. The difference between being fired and laid off is this.

If you are laid off, the company is saying if things get better, we will call you back

to work. When you're fired, that's it, Sucker. You're out. Okay? You don't work there anymore.

But in this case, they're saying, "We're going to call you back. We just don't have the money

or the materials." My man wants to work. He's like, "I did nothing wrong. I want to work.

Why am I lying down?" Sorry. No work. Okay?

Next one we're going to do is "write off". See the big zero? I did a video before where

we talked about a write off when you reduce it down to zero. So you can look at that.

Check it out. Video with "off" and what "off" means. But in this case, it's different. I

didn't talk about this because this is a business term that I didn't think the general student

would want to see. When you have a "write off" in business, it means you have an expense

that the government considers not taxable. "What was that?" You should say, "Say that

again?" Well, in most countries that have capitalism or do -- you know, exchange money

for goods, you get taxed. And what the government says is when you have a write off, it says

that if you're running a business, to have a business, you need certain things. You need

markers. You need computers. You don't make money for them because you have to buy them.

But if you don't have them, you don't have a business. So your government says, "Look,

if you buy these things, we will reduce the tax that you pay us." "What?" You say. "Government

giving money back?" Like Yoda. "Money back? Government? No." Yes. So when you get a write

off, you can say sometimes it's for eating dinner, buying your suits, buying pens or

computers or paper. The government says, "You need these to work with, so you get a write

off. We will reduce the tax you have to pay." And you thought you weren't going to get anything

from here, right? You did. It's not a rip off. I'm working hard for you. Okay?

So these are the five. So I'm going to give you a little story. I want you to think about

the story because in English, if your English is good, you can take multiple things and

put them together and make it make sense. Then, you can watch the video again and do

the quiz at EngVid. All right? Quickly. So let's go.

I took off from work one day because, you know, I went on my vacation. And you know,

the company was doing really well. We had taken off in sales, so I took off and took

my vacation. But then, I found out one of the employees, Mr. E, was ripping us off and

selling our secrets to the Indian people. Because of that, there were many, many layoffs

in the company, and a lot of people, good people, couldn't work. This is terrible. But

lucky me, I came back and because I was doing well, I got to write off my trip and my vacation."

So go do the quiz. See how you do. And if you don't do well, come and watch the video

again. And by the way, Indian people -- not upset with you. Just have to use a country.

Next time, I'll use the United States that rips off everybody. Anyway. E, I'm out. I'm

taking off. See you.