Using English at Work：59 Socializing with Coworkers(5)

（单词翻译）

"To bad-mouth (someone)" means¹ to say bad things about another person.

It's never a good idea to bad-mouth someone, because that other person may hear you,

or people that you are talking to might tell that person - especially if that person is your boss!

When Brian starts to grumble² about work and bad-mouth the boss, I'm in no mood to talk about work.

If someone is "in no mood" to do something,

it means that he or she does not want to do something, they're not interested in doing something.

If you feel sick, for example, you probably are in no mood to go outside and play in the snow, or simply to go outside.

I'm in no mood to talk about work, meaning I don't want to talk about work since it's Friday

and it's the beginning of the weekend, so I change the subject.

"To change the subject" means to say or do something that gets people to stop talking about

whatever they're talking about now and begin talking about something else.

If your wife or husband asks you to do something that you don't want to do,

you may change the subject so perhaps they'll forget about it.

That's what I'm doing here; I'm changing the subject so we can talk about something else, not work.

To do that, I ask my coworkers about their plans for the weekend.

Diana says that she's planning to kick back and relax.

"To kick back" means to stop working and start having fun.

I like to kick back after a long day by sitting on my couch³ and watching a baseball game, at least during the summer.

"To kick back" is a somewhat⁴ informal⁵ expression.

In our story, Diana is going to kick back and relax. Rodrigo says that he has a hot date.

A "date" is a romantic⁶ meeting between two people, and a "hot date" is a date with a very attractive⁷ or sexy person.

Unfortunately, not all dates can be hot dates!