20 Office Expressions to Describe Your Workplace - Visual Vocabulary

Hi, I’m Katie. Welcome to Oxford Online  English! In this visual vocabulary lesson, you can learn words and phrases to talk  about offices and describe where you work.

Before we begin, check out our website: Oxford  Online English dot com. Do you want to see a range of video and listening lessons to improve  your English, all 100% free? We have that!

Do you want to take online classes  with a professional teacher? We can do that, too! Oxford  Online English dot com.

Let’s start by looking at  different types of offices.

I work in an open plan office. It’s light and modern, but it can be quite noisy  sometimes, and it can be hard to focus on my work.

My office has cubicles. It’s OK but sometimes I find it depressing that there are  no windows and I can’t see the sky.

Is your office open plan? Many modern offices are. ‘Open plan’ means that everything is in one large  space, and there aren’t many separate rooms.

Many open plan offices have cubicles. Large offices with many cubicles can be called ‘cubicle farms’. This has a negative meaning.  If you describe your office as a cubicle farm, you’re probably suggesting that  it’s a boring place to work.

I work for a start-up, and our office is nice but too small. It’s very cramped and there  aren’t enough desks, so we have to hot desk.

‘Cramped’ is a useful adjective. It  means that you don’t have enough space. You can use it for many things. For  example, if your kitchen is very small and you can’t move around without hitting  things, then you could say it’s cramped.

What about ‘hot desk’? Do you know  what that means, or can you guess?

Hot desking is a way to share a workspace. If  you hot desk, you don’t have your own desk. You share a desk with other workers, and you  just take any free desk when you get to work.