Practice English Listening B1 Exercises – Love in the supermarket

The taxi

1   Because the taxi driver said that all English people were football hooligan.

2   He asked him to stop the taxi.

3   He got out and he didn’t pay anything.

The hotel

4   It wasn’t clean / It was in a mess. The bed hadn’t been made, there were dirty towels on the floor and the bathroom was filthy.

5   He said that she had to wait half an hour while they cleaned her room.

6   She told him go give her another room. He did this.

The restaurant

7   Because there was a black hair in it.

8   Because they had charged him for the ravioli. He thought they shouldn’t charge for it.

9   He complained and they didn’t have to pay for the ravioli.

1

I was in a taxi in Greece, in Athens, and I was going into the centre to do some shopping and the taxi driver started chatting to me. He asked me where I was from. When I said I was English, he started getting really aggressive. He said that he didn’t like the English and that all English people were football hooligans. He went on and on – he just wouldn’t stop. I got really annoyed. I mean I thought, ‘Why do I have to listen to all of this?’. So I asked him to stop the taxi and let me get out. Luckily, he stopped and I got out – and of course, I didn’t pay him anything.

2

This happened to me recently when I was travelling around France on business. I was really tired because I’d been working and travelling all day. Anyway, when I got to the hotel in Toulouse – it was the evening – I checked in and the receptionist gave me the key to my room. So I went up to my room and opened the door, but it was a complete mess! The bed wasn’t made, there were dirty towels on the floor and the bathroom was filthy. I went downstairs and told the receptionist and he said that I would have to wait for half an hour while they prepared the room. But I was exhausted and needed to rest, so I told him to give me another room straightaway. Luckily, he did.

3

This happened to me last week. I went to a restaurant in London with my family to celebrate my dad’s birthday. Anyway, my dad ordered ravioli and when his dish arrived he saw that it had a long, black hair in it. So he asked the waitress to take it back and bring him another one. She brought him another plate of ravioli and it was fine, and we finished our meal. But when my dad asked for the bill, he saw that they had charged us for the ravioli. He didn’t think that was right. He thought the ravioli should be free because he had found a hair in it. So he asked the waitress to take it off the bill. She went away and spoke to the manage, and he came and apologized and he took the ravioli off the bill.