Leave something on the table
Today’s expression is to leave something on the table. How did you hear it before? Americans, collectively, leave millions of vacation days on the table. In fact, I’m embarrassed to say that last year, even I left about five vacation days on the table, and I love my vacation. When you leave something on the table, you fail to claim it for yourself. It might have been available to you had you taken it, had you claimed it, but because you didn’t you missed out. In my case, I was being offered about 25 vacation days per year, but I only actually took 20. I was offered 25, it was there for me to take, but I only took 20, so I left five days on the table.
If you go into a negotiation with another party, you want to get as much advantage for yourself as possible. Otherwise, you’ll leave something on the table, and you don’t want to do that. So let’s think about a few times when you might be in a negotiation. Imagine you get a new job and it’s time to talk about how much you’ll get paid by your new employer. The new company has an amount that it’s willing to pay you, but of course they don’t tell you that. They make an offer, which is usually—at least in many jobs in the US—a little bit less than the maximum they’re willing to pay. Pretend an employer offers you a salary of $7,000 per month, but they’re secretly willing to pay you a maximum of $8,000 per month. If you accept the $7,000 offer right away, you’re leaving money on the table. If you negotiate a little bit, you might be able to get more—who knows, maybe even the full $8,000. Again, here in the US, studies generally show that women are more reluctant than men to negotiate their salaries, so women tend to leave money on the table for their reluctance to negotiate.
When you go into a negotiation, your objective is not to leave anything on the table. If you ever have any sales training, then you know that sooner or later you have to ask for the sale. You have to ask the customer to buy; you can’t just assume the customer will approach you first. In sales, you don’t want to be too pushy, but if you don’t ask the customer to buy, you’ll be leaving some sales on the table.
If you’re going to college and you don’t at least try to get a scholarship, then you might be leaving some money on the table. If you’re selling a house, you want to make sure the house is clean and all the small repairs are done. If you don’t, then you’ll wind up leaving some money on the table because buyers will pay less for your house.
Sometimes in negotiations, as a sign of good faith, you want to leave a little something on the table. In these cases, you may decide not to quite take everything you might get. And by doing so, you build goodwill with the other party. You may consciously decide to leave a little something on the table, just so you’re not perceived as trying to take advantage.
Quote of the week
It’s Monday; we have a quote of the week. I was reading an article about France, and in France, they prize their culture, so they tend to protect cultural institutions from competition. One example is bookstores. They want to preserve traditional bookstores in France. And the French Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, had a good quote about the pleasures of bookstores. He said: “On the internet you can find what you look for, but only in a bookshop do you find what you were not looking for.” That goes for libraries, too. There’s a way of finding exactly what you want when you’re searching online, but the pleasures of just stumbling upon something new, something you weren’t looking for—that’s what’s nice about walking around a bookstore or a library. The article I was reading was about a French law that doesn’t allow discounting books, which is not necessarily something I favor, but I can appreciate the sentiment behind the quote. Once more, “On the internet you can find what you look for, but only in a bookshop do you find what you were not looking for,” and that was by the French Minister of Culture Franck Riester.
That’s all for today! Thanks for joining us at Plain English. I hope you get a chance to take some vacation time this summer, if you’re in the north, or maybe hit the slopes if you’re in Chile or Argentina. Remember to get episode announcements and all the news about the program by going to PlainEnglish.com/mail . The next episode comes out on Thursday. I hope you’ll join us then.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
