活是下面人干的 酒是下面人卖的
“You know, in this company, the underlings do the work, sell the liquor,”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
你说这公司
“You know, in this company, the underlings do the work,”
活是 下面人干的 酒是下面人卖的
“You know, in this company, the underlings do the work, sell the liquor,”
锅也是下面人背的 我们下面人做了那么多的事情
“and even take the blame. We underlings have done so much.”
“Management does nothing while we break our backs doing all the real work.”
In hierarchical Chinese workplaces, lower-tier staff ('people below') often feel pressured to execute all the hard labor, including heavy client entertaining, while bearing the risk of taking the fall ('carrying the pot') when things go wrong.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
subordinates; lower-level employees; people at the bottom
Used informally in workplaces or organizations to refer to rank-and-file staff as opposed to management.
emphatic structure highlighting the agent of an action
Use this pattern in parallel clauses to strongly emphasize who actually performed the work.
Placed at the end of a 'shi...de' construction to assert certainty and emphasize the doer of the past/ongoing action.
VOCABULARY & EXPRESSIONS
Parallel Spoken Cinema Scenes (语义近邻切片)
“I should be the one doing this.”
“So, can you do this job or not?”
“Business is getting better and better. Now I'm short of hands.”
“Having work isn't much better.”
“A city comes alive when transportation thrives.”
“I mean, I'll do all the chores.”