Services

1. Who does what?

1. At the photographer’s you can ___

2. The watchmaker ___
3. The shoemaker does ___
4. At the dry-cleaner you can ___
5. At the hairdresser’s you can ___
6. You go to the tailor or a dressmaker if ___
7. The car mechanic ___
8. At the post office you can __
9. In a bank you can ___

a) the shoe heels or soles, he sewes the upper leather of your shoes if they need repairing.
b) send letters, parcels, pay bills, buy magazines and newspapers. You can also keep a
savings account.
c) have a haircut. You can have your hair washed, cut, dyed or permed.
d) have your photo taken. You can also have your photos developed.
e) open an account on which you can put your savings. You benefit from an interest if
you keep your money on an account. You can apply for bank loans if you want to buy
a house/flat/car and pay it back in monthly instalments.
f) repairs or sets your watch and he also changes the battery if it runs down.
g) you want to have a new suit made or if you want to have your clothes taken in or let
down.
h) have the stains removed from your clothes.
i) gives your car a check-up and repairs it.

MŰVELTETÉS: HAVE + SG + V3

I had my car repaired.

I’m having my photos developed by the photographer’s.

I had the stains removed from my fur coat.

Services

There are several services in the world, such as restaurants, banks, hairdressers, dry-cleaners,
patrol services and so on.

People are usually in a hurry and they don’t have time to wait for meals in restaurants. They
go to self-service restaurants, which don’t offer many kinds of dishes, but the service is quick
and the food is acceptable. There are cheaper and some more expensive ones. You can buy
your food at takeaway restaurants if you don’t have time to cook but would like to eat at
home. Fast food restaurants are very popular but not so healthy. I like these foods but I eat
there rarely.

Many students complain about the canteen food, saying that it is tasteless and full of fat. I
think the situation is not that bad. The kitchen provides food for several hundred students a
day and can’t afford to use the best ingredients. There are some dishes that they cook really
well.

In Hungary the number of foreign restaurants is growing. There are more and more Chinese,
Greek, Italian, Turkish and Arabic restaurants. You can also find other international
restaurants, mainly in big towns.

I go to the hairdresser’s to have my hair cut two- or three times a year because I grow my hair
and I dye it at home.

It’s much cheaper to do all the work yourself and with the help of your family and friends, but
you might not be so satisfied with the result. Employing professionals is quite expensive but
they work faster and better.

I take suits, overcoats, leather jackets, fur coats and other clothes made of materials that can’t
be washed to the dry-cleaner’s.

At the post office you can buy stamps, envelopes, cards, scratchcards and so on. You can post
letters and parcels, pay your bills, transfer money, etc. I transfer money by internet.

Banks offer a wide choice of services. They deal with savings, payment services, lending,
insurance, foreign currency exchanges, leasing, giving advice on investments, and so on.
Nowadays more and more banks provide telebanking services. It means that people use their
phones or the internet to give orders to the banks to carry out different kinds of business
transactions for them.
Patrol services are ambulance, police, fire service and auto club. Ambulance callable in 104,
police in 105 and fire service in 107 in emergencies. In Hungary these services are not so
quick and modern. Auto club helps the motorists in default. It’s available in 188, and it has 80
modern “yellow angels’.

Shopping

I buy some bread and milk almost every day in a little shop opposite my house, but we go to a
big hypermarket to buy other all things for the household usually every third weekend.

We always buy big hunks of cheese, crates of yoghurt and kephir, tubs of margarine and
butter, sugar, flour, cooking oil, spices, mineral water, cereals, meat, cleaning supplies,
domesticities, nappy, consumer durables, electrical goods, toys, etc., so almost everything.
Vegetables and fruits we buy at the market near my house because these goods are fresh there.

Advantages of hypermarkets are that you can find almost everything from food to gardening
equipment in one place and there is also a wide range of goods. There is usually a place where
the children can play while their parents are shopping. The hypermarkets offer some products
at reduced prices and cards for regular customers. With these cards you can earn points that
you can exchange for goods or services.

I like shopping in hypermarket because they’re opened non-stop and I can buy everything in
one place at a low price. The disadvantages of hypermarkets are that they are often incredibly
crowded, especially at weekends. It’s difficult to move with fully packed trolleys among the
shelves. These hypermarkets are generally far from the town centre and it can take long to get
there and home. Fortunately there is a hypermarket near my house so we don’t have to travel
a lot.

Usually we get catalogues from super- and hypermarkets about sales so we go to there at that
time.

Recently I buy books and Avon essences by internet. It’s very comfortable and cheap, I like it.

In small shops the customer service is usually better than in bigger stores because the shop
assistants consider the customers more important there. These shops are closer to your home
and aren’t so crowded and you don’t have to stand in a long queue. Their disadvantages are
that you can’t find as many brands as in big shops and they are more expensive.
I think I pertain to the majority, which do the shopping in hypermarkets.