Read the following text. What do the expressions in bold mean ? We'll tell you next week.
I was at a loose end last Sunday afternoon. I could have called Jim; if I had invited him out for a pint he’d have come at the drop of a hat. But my argument with my boss had left a bad taste in my mouth. His remarks had been totally below the belt and I had had to bite my tongue to avoid saying something that I would have later regretted. When I told my boss that I was getting cold feet about the new project he came down on me like a ton of bricks. As I had got the job by the skin of my teeth I didn’t want to play with fire so I had kept the bad news about the prototype under my hat. Even if I had told him about the problems, he’d have told me to put a sock in it. I felt on edge, but I kept a stiff upper lip and anyway I didn’t want
to rock the boat. So, if I had invited Jim out for a beer, I would have just talked shop and he’d have just told me to keep my chin up and would have probably added that I was making a mountain out of a mole-hill.
Finally, I realised how I could kill two birds with one stone. After picking the brains of a colleague who had already found himself in the same situation, I decided that I had to pull myself together and to take the bull by the horns. I arranged a meeting with my boss and our R & D team and I managed to twist their arms to bring along the Seldox reports, which they themselves had contributed to. The reports showed that the project was not exactly going like clockwork and it was clear that the company would go to the wall if we didn’t take steps to put things right. By taking this initiative I felt I was turning a new leaf - at last I was standing on my own two feet. Indeed, I had been sitting on the fence for too long, never daring to say what I really thought about the project or my boss’s unrealistic ambitions for the company. When he read the Seldox reports he put two and two together and realised that we would have to go back to square one. He was all ears when Jack Sebastian from the lab spoke about the risks that we would be running if we continued to stick our heads in the sand. The figures brought my boss down to earth, as it became apparent that we had a cat in hell’s chance of pulling the project off. Jack’s experience came in handy and it was his ability to call a spade a spade that won the day. I finally came to the point and told my boss that he was counting his chickens before they hatched by publishing over optimistic sales forecasts when we hadn’t even tested the product. Jack hit the nail on the head when he
pointed out that, in a nut-shell, it all came down to marketing. My boss had his hands tied and being forced to take advice from others, rather than to give orders, he must have felt like a fish out of water. I had finally turned the tables on him. Before that, he had ruled with a rod of iron, but when he finally saw the light he had to take a back seat. If we had succeeded in saving the company it was thanks to good timing - we had struck while the iron was hot, the Seldox reports having just been published.
My colleagues and I were on cloud nine, but we continued to put our shoulders to the wheel so as not to lose our grip. As for the boss, he has looked a bit under the weather recently and I’m sure I’m in his bad books now.
