13 Apr

pull your weight

Who taught: Jake

Starting from the last Friday through Monday, there was a team competition in my company. We call it, “IO Days.” During about 3 and half days, each team can design and develop any new feature integrated into my company’s core software which is search engine. It was really fun. Our team developed a really cool and amazing analysis dashboard tool which can be used in any companies with very easy configurations, if they bought our software. 🙂 We have a big presentation day tomorrow. No doubt we will win. Go, IOcandy! I will keep you posted about the result of the competition later. But, at the same time, I feel really tired now. Maybe I am too old for this. 🙂 This group work remind me of the expression Jake told me a few days ago.

Well, in so many times, I guess you would have to work with other people as a Well, in so many times, I guess you would have to work with other people as a team, right? Then, there is always someone who do not work as hard as they supposed to. Here is an expression you can use when you see those people. “I do not think you are pulling your weight! Don’t you think so?” Jake told me this expression the other day, “So, T-Bone, I heard you did not pull your weight for the professional services team’s quarterly goal.” I knew he was joking about something (“What? Jake! You were not joking?? That is BS! I know you did not pull your weight for the IO Days.”) but I did not know what he meant. Well, as always, curious Terry had to ask the origin of the expression. He dose not know it. Hmm… I thought about it and my only guess is “tug of war.” When you play it, you are always in a team and you really need to pull all of your weight to contribute to your team’s win. So, in that sense, it totally makes sense. But, I am not sure if my guess is right or not. Do you guys know?

3 thoughts on “pull your weight

  1. Pingback: Preach to the choir | Learning English from Friends (LEfF)

  2. Well, there are lots of times when your team would want you to pull your weight, not just in tug of war. If I were guessing, I’d guess that it comes from fishing, where teams of people have to haul up heavy nets of fish. It would be pretty easy not to pull your own weight in that context, and then everyone else would have to work harder to make up for you.

    • Jean, That totally makes more sense. I like it. From now on, I will think about fishing whenever I use or hear “pull your weight” BTW, today I watched a movie, Tenure, and I heard “pull your leg” expression from the movie. So happy to hear the expression I learned that I talked to Jessy, “Hey, did you hear it? He said pull your leg. That is the one I learned from Jean.” 🙂 Thanks!

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