As most of you, dear readers, know, (1.) I was once an English major, and, thus, (2.) I have a weird and hyper-detailed attention to phrases people use. All that fucking lit-crit left it’s ugly burn in my brain. Thankfully, switching to philosophy at the last minute saved me from a malignant case of Englishmajorism. But that’s a story for another time…
IT Meets Il Duce
Another phrase people in IT/biz love using is “keeping the trains running on time.” This means, essentially, that the daily (even hourly) business processes that a business depends on are super-reliable. It’s the “99.99% uptime” concept.
The problem I have with this phrase is that it’s associated with Mussolini, a freakin’ Fascists. You may also know him as “The Other Guy” the Allies were fighting in WWII in addition to the Nazis and Japanese
Biting You in the Ass
Oddly enough, the idea that Mussolini kept the trains running on time, according to snopes, is an urban legend. This makes the phrase even more rich, giving it the cyncical meaning that those who use it are blowing smoke up your ass. Or, as snopes puts it:
One of the best ways to gain the support of the people you want to lead is to do something of benefit to them. Failing that, the next best thing is to convince them that you have done something of benefit to them, even though you really haven’t. So it was with Benito Mussolini and the Italian railway system.
If these people truly want to honor Mussolini’s efficiency skills, they should change the phrase to “keeping the gypsies in jail”.