For Friday, March 8: Don't be a drain!

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. Benjamin Franklin

We've got a problem. We really don't like to take personal responsibility and we make excuses to make sure that we don't take responsibility. And what happens is we become good-for-nothings. That's right I said it, now deal with it. When we try to excuse everything away we prove ourselves to be untrustworthy, insincere, immature, and lacking in character. When the only excuse you can find is you then own up and deal with the fall-out. Even if the excuse isn't you but isn't right take some responsibility and deal with it in a mature fashion. A person who lives their life blame shifting and excusing themselves away is a drain on their families, relationships, workplaces, etc. Don't be a drain!

Comments

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

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