In our example from the top, employees also look over their shoulder at work because... Well, here, “looking over our shoulder” is a metaphor. They’re just afraid of losing their jobs. It’s not as if every day management sends people with knives and shot guns to oversee them doing their work or anything like that. Still, they look over their shoulder for any new policy changes that may put their jobs into jeopardy.
Perhaps this is a hard time for the company as a whole. It is losing money and management has sounded everyone out that 300 people will be laid off within the next six months.
I can keep painting this picture, but it’s a bleak picture and I don’t find much fun doing it. Happily, I think you’ve already got the idea and so let’s call it quits right here.
“Looking over one’s shoulder”, in short, is very widely used as a metaphor, especially in America where people speak a simpler language than do the British. America is a younger culture, and hence it seems people there tend to appreciate and prefer newer and often simpler idioms and expressions.
And here are a few media examples, old and new:
1. When David E. Kelley, formerly a practicing lawyer, took over as the executive producer of L.A. Law this season, he set out to disrupt the harmony that had dulled the show’s characters and plots. “Law firms are not families — they’re very political,” he explains. “You have to look over your shoulder all the time.” The result has been a docket full of on-screen conflicts and boardroom wars — the latest being a Dynasty-style power struggle between new mother Ann Kelsey and new partner Rosalind Shays — that Kelly says may continue through next season.
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