A Pound of Pennies

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom from Carlsbad. How are you?

Great, Tom. What’s up?

Hi, Tom. What’s going on?

I work at a business coaching company, and one of my clients used the phrase pound of pennies one day on the phone with me, and I wanted to talk to you guys about that.

Okay. How did they use it?

Well, we are a business coaching company, and so we try and do whatever we can to help people improve.

So I was talking to her about her office setup, and she was talking about her assistant, who was a friend of hers who had become her assistant.

And she was from somewhere in the south, and she said, well, you know, she’s just a pound of pennies.

And I laughed, and I had no idea what it meant.

And she heard me laughing, and she said, do you know what that means?

I said, no.

And she said, well, it’s like a pound of pennies.

It has value, but it’s a pain in your butt.

So, like, it’s not organized.

So she was talking about her assistant.

She loves her, and she knows that she has some value, but she’s also a pain.

That’s fantastic.

I tried to find out what I could about it, and I found nothing.

And I love your guys’ show, so I thought you might know.

Did she suggest where she picked it up from, or did she make it up herself?

She had said that it’s something that they say in her family, but it wasn’t the focus of our conversation, so I didn’t really get anything else.

And, Tom, do you know how much a pound of pennies is worth?

I have no idea.

Well, it depends on the year of the pennies, because they used to be heavier than they are now.

But a pound of pennies is $1.46.

I’ve never heard this expression to apply to somebody who has value but is kind of annoying to deal with.

Yeah, I’ve never heard it.

But I am adding this to my ideologue.

No kidding.

This is a new one for me.

This is brilliant.

Everybody loved it.

When she told me, I told the people that I work with, and everybody loved it.

Now we use it here, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you just popularized a new term.

She’s a pound of pennies.

She’s valuable.

We love her, but she’s a pain.

I think that’s wonderful.

But this is our way of saying, because we can’t add anything more to what you’ve offered us.

We’ll put the word out.

We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who listen to this show.

Maybe somebody else has something to say about a pound of pennies, right?

Yeah, I would love to hear more about it.

So, yeah, well, I’m a little, I don’t want to say disappointed, but I was hoping to find out more about it because I really couldn’t find anything myself.

So I guess it’s just one of those things.

Yeah, it could be.

Yeah, our answer was just worth about a pound of pennies, right?

A special language has to start somewhere.

Maybe you’re close to the source.

Yeah, well, that sounds great.

So I will continue to use it.

I hope you guys do.

Thanks, Tom.

Okay, thank your employee, Tom.

All right, thanks.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Well, if you know anything about a pound of pennies is a way to kind of praise someone but criticize them, call us 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.