Bang In and Bang Out Sick

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how’s it going? This is Sean from New York.

So I was talking to my co-worker about potentially not going into work the next day.

And I was texting her and I used a phrase that’s called banging out.

I said, maybe I’ll bang out from work tomorrow.

And then after I texted that to her, I thought about the phrase.

And I thought, where did that come from?

The only person I’d ever heard use it was my father. So I thought because of his job, his employment, which is with the city of New York, I thought maybe it’s something that was particular to city workers or maybe even more specifically to first responders.

When I did a little preliminary research, I only saw a post on a form from like medical responders, like EMS attendants that said the phrase bang out.

But so I was looking a little more into that because I my my coworker had also heard it from one other person, but it didn’t seem like it was a widespread phrase.

Maybe it was particular to New York City or something.

So you used bang out to mean that you’re going to call out sick.

Right. Yes.

Yeah, that I would bang out from work.

Bang out. B-A-N-G. Bang. Like the noise. Bang.

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Gotcha. And your father’s work is what?

He’s a dispatcher for the police for the city of New York.

Oh, NYPD.

Yes, exactly.

I think one of the reasons that you might have had not a lot of luck finding information about this online is usually people say that they’re going to bang in.

Instead of bang out.

Okay, that’s interesting.

Yeah, so people bang in sick.

The reason I know this is I have an entry for this in one of my books.

I did my 2006 book, The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English.

I traced this back to the 1980s, but since then I’ve traced it back to the 1960s.

And it’s particularly common, as you guessed, among first responders, firefighters and police officers, and even sanitation workers and prison guards.

And it’s common in not just New York City, but in Boston.

And you’ll find it sprinkled throughout Massachusetts and Vermont as well.

And it’s just those particular professions in those particular places who say that they’re going to bang in sick.

And a lot of times it doesn’t just mean that they’re going to call in sick.

It might mean that they’re going to fake call in sick.

They’re going to pretend to be sick.

And it started that way from the very start.

There was a transit strike in 1961 in Boston.

And over 1,600 workers banged in sick as part of the strike.

That is, they called in and said, we’re not coming to work as a way of showing solidarity with this strike.

Wow, that’s wonderful.

I’m surprised that it hasn’t spread so much.

I guess I just parrot all of my father’s phrases in idiosyncratic language.

Yeah, that’s the way it works, though.

That’s how it works.

We just pick up stuff from the world around us.

You know, in the FBI, there’s a related phrase, but I’ve only been able to take it back to the 90s.

It’s called banging the books.

And if you bang the books in the FBI, it’s about inflating your overtime hours.

That is, you might take off work early, but then claim that you actually worked until you were supposed to.

Or you might take off at the regular time and then claim that you worked late.

And that’s a way to make sure that you try to get more money than you do.

And I noticed that both of you said call out sick.

I would have said call in sick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So search the waywordradio.org website for our calls about call-out sick versus call-insick, because that’s a whole thing as well.

Very, very interesting.

I thank you so much.

It’s a tremendous pleasure and privilege to be able to call in to this show and listen to it for years.

Yeah, it’s our pleasure, Sean.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

We appreciate it.

You as well.

Have a good one.

Be well.

Bye, Sean.

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