Our Head of Department resigned from his position and left the company about three weeks ago. Nobody has been hired to take over his role yet. This has created a complicated situation in our team, because nobody knows who should be calling the shots (Das Heft in der Hand haben). Hopefully they find a replacement soon!

The origin of the expression is probably from the game of pool or billiards, where a player has to „call the shots“ by announcing which ball will be hit and where it will go.

At the beginning of this year, we changed our complete IT infrastructure. In the first weeks with the new system, the system experienced some teething problems (Kinderkrankheiten), which was to be expected. But now it’s running perfectly. It was an excellent investment.

A baby suffers from teething problems when its first set of teeth grow through its gums. We use the same idea in this idiom to describe the problems experienced in the early stages of an activity.

The grapevine at the office has been very busy speculating about the future of our company. Some wild theories and panic started developing, so management decided to nip it in the bud (etwas im Keim ersticken) and announced the upcoming merger with our largest competitor to the staff.

Nip in the budcomes from horticulture, where trimming a bud (Knospe) from a plant prevents the bud from becoming a flower or fruit. So in the idiomatic sense it means to stop a potential problem before it fully develops.

Our new product was due to launch at the end of October. Everything was going exactly to plan. But then one of our main component suppliers had a huge fire at their factory, which really threw a spanner in the works (Sand ins Getriebe streuen). Now the release of the product will be delayed by at least 2 months, meaning it might not be in stores in time for Christmas.

My boss called me into her office this morning. She wanted to talk to me about a new project which is very important to our company. Everybody in the department is very excited. My boss wants me to be project leader. It would be an interesting project but it will mean lots of extra time in the office. I have a feeling I’ll be doing overtime until the cows come home (bis zum Abwinken)!

Cows are known for doing things in a very relaxed way and the background to this idiom is that it takes a long time for them to do something. If you have ever seen a herd of cows walking back to their field, you’ll know they move quite slowly. It is not exactly known when the phrase first appeared but probably around the beginning of the 19^th Century, perhaps in Scotland. In the film ‘Duck Soup’, the comic actor Groucho Marx famously says to a lady-friend: “I could dance with you until the cows come home. Better still, I’ll dance with the cows and you come home.”

When my former company filed for bankruptcy (Konkurs anmelden), I was really upset. I loved working there and felt a close personal connection to the company. But I have since found a new job with more responsibility and have learnt a lot of things I would never have in my old position. So in the end, I guess every cloud has a silver lining (Wo Schatten ist, ist auch Licht.)

This is an old expression, coined by John Milton in Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, from 1634:

„Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?“

In modern usage, we often shorten the idiom and simply refer to the “silver lining”, the positive aspect of a negative situation.

We have a new management trainee in our department – fresh from university. He’s full of enthusiasm, which is great, but I think he forgets that we have been doing this work for years and gathered a lot of valuable experience in that time. When he tried to tell me again last week how I should be doing my job I had to remind him not to teach his grandmother to suck eggs (Da will das Ei wieder klüger sein als die Henne!)

„Egg sucking“ is a way of removing the insides of an egg while leaving the shell in one piece. Two small holes are made on the ends of the egg, and the contents sucked out. The shell can then be painted or used for other decorative purposes without it becoming rotten and smelling bad. This is a skill most grandmothers are experts in, so there is no need to teach them – the expression is used to mean you shouldn’t give advice to someone who knows more than you on the topic.

When our CEO retired last year, there were a number of senior managers in our company who really wanted the position. But in the end it went to the dark horse (unbekannter und erfolgreicher Außenseiter), a woman from outside our company who was 15 years younger than any of the other candidates and had no previous experience leading a company.

This idiom comes from the world of horse racing (just like this one). A dark horse was one that wasn’t known to the the people betting on the race, and was difficult to place odds (Wettquote) on. From here it came to mean any little-known person or thing that reaches prominence.

I am really not happy with my job, so I have decided to do something about it and start looking for a new job. I have been trying to keep it quiet – nobody at my current job needs to know anything about it yet. Unfortunately I let the cat out of the bag (die Katze aus dem Sack lassen) at lunch yesterday and accidentally told one of my colleagues that I had an interview on Wednesday. Oh well, I’m sure she’ll keep it to herself.

The most logical explanation of this idiom is connected to another German idiom – die Katze im Sack kaufen – a pig in a poke. Both refer to trying to cheat people by selling cats instead of piglets in a sack at the market. If you buy the cat in the bag, you have been cheated. But if the cat is let out of the bag, the secret has been revealed.

Our company creates electronic devices for use in heavy industry. Our new product is by far the best on the market, and I think its performance will be enough to convince our potential clients to buy it. But my colleague wants to hire a designer to create a modern look for the product and its packaging –  I think he’s just gilding the lily (etwas unnötig verschönern)

To gild means to cover something with a very fine layer of gold. A lily, beautiful in its natural state, does not need a layer of gold, and this gives us the idiom’s image.