What have we stopped noticing?
The things we say, do, and accept without thinking twice.
Look closer where it comes from, what it assumes, and the case for keeping it
Describes something extremely difficult to organize, coordinate, or control.
The job is described as wrangling: the speaker is not deciding where to go, only keeping animals moving in roughly one direction.
That this work is coordination rather than leadership. Getting people who disagree to move together is the harder half of the job, and the phrase files it as a chore.
The work it describes is documented as unevenly handed out: women are asked to take on tasks with low promotability more often, and accept them more often. The phrase is usually said by the person doing that work, which is one way a job talks itself down.
It is usually self-deprecating and affectionate, and it credits a genuinely hard job: whoever says it is admitting the group is not moving on its own.
- like herding cats · Cambridge Dictionary
- Idiom of the Week: Herding cats · Explorations in English Language Learning, University of Hamburg
- Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability · American Economic Review
- Being Glue · Tanya Reilly