Do people really get pink slips when they get fired?

Asked by girlofscience (7567

) June 9th, 2008

For some reason, I just can’t see this actually happening. If it does, ok, weird. If not, why do people continue to use incorrect/outdated euphemisms for such things? Did people used to get real pink slips? What are they, and where do they come from? Do businesses order them to have around in case they have to fire someone?

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3 Answers

I don’t this so, and this snopes article discusses the etymology of the phrase. It most likely comes from the fact that when copiers didn’t exist, a single sheet of carbon paper would have a white, yellow and pink sheet. The person’s copy would be the pink one, while the company would keep the white and yellow ones.

The National Institute of Health used to give scientists pink sheets containing the reviews of their grant proposals, which were just the carbon copy of the official sheet. Nowadays, the “pink sheet” at the NIH is a PDF file that is emailed to you. But, most people still call them pink sheets.

shilolo (18075

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