Beware the Bus

While I can understand and accept that people who operate within a defined social circle tend to latch on to certain comfortable and familiar phrases, that doesn't mean I have to like it. The most confounding and frustrating example of this is the terminology that develops in the workplace. The president-elect of offensive phrases?

Throwing somebody under a bus.

Today, out of bemused spite, I counted my personal interactions with this phrase and found that I was thrown under a bus four times and threw two people under one myself (I'm still unsure if it was the same bus). My micro-experiment has led me to two conclusions:

1. I am not a nice person and neither are my coworkers. Who could claim to be nice after throwing people under busses?
2. Bus drivers need to be more careful.

This needs to stop people, it really does. A literal interpretation is disturbing and it barely stands up as a meaningful metaphor. Could we maybe spice it up a bit from time-to-time and sell somebody down the river? Perhaps we could throw somebody from a train?

Although, I must admit that hearing this phrase is a thousand times better than hearing someone who can barely run a spell checker use the word SYNERGY four separate times in a six-slide Powerpoint presentation.

Maybe I should just try my luck at a professional bowling career.