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Idiom in Spanish working life
Spanish is rich in frases hechas, and the office is one of the places they are used most. Many come from older ways of life: a marchas forzadas from the army, al pie del cañón from artillery, poner toda la carne en el asador from cooking over a fire, sacar las castañas del fuego from roasting chestnuts in winter. Others are recent: ponerse las pilas, to put your batteries in, could only exist after battery-powered devices, and football has supplied echar balones fuera, kicking the ball out of play to stop an attack. Some have stories behind them that Spaniards themselves debate. Hacerse el sueco, to play dumb, is popularly linked to Swedish sailors who supposedly pretended not to understand Spanish in port, although many linguists trace it instead to an old word, zueco, a clog. Llevarse el gato al agua is said to come from a village contest of strength. These origins are part of the fun, but nobody needs them to use the idiom. The more important skill is dosage. Native speakers use idioms naturally but sparingly, often at the end of a point, with a touch of humor, or to soften criticism. Learners who have just discovered them tend to pile them up, and Spanish speakers notice immediately: the result sounds rebuscado, forced, or, worse, cursi, a hard-to-translate word for language that is affected or twee. The advice Carmen gives Pablo is the advice most teachers give: listen for when people use them, borrow one at a time, and let the rest come with exposure. An idiom that arrives at the right moment, like Alex's cortar por lo sano, makes a speaker sound at home in the language; ten in a row make anyone sound like a phrasebook.