He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Florian W. — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:15:22 GMT

@Michael: Das Ähnlichste dürfte wohl "vom Stuhl hauen" sein.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

pramakers — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:18:55 GMT

> And paintball always works well;

It does! We did this with our team well over a year ago. Even though a lot of team members have left and been replaced, those that were there back then still talk about it to this day.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Michael — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:49:34 GMT

@Nick: Thanks for your explanation. It's like you bought a ticket for a place with a seat but you don't need the seat because the show is that good that you stand all the time anyway.

And yes, we get The Simpsons in Germany, but I don't watch it regularly and they are synchronized so this proverb might get lost. But I can't think of a proverb in German that expresses the same meaning.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Florian W. — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:25:50 GMT

@Nick Lamp: Thank you for the explanation, but "The Simpsons" are aired in a dubbed version and so this kind of references gets removed.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

David Comeau — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:39:05 GMT

I remember that line from Monster Truck Madness! Army Armstrong said that in the demo video in the extras on the Win95 disc.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Nick Lamb — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:32:30 GMT

Michael, this relates to an English idiom "(to be) on the edge of {their} seat" meaning to be very excited. Imagine if you are sat in an audience for an event and something exciting happens, you may unconsciously move slightly forward as if this small change will make it easier to see what's going on.

Advertising, particularly for events like a monster truck rally may play on this metaphor by suggesting that you will be in this state (of excitement) for the entire event. So although you must buy a ticket for "a whole seat" to see the event, you will only sit on (and thus need) the edge of it.

So, this article title is a reference to the advertising for monster truck rallys.

I think you get The Simpsons in Germany, you can see an example of this style of advertising in an episode where the Simpsons go to a monster truck show.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Michael — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:33:47 GMT

Could please anyone explain me what "He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge" means? I'm German and I don't really understand it. I know what a seat is and I know what an edge is. But I don't understand the meaning in this context.

Thank you.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Drak — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:37:05 GMT

I'm glad that where I work we don't really have those mandatory teambuilding events, and it's not really neccessary.

We did have a cool 'job well done' thing one saturday morning though, namely a trip to a gunnery range to do some shooting. For those of us not living in the US this is not something you get to do very often, and it was well worth my free time :) (And the boss paid for it too)

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Worf — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:13:00 GMT

Yeah. Nothing sucks worse than mandatory team building... off company time. Add to that expenses not paid, and you've united the team against the manager.

Thankfully, managers have seen the light, and it's often something like a nice lunch out with everyone on the team.

Another time I simply skipped out and went for a walk - and came back to a nearly empty office and did my work.

re: He bought the whole seat, but we only needed the edge

Matt — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:36:14 GMT

Oh Gabe, if I could start comments, yours would be lit up like the night sky...