Pink slips

[jwg]

In Zippy this morning someone was fired and given a pink slip. He asked "You couldn't have made it a blue or maybe a brown slip?"

rsc wondered if anyone ever gives pink slips to fire people these days. In my career I "officially fired" a very small number of people and there were no pink slips involved.

This reminds me the time that I had noticed we had some kind of disciplinary form in the supply room. I had a fish tank in my office and one day I got tired of the angel fish who kept eating other fish so I removed it from the tank and let it die. Then I filled out one of the discipline slips and pinned it with the dead fish to my bulletin board. Did everyone in the office behave better because of this example? No, it just confirmed their view that I was a bit weird.

Comments

[neild.livejournal.com]

It does seem improbable, now that you mention it. But that was the best info I could get out of Ask.com.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

I read a conjecture that it could have come from a multipart form where one of the copies was pink (they usually were different colors - the RedSox ticket form is white and the customer copy is yellow) and that was the one that was given to the employee.

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

I read that too, but hardly likely as the origin of the term if it was first used in 1915 - NCR paper with white/yellow/pink copies were way in the future then.