There is a sewer and septic company I tend to see on the road quite frequently.
The slogan on the trucks is: “Let us keep you in the pink!”
I can assume it means they will keep your septic running right, but what in the hell are they referencing?
All I can give you is phrases.org. While I know what the expression means (everything is going well/correctly), I don’t recall when/where I learned it. The only actual occasion I can think of where I’ve heard it is from a song in a cartoon I watched in childhood (and okay, I got the dvds as an adult - nostalgia, to be sure, but it holds up better than some other childhood favorites). FTR, that was Jem, and the song went “Everything is alright–Friends are friends again–Everyone is in the pink” according to my Google search.
This is the only thing I can think of - being in the pink of health means that you are doing well.
Septic tanks have a unique ecosystem that has to be healthy (in its own terms) in order to function properly. When they service septic tanks they generally throw in a lot of chemicals to throw things into the proper balance. You can also buy stuff to throw in the system on a periodic basis - not sure how effective they are though.
Is this perchance the company?
The top layer of water in a septic system is red or pink or purple-- the temperature has some influence on it. If the top layer is brown, or some other clearly “not-pink,” the system is way, way overdue for a sucking out.
“In the pink” is also a term for healthy, because Caucasian people are supposed to have a pink tinge to their cheeks when they are healthy. Too dark red can mean feverish, and too pale can mean undernourished, which is why “in the pink” means healthy. So the septic system is capitalizing on “in the pink” to mean that your septic system is healthy, because when you look at the top layer of water, it is some shade of pinkish, from purple, to literally pink, to bright red-- but not brown or black, or green (green means algae, and probably a serious leak).
ETA: I had a house with a septic system for almost 15 years.
I was guessing at what RivkahChaya is explaining, that the sewage company are making a pun on the chemicals they use.
But the origin of the phrase “in the pink” seems to have something to do with the old meaning of “pink” as a point (as in “pinking shears” to make a pointed edging to cloth to limit fraying), or metaphorically a pinnacle, which has come to be used only for healthiness:
Are their trucks pink? Around here there’s a septic tank draining company that paints its trucks pink. Not sure of their slogan.
The septic pumper in the last chapters of Christine was painted pink and named Petunia. So it’s at least an 80s trope, and probably older.
Pink is, of course, not the color of [many things] as Steven Tyler would have us believe, but the marketing effort for ‘breast cancer awareness.’ Which leads to things like a local propane company having an all-pink truck. The rounded rear of the tank, with some sort of pressure fitting right in the middle, looked just like the giant breast from Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex. It was great fun to follow around.
Too bad it’s now mostly white with pink highlights on the sides. The drivers must have gotten tired of being called boobs for just doing their job.
This is certainly not universally true. If a pumping company is adding chemicals (and charging for them), it sounds like a way to milk extra money from customers through a scare tactic. You don’t need to add chemicals to septic tanks, they will grow their own bacteria to “stay in balance” and do the job at hand.
I think the answer to the OP’s question is it is referencing a very old phrase that isn’t very common anymore.
Out of the stink and into the pink?
Shocking! 