That’s how Cain killed Abel, isn’t it?
What brother?
It’s cold. It’s the opposite of I got your back.
It appears to have replaced “throwing to the wolves” in most people’s minds. It’s the better metaphor, to my mind, because wolves are coming after somebody, whereas buses (well, the people who drive them) don’t really want anybody under them.
I often hear this in a sports context. I always assumed it was the team bus they were throwing the scapegoat under.
Yeah, it works that way; although the morph I recall was “what if you get hit by a beer truck? There’s so many of them driving around this town!”
I make a point of not employing this usage when dealing with clients. Instead I always use something like, “if Jim wins the lottery tomorrow, who will take over his responsibilities?” I used the “If Jim gets hit by a bus” meme once and, as it turned out, someone in the room had a relative killed by getting hit by a bus. No offense was taken (or at least exhibited), but I’m not in the business of dredging up bad memories for my clients. It’s not the greatest way to win repeat business.
I had ever heard this before he last several seasons of reality cooking shows. It really is that specific for me, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard it outside of Hell’s Kitchen, Next Iron Chef, Master Chef, Restaurant: Impossible, those sorts of shows. It seemed to me like suddenly sometime in the mid-to-late 00’s suddenly everyone in televised kitchens started throwing each other under busses.
It always is in the sense of “throwing to the wolves”… sacrificing another contestant or coworker to divert blame from themselves to get ahead.