My understanding of the phrase “I’m out of pocket” is “Whatever I decide to do right now, I have to pay for with my personal funds, because my employer won’t cover it.”
In the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that people don’t use it for that meaning but instead use “I’ll be out of pocket” to mean “I’ll be unavailable or unreachable.”
I’m looking for an understanding of this phrase and this usage. Am I wrong about the original meaning of the phrase? When did the latter usage arise? How did it come to have that meaning?
I’ve heard it ever since 1999. Nowadays I rarely see or hear the full phrase but I see “OOP” quite often in the context of work. One guess is that if you use the abbreviation “OOO” for out of office it looks like you are trying to spell a word with your Cheerios.
It may be a stretch, but I wonder if the “unavailable” use of the term has any relation to American football. When a quarterback is “in the pocket,” he’s setting up to pass the ball, and the offense’s play is (more or less) proceeding as planned. If the defense forces the quarterback to scramble “out of the pocket,” the play has started to break down, and he may not be able to pass as intended.
It’s also a common phrase in the US health insurance industry: "Out of pocket maximum"represents the maximum amount in combined deductibles and co-insurance payments you’ll have to make in a year for covered in-network services.
I’ve never heard that “out-of-pocket” is just limited to employer/employee expenses. A contractor might say “If I upgrade the materials, I’ll be out-of-pocket for the extra cost.” But I’ve never heard it to mean “I’ll be unavailable or unreachable.” That’s probably some new corporate-speak thing that’s trending.
Huh. I have never heard this usage of the term. Good to know in case I come across it. I wonder if it’s regional/generational/etc.
And, yeah, first two things that came to mind were the football use of the term and the musical use (e.g. “playing in the pocket”), but I can’t quite see how they would be related.
FWIW, since you and I live in the same city, I’d guess that I’ve heard it used in that way (though not particularly frequently) for at least the past decade or so. The context is always along the lines of “I’ll be out of pocket for the rest of the week,” and understood to mean, “I won’t be in the office / I won’t be reachable / I’ll be busy.”
OK, so it’s the people I hang around with. Is it more corporate speak, maybe? Or is it also used in regular casual conversation, too? I mean, by people who may not have a corporate type of background.
I’m going to go with the “corporate speak” hypothesis, since I work in advertising, and I think that when I’ve heard it used, it’s nearly always been at work.
FWIW: I’ve only been aware of the ‘new’ usage somewhat recently when our company started partnering with another company in the Midwest. In my limited experience it hasn’t been used in the first person and is somewhat jealously invoked to refer to an employee who has broken the shackles of being reachable for the time-being.
I’ve only ever heard or read “out of pocket” to mean something related to expense accounting, never to mean “out of office/unavailable”, where “pocket” doesn’t have any context at all.
Very strange usage to carry over, am very surprised this usage is on the rise - is it a regionalism? The way “waiting on” to mean “waiting for” (awaiting a person or a dependency) originated in the American South(?) and spread around to my area in the Northeast in the past 10-15 years?
here is a discussion from 2011 - it seems it originated as a Southern regionalism (and also notes the early O Henry refererence), and is apparently spreading. I’ve heard it used in Kansas City (which is a semi-southern city), but couldn’t say when I first noticed it (not a native but been here a long time - the meaning has always seemed obvious from context).
I also doubt it came from football, because to my ear, the usage would be “out of the pocket.” I agree that that’s not likely related to the musical usage, where playing in the pocket means, I believe, right on the beat.
I agree that it’s mostly corporate speak where I hear it.
Never heard of it in the “out of office” sense and I’m super surprised its origins are that old! Makes perfect sense to me in the financial sense - is some other entity paying for this or do I have to pull the money out of my pocket to pay?
Before I read RitterSport’s post I would have thought maybe it’s used in modern times to refer to people working from their phones (in their pockets) while out of the office.
Additionally, if it dates back to 1908 (and possibly before), that’d also likely disprove any connection to football, as the concept of the “pocket” for the passer almost undoubtedly came about later than that. The forward pass only became legal in American football at about the same time as the O. Henry writing.