asleep at the switch

Also, asleep at the wheel. Inattentive, not doing one's job, as in At the critical moment the watchman was asleep at the switch and only called the fire department when it was too late. This term came from 19th-century American railroading, when it was the trainman's duty to switch cars from one track to another by means of manually operated levers. Should he fail to do so, trains could collide. It was later transferred to any lack of alertness. The wheel in the variant is a steering wheel; similarly disastrous results are implied.

If the yard goose or switch monkey (railroad jargon for a switchman) happened to doze off for a minute during a slack period of traffic, he was said to be asleep at the switch. That literal description became a phrase fit for a dictionary when it jumped the track to be used in situations having nothing to do with railroads. The earliest evidence for the figurative application is found in a 1908 quotation from McGaffry's Show Girl, where a character asks an inattentive waiter in a restaurant, "Waiter, are you asleep at the switch?"

Other examples of the phrase having this generalized meaning, "unobservant, preoccupied, or neglectful," followed in short order. We have, for example, from 1915, "The net player was asleep at the switch and never saw the return." More recently, from 1975, we have "The rest of the class, asleep at the switch, is impressed by Caz's work." Even with automated switches in everything from railroad yards to computers, there is still plenty of opportunity to be asleep at the switch.