asleep at the switch

Idioms  

1. 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.

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Example Sentences

“Nobody was watching. Everyone was asleep at the switch.”

From The Wall Street Journal

Americans tend to be asleep at the switch.

From Salon

“They’ve been asleep at the switch,” election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg said.

From Seattle Times

How to say you’ve been totally asleep at the switch of your children’s life without saying it?

From Washington Post

“Regulators were asleep at the switch,” Lawrence J. White, a banking expert at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told my colleague Don Lee.

From Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• inattentive
• reckless