Players were asked to shape up or ship out..

Dhoni told his team that all eyes were on them and they had to shape up or ship out. It will be a tough tour and the selectors will be unforgiving.

A new trainer was hired to help employees improve their spoken English. However, even after six months, hardly any improvement was observed in their speaking skills. On top of it, the trainer would get into arguments with several employees. One day, the HR manager called the spoken English trainer and asked him to shape up or ship out.

The phrase is, “Shape up or ship out”.

The sense is pretty simple. You ask someone to shape up or ship out when you are trying to tell him that he needs to improve his behavior otherwise he would be asked to leave. It is what you’d say to erring employees, bad team members and anybody who has brought you to the end of your patience.

Let’s take some examples:

1. The high profile batsman would spend more time in parties than on the cricket field. Slowly, it started hurting his performance. He started reporting late to practice sessions and his fitness also deteriorated. The coach called him one day and asked him to shape up or ship out.
2. The new chief minister called all the senior bureaucrats in his office and asked them to shape up or ship out. He was worried that with increasingly worsening law and order situation, he would lose the election.
3. The new boss summoned the entire sales team and explained the financial difficulties faced by the company. He told them that these were tough times and they either had to shape up or ship out. This also meant that he did not think their performance so far was great.

It is a warning message, improve or you will be punished, thrown out and is generally used in informal or semi-formal settings. Obviously, it is not a very polite thing to say to someone.

Let’s close with a couple more examples:

1. PSU employees were worried that once the company got privatized, they would have to shape up or ship out.
2. Stern warning needs to be given to all police officers that they need to shape up or ship out.