You had one job. — Said when the one thing that was required did not happen.
Close, but no cigar. — Nearly right is still not right.
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. — In most things, a near miss earns nothing.
Nice try. — Often ironic. The effort is noted, and the result is still missing.
What have you done for me lately? — Past results do not count for long. The phrase is also the title of Janet Jackson’s 1986 single, which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100.
In August 2010 the Los Angeles Times began publishing ratings of about 6,000 Los Angeles teachers by name. The ratings measured how much each teacher’s students gained on standardized tests, a method called value-added.
The reporter Jason Felch said that “individual teachers really matter.” Hundreds of teachers protested, and the union leader called for a boycott of the paper. The National Research Council had warned: “Too little is known about the accuracy of these methods to base high-stakes decisions on them right now.”
In the National Football League, Black Monday is the first Monday after the regular season ends. It is the day many head coaches are fired. An Associated Press headline of December 29, 1998, read: “NFL coaches face ‘Black Monday’ with five fired.”
Long service does not protect a coach. In 2024 the New England Patriots parted with Bill Belichick after 24 seasons.
On March 13, 2004, 15 driverless vehicles set off across the desert to compete for a $1 million prize from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. None finished. The best vehicle covered only 7.5 miles, and the prize was not paid.
In 2005 the challenge was held again. Stanford University’s vehicle Stanley finished in 6 hours and 53 minutes and won $2 million.
On May 22, 1919, the New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered $25,000 to the first aviator from an Allied country to fly nonstop between New York and Paris.
Several crews tried and failed. Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster were killed in a test crash in April 1927. Charles Nungesser and François Coli disappeared over the Atlantic in May 1927. Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris on May 21, 1927, and received the prize on June 16, 1927.
In 2012 New York City started a program for 16- to 18-year-olds at the Rikers Island jail. It was paid for with a social impact bond. Goldman Sachs invested $7.2 million and would be repaid only if reoffending fell by 8.5 percent.
In 2015 the evaluation found that the program had no effect on reoffending. The program ended. Goldman Sachs lost $1.2 million, after a guarantee from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the city repaid nothing.
The Northridge earthquake of 1994 brought down sections of the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. The rebuilding contract gave the contractor, C. C. Myers, 140 days, and a bonus of $200,000 for each day the bridge opened before the deadline.
Myers finished in 66 days, 74 days ahead of schedule. The bonus came to about $14.8 million. Some reports gave $14.5 million.
Since October 1, 2012, Medicare has paid American hospitals less when too many patients return within 30 days. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program measures conditions such as heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and hip or knee replacement. The payment reduction is capped at 3 percent.
A study in JAMA in 2018 found that the program was associated with an increase in deaths within 30 days of discharge for heart failure and pneumonia. The authors said further research was needed to tell whether the program caused the increase.
Under the Uniform Commercial Code, adopted in American state law, a buyer may refuse a delivery that does not match the contract. If the goods “fail in any respect to conform to the contract,” the buyer may reject the whole delivery, accept the whole delivery, or accept some commercial units and reject the rest.
Lawyers call this the perfect tender rule. In practice it is limited by other rules, for example for deliveries in installments and for limits on remedies written into the contract.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation tells U.S. government buyers how to describe the services they purchase. They should state “the required results rather than either ‘how’ the work is to be accomplished or the number of hours to be provided.”
Such contracts must include “Measurable performance standards (i.e., in terms of quality, timeliness, quantity, etc.),” a method for “assessing contractor performance against performance standards,” and “Performance incentives where appropriate.”