box checker

From box +‎ checker.

box checker (plural box checkers)

1. (derogatory) A person who follows instructions to the letter and avoids taking any risks.
   • 2021, Steve Prziborowski, 101 Tips to Ace Your Promotional Exam, page 81:

     Unfortunately, appearing to just be a box-checker is a very common occurrence in today's fire service, and this results in a number of candidates actually failing an event, particularly the emergency simulation exercise.

   • 2021, George David Miller, Reinventing American Jurisprudence, page 2:

     For the box checker, reorientation is seen as overreach. For the box checker, originality is seen not looking before leaping.

   • 2022, Rebecca Forster, Distant Relations:

     Jane had pegged her for a box-checker who didn't give a twit about what she was actually doing.

   • 2022, John Ross, Team Unity:

     Box checkers are the people who almost seem as if they're checking the boxes as they're talking , doing things out of obligation or suggestion rather than because they truly care .

2. A person who strives to live up to the expectations of others; a person who follows the rules and strives to achieve the conventional definition of success.
   • 2017, Joy Mangano, Inventing Joy: Dare to Build a Brave & Creative Life, page 250:

     Sometimes we feel like we have to be the box-checkers of our lives. We make a list, and we don't stop until we check off every box. We strive for perfection.

   • 2021, Michelle Obama, Becoming:

     I was a box checker, marching to the beat of effort/result, effort/result.

   • 2022, Jonathan Bergmann, The Mastery Learning Handbook:

     I have found that there are two categories of students who get ahead—those who I call the box checkers and those who learn quickly and well.

   • 2023, Jessica Galica, Leap: Why It's Time to Let Go to Get Ahead in Your Career:

     A "box checker” who put her head down and followed the rules, she worked hard in school and went on to graduate from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and land a coveted attorney position at a law firm paying rich six-figure salaries and extra bonuses.

3. One whose job consists primarily of administrative work indicating tasks that have been completed.
   • 1992, Record - Society of Actuaries - Volume 18, Issue 1, page 397:

     Then the box checker would say, " Yep, has a Schedule B," and by the time somebody read it, they'd understand there was nothing in it.

   • 2017, Timothy Tuohy, Healthcare Information Technology Integrated Project Delivery:

     We apply these methods because we need tools and there are management demands for status and progress reports, but the project manager is relegated to being a 'box checker' at best and a task master, similar to what I imagine were employed in the construction of the pyramids, at worst.

   • 2019, Anthony Washington, Douglas Scott, Creating AWE for Business, Project, and Agile Management, page 14:

     With the advent of project-management methodologies, the project manager's career path in some companies has morphed into a simple "box checker”. Completion of a checklist does not mean there has been effective project management or delivery of an acceptable product.

   • 2024, George M. Guess, International Development Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations:

     When one interviews for a management job, she or he needs to know if the organization is treating their particular posistion as a noun, that is, simply a position on the organization chart, a potential box-checker or form-filler.

4. Someone who is counted in an organization as representing a minority ethnic group but who is so assimilated into the dominant culture that their ethnic status becomes meaningless.

   Synonym: high-cheekboner

   • 2003, Kevin R. Johnson, Mixed Race America and the Law, page 309:

     Today a box checker may escape detection by claiming Hispanic origin at the outset of a hiring, contracting, or admissions process. Would-be box checkers realize that having a Spanish surname is not a necessary condition of being “Hispanic,” so they need not call attention to themselves by changing their name.

   • 2012, Carolyn Kenny, Tina Ngaroimata Fraser, Living Indigenous Leadership, page 182:

     The seventy-plus so-called box checkers remained a mystery to the active students. They wondered, "Why would someone check a box on an admissions application but not participate in activities that are relevant to the community they are representing?"

   • 2013, Richard Lee Colvin, Tilting at Windmills:

     She called Ottinger a "tool" of the business community and Lopez a "box checker,” apparently meaning that he was only nominally Latino and that he had acted in a way that was detrimental to the interests of Latinos.

   • 2018, Daisy Verduzco Reyes, Learning to Be Latino: How Colleges Shape Identity Politics, page 92:

     We have a specific joke to talk about people, who are Latino that we know don't identify. We call them box checkers.

   • 2022, Andrew C. Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, Adolescent Portraits: Identity and Challenges:

     As I see it now, I was a sellout in high school. I was a box-checker. I was a coconut. Name the insult and I was the epitome of it.

5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see box,‎ checker. Someone or something that checks boxes.
   • 2004, Mark Pogrebin, About Criminals: A View of the Offender's World, page 91:

     Examples of the types of jobs the women worked at are fast food attendant or cook, box checker at a department store , housekeeper, dietary aide, beautician, bakery shop clerk, assembly line worker for a manufacturing company, child care aide, hot dog stand attendant, cashier, waitress, hostess, receptionist, go-go dancer, and secretary.

   • 2020, Holly Parker, Back on the Market: A Realtor's Guide to Love and Life:

     Well, there I was, at age thirty-two, an official box-checker. DIVORCED. Don't believe me? Look at the box.

• box-checker