The Shop floor literally is the floor of a factory (machine shop) where people work on machines, or the space in a retail establishment where goods are sold to customers. It is opposed to offices and so forth providing accommodation to the business's management.
In the UK, a worker "on the shop floor" may be used metaphorically sometimes as a synonym for the working class in economic classes
C/D/E. In that way it may have undertones of class prejudice, but it may just be meant for an averageperson, the man on the Clapham Omnibus.
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Famous quotes containing the words shop and/or floor:
“Here thou art painted in the dress
Of an inhuman murderess;
Examining upon our hearts
Thy fertile shop of cruel arts:
Engines more keen than ever yet
Adorned tyrant’s cabinet,
Of which the most tormenting are
Black eyes, red lips, and curled hair.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“The distant box is open. A sound of grain
Poured over the floor in some eagerness we
Rise with the night let out of the box of wind.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)