hanging over the basket is an expression used mostly on industrial and business environments that refers to an individual being on a powerless or difficult situation with limited options to get past it. It is also used as a threatening expression that shows that an individual has the power to control or manipulate someone else.
- I've been trying to get a raise so I can't really complain about some of my job's situation. My boss has me hanging over the basket!
- If you don't have that package shipped by Wendesday, mark my words, I'll have you hanging over the basket...
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. PenguinBooks,1992. p. 38)