squeaky wheel gets the grease

proverb The person complaining or protesting the loudest or most frequently is the one who will receive the most attention from others. My sister makes a point of writing letters of complaint to businesses whenever she has an issue with their service, and nine times out of ten, she's rewarded with some kind of discount or gift. I guess it's true, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

The loudest complaints get the most attention, as in No matter what table they give her, Helen generally insists on a better one and gets it-the squeaky wheel gets the grease . The current version of this idiom, with its allusion to a wagon wheel that needs oiling, is ascribed to American humorist Josh Billings (1818-1885) in a poem, "The Kicker": "I hate to be a kicker [complainer], I always long for peace, But the wheel that does the squeaking Is the one that gets the grease." However, the idea of the idiom is much older. A manuscript from about 1400 had: "Ever the worst spoke of the cart creaks." Similar sayings were repeated over the succeeding centuries.

The loudest complainer usually obtains the most attention. This allusion to a wagon wheel that needs lubrication appears in a nineteenth-century poem attributed to the American humorist Josh Billings. Entitled “The Kicker” (i.e., The Complainer), it goes, “I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, But the wheel that does the squeaking is the one that gets the grease.” However, this idea had been similarly expressed in various early proverb collections. “He who greases his Wheels, helps his Oxen” occurs in Thomas Fuller’s collection (1732), and “A wheel badly greased creaks” in Alfred Henderson’s (1830).