If you are pushed From Pillar To Post means you’re in a constant state of flux and are probably harassed at the same time. In medieval times, all towns and villages in England had both a pillory and a whipping post. A pillory, which was also known as the stocks, was a place where petty criminals would be clamped by their head and hands, so local people could gather round to humiliate them. For more serious crimes, offenders would first have to suffer the pillory before being taken to the whipping post for a public flogging. In this way, the phrase began as “from the pillory to the post” but evolved into the idiom in use today.