pain in the neck

“When the tariffs came, the 3% of our product that we actually make in Asia was a pain in the neck,” McPhee said.

“Passing plates back and forth across the table is a pain in the neck,” I told him.

“You were a pain in the neck,” Agnes observes, in another.

You and I might translate that as: "The saga over Angela's tax was a total pain in the neck, but it's given us the excuse to make some of the changes we fancied anyway."

Dr. Sollmann pointed out that non-invasive treatment options that directly target the site of pain in the neck muscles could be highly effective and safer than systemic drugs.