In Italy there is a saying: “Un colpo al cerchio ed uno alla botte”.

It dates back to medieval times, the time in which master craftsmen were used to assemble piece by piece the wooden barrels. To do that they had to use iron rings, inserting them around the structure and then gently hammering first the iron ring (cerchio) and then the wooden barrel (botte) in order to achieve the perfection they needed.

Repeating this procedure over and over, they ended up with something perfectly balancing, strong, and sealed.
So: one stroke to the ring, one stroke to the barrel.

Over the course of time (centuries) this saying started getting used for something more general. Now it has become a proverb. It is now used when someone wants to underline a behaviour of people when they do something, and then, to correct it, or to balance the effect of it, they do something else, on the other edge, either to balance, or not to apparently displease, or to please both parts. It is now common to use this way of saying to underline those cases in which someone does something and then for the fear of having creating an unbalance, or displease, they do something else, to “make happy” even the other arm of the scale.
It is mostly used in an ironic way, yet, it hides a deep meaning. It is a sweet way of saying, very true, and very often pinpointing perfectly a situation.

Fact is that most of the times these little taps to “adjust” are unnecessary, and instead of adjusting they rather underline having created an unbalance that’s just “silly”, and was not to be created, overall.