How can git pull be up-to-date and git push fail?

I'm trying to explain this behavior to a co-worker, and how to solve it:

% git pull Already up-to-date.

% git push error: remote 'refs/remotes/origin/flexify' is not a strict subset of localref 'refs/remotes/origin/flexify'. maybe you are not up-to-date and need to pull first?

I believe he is using git 1.5.0 and that the above was tried from the master branch.

So, I'm confused: I would have thought the way you solve the problem in step 2 is by executing step 1. Would he need to do this:

% git checkout flexify % git pull flexify:flexify % git checkout master % git push

Bill