Is or Isn’t "No Problem" a Problem? |
I was at lunch at one of my favorite repeateries with my husband and his mother. Our server, a nice young man, had no problem helping us whatsoever--so he said. No matter what our request, he said, “no problem,” beginning with when he took our order. My mother-in-law had the grilled chicken sandwich with mayonnaise--“no problem”. I had a burger with cheese--“no problem”. My husband ordered the tilapia that came with a side salad. When the server asked what kind of dressing he wanted, my husband replied, “blue cheese”, to which the server said, “no problem,” which we found rather odd since it shouldn’t be a problem to order salad dressing to go with a side salad. Then we mused that perhaps it could’ve been a problem had it been ranch or honey-mustard or even thousand island, because not all restaurants provide every dressing to satisfy every taste. Fortunately for us, blue cheese was “no problem” and we were grateful for that.
We talked about how “no problem” was an appropriate response when someone has been somewhat inconvenienced, as in this example: “Gosh, I’m sorry I forgot our anniversary, dear,” to which the polite answer back would be “no problem.” But to reply to the statement, “I’d like some blue cheese dressing with my side salad” with “no problem” seemed just a little odd. When the server came back to our table, the three of us had to avoid eye-contact with each other just in case we started cracking up. We expected every response from him to be “no problem” even when it wasn’t, and then he threw us a curve by saying “not a problem” just for variety’s sake, which sent us off big time. Knowing it’s not polite to laugh at someone at his expense, even if he is unintentionally funny, we pretended to act serious so as not to embarrass him or ourselves.
We cut our server a break since he was trying hard to do a good job and made such an effort to be pleasant, knowing full well that he probably had no idea that he had such a bad, albeit annoying, habit that had crept into his vocabulary, but not only his, mind you. We noticed this phrase spoken with great frequency lately, particularly from equally helpful twenty-somethings with service-oriented jobs. We tried to remember other phrases similar to “no problem” and came up with a list, such as: “you know” and “to tell the truth” and “like” and “if you know what I mean.” My mother-in-law mentioned “pshaw” but agreed that we never heard anyone actually say “pshaw” out loud, so it must’ve been used a long, long time ago--before our time anyway.
We concluded that every generation must have some colloquialism that’s popular for a period of time, and we sure hoped that “no problem” and “not a problem” would pass soon, because hearing someone repeat this phrase unnecessarily might be merely filler in conversation, but made us feel like going for the jugular.
Just for silly’s sake, we decided that our response to everything from now on would be “no problem,” and we made up our minds that using the phrase “no problem” was really “no problem,” and if only all of life was “no problem” then life must be pretty good, and maybe that’s all this young man meant by saying “no problem” anyway.
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