No Problem for YOU Maybe

“No problem,” says the young waitress when I thank her for a fresh fork after she’s knocked my original fork to the floor. “No problem,”’ says the young barista just after I thank him for my cup of decaf. “No problem,” says the kid at the gas station after he has filled my car and I have thanked him. So here’s how I feel: In each case cited above, I have been happy to hear that it was no problem for these young people to have done what they did. But these exchanges are all commercial transactions, in which one party offers a good or a service in exchange for pay from the other, so as far as I have always understood, the notion of a ‘problem’ doesn’t enter into it.Look at commuting. It’s hard to have spent two or more hours on the road to get back and forth to your job. It’s hard to have to stand out in the elements in wet or cold or sizzling hot weather waiting for the bus that will get you to your job and back again. Ask any random group of people what time they have to get up in the morning in order to get themselves and their family members fed and dressed and out the door to work or school and what you learn will back up the statistics: Americans are among the hardest working people on the planet. And yet you rarely hear them using the word ‘problem’ about what it takes for them to get to that job. Most people - in these post-crash times especially - are happy to even have a job that they can go to every day,So what’s with this ‘no problem’ phrase that has become the norm among so many younger people? I don’t mean to be grouchy here. And for sure it’s not that I don’t CARE about the problems people face day to day because I do. If I see a sales associate furtively rubbing her neck with a look of pain on her face as she waits for me to dig out my money, I’m not going to act as if I didn’t see it. I’m going to ask her if she’s OK.It’s just that ‘No problem’ is the wrong response to ‘Thank you’ and don’t we all know that? Don’t we all remember the right response, the one we were all taught as kids? The right response to ‘Thank you’ is ‘You’re welcome.’ In Italy and Spain they say, ‘It’s nothing’ in response to a ‘Thank you.’ In Germany they use the word for, ‘Please,’ which, handily enough, also means ‘Thank you’, ‘Care to have a seat?’ ‘After you,’ and a host of other things as well.In English we sometimes say, ‘Don’t mention it’ when someone says ‘Thank you,’ which, come to think of it, feels a lot like ‘It’s nothing’ as well as the German word for ‘Please’, Thank you’, ‘Care to have a seat?’ and ‘After you.’‘You’re welcome’ means ‘You are welcome to my help’, or, in these instances, ‘I am happy to be the one providing you with your coffee/your gasoline/your bag of potatoes, which I hand you in this bag here.’No matter if they’re not all THAT happy; we say ‘thank you’, ‘please’ and ‘you’re welcome’ because it is courteous to do so; because it oils the social machinery. But enough for now with my beefing! Next week, if I’m still showing my age - and my grumpy side - I’ll be going after all those people who absurdly call me ‘Young lady.’ ;-) 

Minding Our P's and Q's

Out with the old and in with the new, that's what they tell us each year. So what Old Thing will YOU choose to leave behind as the days carry us toward 2012?I know I can name a couple of customs I'd like to see go out with the trash:I would like very much to see people especially in commercial settings stop saying "No Problem" when thanked for their services. I mean, are we so fixed on problems in this society that the word is ever on our lips? Did the donors of this giant turkey say "No problem" when President Bush said "oh hey thanks for this!"?Certainly other cultures have more graceful ways of acknowledging thanksThe French say "pas du tout" or "not at all."

• Those speaking Spanish say "de nada" which means "It is nothing for me to help you in this way."
• And the Germans use the single word "bitte" that appears to mean, by turns, "please," "thank you," "your table is this way" and "I'm sorry to say we are out of bratwurst but let me bring you another half-gallon tankard of beer."
• All these phrases are nicer than "No Problem."

So that's my first gripe. My second gripe concerns the bad grammar you hear on electronic media of every kind.I would like to see every reporter, news anchor, talk show host and meteorologist go back to school to learn a little more about proper English usage.Oh maybe they know that a noun is the name of a person place or thing. The family dog probably understands that much. But who understands pronouns, those handy ‘his-her-and-their-type words that save us from having to say "Johnny crashed Johnny's car when Johnny tried to text Johnny's buddy while making a too-wide turn at the stoplight"?Very few.Pronouns have to agree with the nouns they're standing in for: that's the rule. And here is a helpful little refresher:You know you're dealing with the NOMINATIVE CASE when you're looking at the subject of a sentence, like the word "Joe" in the sentence "Joe patted the dog."You know you're dealing with the POSSESSIVE CASE when a noun comes with an apostrophe-s tacked on to it, as in the sentence "That dog is not Joe's."And you're working with the OBJECTIVE CASE when a noun receives the action of the verb as in "the Dog bit Joe."Again, a pronoun has to match its noun in case. Thus, if you say "Mom told Beth and I we could go to the mall" you are making a huge error as you will see if you take out the word "Beth.""Mom told I?" You wouldn't say that!You wouldn't say, "the waiter set the plate down before my date and I" either because "before" is a preposition and prepositions take the objective case. You know the above is wrong the minute you take that date of yours away (though it is admittedly stressful to have your dates taken away in restaurants, especially if you're hoping they'll foot the bill.)And now here we are back where we started, in restaurants with patrons offering thanks to the wait-staff for serving them and the wait-staff in one way or another saying they were happy to do it.I guess that's the most important thing: that we acknowledge one another's efforts in keeping that social fabric nicely knit together.Sigh.As for thanking ME for this grouchy little harangue, I know you might not feel like doing that. But if you do I'll probably just say "You're welcome" because, in case it isn't hugely obvious, for some of us OLDER folks the breezy approximations of modern speech just plain make us crazy!