Monday, July 16, 2007

"No Problem!"

Back in middle school, one of my teachers always talked about how much he hated it when people responded to "Thank you" with "No problem". He claimed that saying "no problem" implied that the one saying thanks could have potentially created a problem for the other person. This, apparently, was impolite.

I don't know why I thought of this the other day, but I realized just now how ridic that sounds. Seems like the reason why someone would thank someone else is because the thankee did something that doesn't necessarily benefit himself to benefit the thanker. Thus, it almost seems necessary for the thankee to inform the thanker that the thankee's loss did not outweigh the thanker's gain.

I'm not sure if any of that makes sense.

Oh, but I remembered why I thought of this. My manager here at work seems to thank everyone at every possible opportunity she gets, regardless of circumstance. She just thanked someone via phone approx four times in a 15 second span.

Weird as it may sound, I dislike this degree of thankfulness. Not only does it diffuse the sincerity of each thank, but I feel it makes her seem like she's way above everyone else. It's as if other people are always doing favors for her, like she's entitled to those favors.

Not sure if that makes any sense either.

3 comments:

Bruce said...

Yeah I don't like a lot of those super std and meaningless things people say.

Dr Spaceman said...

you're in NYC, how can you be this bored?

n00b

Dr Spaceman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.