‘No problem’ no problem

The New York Times published a list of 100 things restaurant staffers should never do. Number 41 was saying “No problem.” Saying “No problem” is a problem. Would it be on the menu if there were a problem?”

I totally agreed with that. The response, “No problem” in all kinds of situations has annoyed me for years. But it’s a losing battle because people say it everywhere. It has become one of those universal ubiquitous phrases like, “OK.”

I don’t know about mid-East languages but I would guess, due to the internet and the presence of American troops, “no problem” is part of the vocabulary of young people there — and in China, too.

After a tour of four Balkan countries, I can report first-hand that you may not understand anything else a native says to you but you will understand, “No problem.” For example:

Arriving at the Budapest airport and dickering with a gaggle of taxi drivers holding up signs with Euro prices into the city, we pick one and give him the name of our hotel.

“No problem!” he assures us.

Trying to explain to a taxi driver on a rainy night in Belgrade a recommended restaurant district we wanted to go to with no idea where it was, we were relieved to hear a confident, “No problem,” and being safely delivered there.

Then asking the waiter at a fine restaurant we decided on if there were a non-smoking section. “No problem,” he replied, whisking an ashtray off the table he led us to.

Thanking the bellboy in our Veliko Tarnova, Bulgaria, hotel for bringing a bucket of ice to put on the knee and ankle I had just injured in a sidewalk fall and getting a sincere: “No problem.”

Explaining to a surprised maid in a Bucharest hotel that why I was in bed at 2 p.m. in the afternoon was that I had hurt my leg the day before. “No problem!” she replied with a big smile. I don’t know if she understood what I said, but I was grateful that it was no problem.

In a wheelchair, due to the sprained knee and ankle, with the tour group for a folklore dinner in Sofia, Bulgaria, Stephan, the local guide for the city tour I had missed, was jauntily pushing me at a rapid pace up a long boulevard.

“Thank you,” I said, a little breathlessly, as we arrived and he deposited me at a table next to the stage. “No problem!” he assured me cheerfully, disappearing into the crowd.

When the evening was over, he was there to briskly push me out the door, down steps and past the pit of live coals where a barefooted entertainer was dramatically concluding the show, to the waiting bus.

“Thank you,” I said again. No problem.

And then there was George, our wonderful Hungarian bus driver, whose chore it was to get me in and out of the wheelchair, on and off the bus, and who brushed aside my every deeply grateful, “thank you,” with a kind and cheerful, “No problem!”

I’m now a believer. I’m convinced. If it’s no problem in Oklahoma or any place else in America — if it’s not a problem in Hungary or Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania or Transylvania — it’s no longer a problem with me.

Just ask me. I’ll tell you. “No problem!”

Mary McClure lives in Lawton and writes a weekly column for The Lawton Constitution.