Whether you are thankful or not, you are welcome

It happened several years ago, but every time I hear those three simple words I think of it.

I was visiting Cormac MacConnell in County Clare, Ireland, for the first time. Cormac is a journalist, novelist, songwriter, and radio personality well known in his homeland, and I was meeting him through my buddy Bill, who had read several of Cormac’s columns online and had struck up a friendship with him. Cormac had invited us to spend a night at his home as we traveled his country.

And as Bill and I stepped over the threshold into Cormac’s quaint stone thatched-roof cottage, our Irish host said, “You are welcome.”

He said it as if one of us had said “Thank you” to him, though I don’t think either of us had done so.

But it was the Irish way of saying to a visitor, “You are welcome to enter my home.” And even though those words are common enough in America, it was a new and wonderful way to hear them.

But then I got to wondering exactly how common those words actually are in America after all. Because as soon as he said it, a new memory leaped to mind.

It was a few years earlier than my Ireland visit, when I was touring Europe with some youth soccer teams I was coaching. We were in Sweden, and as we enjoyed a barbecue with a host team and their coaches, I said to one of the host coaches, “I hope our players are behaving themselves.”

“Yes, they are fine,” the coach said, “but to be honest, they seem a bit rude.”

I was shocked, because we coaches always insisted that our young players be on their best behavior at all times. They were representing far more than their teams, we told them. They were representing their families, their home towns, and even their nation. They may be meeting people who had never met an American face-to-face before, and their first-impression behavior might spark a lifelong attitude about how Americans behave.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, though I couldn’t imagine what he meant by the comment. I had heard our players say “Please” and “Thank you” every time they were treated graciously. I didn’t argue with him, but I asked him if he could explain what he meant.

“When you thank them for something, they never say ‘You are welcome,’” he said.

I was dumbfounded. I called out to one of my players standing nearby and asked him if he would please hand me a napkin. He did, and I said “Thank you” to him.

“No problem,” the boy said.

“See?” the host coach said when the boy had walked away.

I tried to explain to him that “no problem” was an informal way of saying “you are welcome,” but the coach wasn’t buying it.

“It is not the same,” he said.

I spent the rest of the day listening to our young American players respond to offers of thanks, and I don’t think I heard a “You are welcome” once.

I heard, “No problem.”

“Sure.”

“My pleasure.”

“It was nothing.”

“Don’t mention it.”

But not a single “You are welcome.”

Every pleasantry our young Americans offered might have been accepted in another land—in Mexico, for example, where “de nada” translates to “It is nothing.” Or in Australia, where “No worries” would be the norm.

But in Sweden, where formalities are taken seriously, anything less than “You are welcome” was a slap in the face. After all, we Americans seem OK with “Please,” and even with “Thank you” when we are polite to each other, so why did we have to tinker with “You are welcome”?

And I got to wondering: Was this Swedish coach being formal to the point of nit-pickery, or was he right? Is the phrase “You are welcome” truly on a different level of graciousness than all of our toss-off informalities?

Since then, I have tried to defend our young American players’ casual, offhand graciousness. I tell myself that American English is such a special language because of its rich, ever-changing fecundity. We will never settle for one way to express something when we can say it differently with every person we meet. Our vocabulary—like our supermarket laundry soap shelf—offers so many options for a single item that it can make your head spin if you’re not used to it. It is our unending diversity—linguistically and otherwise—that makes America great.

But still….

That other voice in my head whispers that there may be some things so fundamental—things like gratitude and graciousness—that they can never be improved upon no matter how much pride we take in our creativity and diversity.

Ever since my Swedish and Irish encounters, I find myself saying “You are welcome” as often as possible, rather than a casual “No problem,” or “Don’t mention it,” or “My pleasure.” I even say it when newcomers step across the threshold into my house.

And although it may be my imagination, I think it makes a difference.

Try it yourself. See what you think. It may seem nit-picky, but you may like it after all.

And if you do—if you find that people you meet are just a tiny bit more pleased with your graciousness—there is no need to thank me for pointing it out to you.

You are welcome.

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