Problem or Inconvenience?
Story★★★★In his book Uh-Oh, essayist Robert Fulghum wrote of the summer of 1959 when he was working at the Feather River Inn near Blairsden, California, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Just out of college, he was hot-headed and free with his opinions. One week he grew angry because the employees were being served the same thing for lunch every single day-two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls. Furthermore, the cost of the meals was deducted from the employees’ checks.
On Friday night he learned that the same fare would be on the employee menu for two days more. Fulghum, who had already taken a strong dislike to the hotel’s owner, vented his anger to the night auditor, a man named Sigmund Wollman. I declared that I have had it up t.o here; that I am going t.o get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him. I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going t.o make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyway and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American . . .
The whole hotel stinks anyhow. Fulghum continued in his tirade, and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff t.o pigs. Fulghum raved on for about twenty minutes, delivering his monologue at the top of his lungs and with much profanity. Sigmund Wollman, who had spent three years in a German death camp during World War II, just sat, watching and listening.
Finally he said, “Fulchum, are you finished?” “No. Why?” “Lissen, Fulchum.
Lissen me, lissen me. You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.” “So what’s wrong with me?”
“Fulchurn, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire-then you got a problem.
Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems.
You will live longer. And you will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.” And with those words, he waved the young man off to bed.
Before we lose our cool, it often helps to ask: Problem? Or inconvenience?• 1Robert Fulghum, Uh-Oh (New York: Villard Books, 1991), 143-146.
The point
Robert Fulghum recounts a time when he angrily complained about being served wieners and sauerkraut all week at a summer job. A Holocaust survivor named Sigmund Wollman teaches him to distinguish between real problems and mere inconveniences, a lesson in perspective and gratitude.