Work the problem

The other day I popped into the pet food shop to say hello to the lady who works there. I like her because she takes such an interest in her customers pets; I swear she probably knows them all by name, and she knows her stuff and has been able to recommend food that has, albeit for the shortest space of time, satisfied my “picky eater” cat.

She is a tiny sparrow like person and as I hadn’t seen her around for a while I asked her where she had been. She told me that she had been off sick; had a lung removed because of cancer. This is her 2nd occurrence of cancer and she had previously had a breast removed. But, she told me, despite all that she was just fine and getting back into the swing of things.

She then went on to tell me about the recurring response she has had when telling people about the lung cancer. The first thing they ask is “do you smoke” - in quite an accusing way. Like it is all her fault…even when she says she used to smoke but gave up about 25 years ago, she says there is that hint of “well what did you expect”. As she says, she is not looking for sympathy, she just replies to enquires about her health – but her problem at the moment is the cancer; not whether or not she smokes/smoked. She does not want to have to defend herself or try to convince people that this probably wasn’t caused by smoking, that it is a secondary cancer, and just because she did smoke – 25 years ago - she really doesn’t think she deserves it.

Her story reminded me of the quote by Tom Peters: "The problem is rarely/never the problem. The response to the problem invariably ends up being the real problem."

So true. How we respond to someone’s problem is really important. A suggestion I have is to just “work the problem”….. Recriminations can maybe happen afterwards – or maybe you should just keep quiet because the person is probably feeling really bad as it is.