"My Pleasure" and "Any Time"

I've been meaning to blog about two more ways to say "you're welcome," and I guess now's as good a time as any, especially since I was reminded of this earlier today. Previously, I had blogged about what "you're welcome" really means and when it would or would not be appropriate to say it. I also blogged about the phrase "no problem" which is appropriate even less frequently. There are at least two other ways to respond to thanks: "my pleasure" and "any time."

I can say from personal experience that doing service is not always a pleasure. Sometimes, it's just a bunch of hard work which isn't much fun and doesn't seem fairly rewarding. Of course, that seems to depend largely on a person's attitude. There are occasions when it really is a pleasure to serve someone. With the right attitude, many forms of service can become enjoyable. This happens to me most frequently when the help I'm doing for someone involves doing something I consider fun, or when I'm doing something for someone that I have a strong desire to serve. There are a handful of people that I would gladly go out of my way to help, and it usually is "my pleasure" to help them.

Along the same lines, one cannot always promise to give service "any time." Sometimes, we're busy. Sometimes, we literally cannot help others. For this reason, I don't consider "any time" a promise. I consider it more of a statement of willingness. To me, it means "I would do that for you any time." The word would here is important. It means that we will always be willing to perform that service, when we can. I suppose, in a sense, "any time" is a promise, but it has a few conditions, ability and availability being among them. Still, it's something you can say to someone to tell them that you'd be willing to help them again.

You can't always say "my pleasure" or "any time" to someone and really mean it, just as you can't always honestly say "no problem" or even "you're welcome." But "my pleasure" and "any time" do have their usefulness, and they are sometimes appropriate to say. There are times when it's a pleasure to serve someone, and there are some people we'd be willing to serve, or some acts of service we'd be willing to give, "any time." And when we're in a situation when one of those phrases may apply, we might as well be open and polite and say what we really mean.