The 3 happiest words in the English language

What are the three happiest words in the English language?

  • I love you?
  • Please marry me?
  • Won the lottery?
  • Big pay hike?
  • You’ve been dieting?

I had to think of this recently as I as finding all kinds of bugs in Google Maps.

It was about 6 or 7 years ago. I ran up to my boss’ office in Bellingham WA. He was the VP of Operations & Finance, I was Technology Solutions Manager. I had been fiddling with browser dependencies for our new product ordering and configuration engine, and our devs had been stumped. Internet Explorer was the problem: impossible to please.

We finally got it running right, and before I told my boss I asked him a question: “What are the three happiest words in the English language?”

Since we had been working so long and so hard on this one issues, the three I was thinking of were: “works in IE.”

He looked up from the work on his desk – he always had stacks and stacks piled in various places around his office – and said “Not my problem.”

We shared a laugh, and then I told him what were at that very particular moment in time and space my three favorites.

Ever since then, “not my problem” has ranked up there as a wonderful phrase in my lexicon.