Package A, B or C

A family in Mansoura is planning an engagement evening, and the caterer has sent three packages.

The first is a buffet with a carving station. The second is a seated dinner of three courses. The third is the same dinner with a fourth course and a dessert table. The family spends a week comparing them. An aunt prefers the buffet. The bride's father thinks a seated dinner looks more serious. Someone asks whether the dessert table is worth the difference.

It feels like a decision. It is really the last small step of a decision that was made somewhere else.

Every one of the three options assumes a hall, a hundred and fifty guests and an evening built around a meal. The questions that would shape the night were settled before anyone opened the message. How many people do the couple actually want there? Do they want to sit at tables and be served, or stand in a garden and talk? Would the grandmother's house, forty people, trays of sweets and tea, be closer to what this evening is for?

Those questions were never on offer, because the person writing the options sells catering. All three packages are good for the caterer. That is not dishonest. It is simply where the options came from.

Most days we have to accept the menu we are handed. Life would stop if every choice turned into an investigation, and it is fine to pick the buffet and move on.

But when the outcome really matters, the useful move is to step back from A, B and C and ask what was decided before the question reached us. Quite often the right answer is none of the above.