Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck (31 page)

It actually takes a big person to admit to having been small and piggy. Humans are prone to self-justification—the ego-protecting tendency to insist we’re right and to shove away any evidence to the contrary. You need self-respect and strength of character to cough up the admission “I was wrong.” Socking yourself in the ego by doing this red-flags your bad behavior in your mind so you can avoid making a habit of it, and it’s a peace offering you give to the person you’ve wronged, telling them that you’re willing to invest in making things right.

Apology expert and psychiatrist Aaron Lazare explained in
Psychology Today
that “the exchange of shame and power between the offender and the offended” is what makes an apology work. By slighting somebody, you’ve kicked them in their self-concept, but by admitting you’ve wronged them, you’re reversing the shame they feel and putting it on yourself. “In acknowledging your shame,” wrote Lazare, “you give the offended the power to forgive.”

Getting the forgiveness of the person you’ve hurt and repairing your relationship with them starts with coming clean about what you’ve done.

The nuances of coming clean:

• Details matter.

Before you apologize, do a full jerktopsy—a postmortem dissection of your moment of jerkhood. Ask yourself:

•
Why
what you did was wrong.

•
What
it must mean to the person you wronged.

•
How
things could and should have been different.

Expressing all of this in appropriate detail to the injured person tells them that you “get it” about what you’ve done—which helps keep them from suspecting that “So sorry for going all ‘Bennnd over!’ on you” really means “Won’t be long till it’s ‘Bennnd over!’ all over again!”

• Don’t dally.

Don’t make somebody wait for an apology like it’s a bus that may never come. The sooner you apologize the better. It will be a psychological relief for you, as well as a way to avoid having your victim’s bad feelings fester and grow.

The exception to this speed rule would be when somebody you’ve hurt is too upset to face you, in which case you should wait or send a note—preferably the sort delivered by a postal worker. A snail-mailed apology takes more effort than an e-mail, suggesting that you care enough not to take the easiest way out. As a bonus, a postal mailbox doesn’t have a spam folder or the delete function.

• No excuses.

Excuses are statements tacked onto an apology that start with “but” (“… but you left your lunch right there in the break-room refrigerator, where anyone could eat it!”). The “but” can be either expressed or implied. It’s an attempt to water down responsibility by sticking blame on somebody or something else—very often on the injured party. Here, in italics, is a statement with an implied “but” from basketball’s one-man show Kobe Bryant, who, most charmingly, called a referee “a faggot”:

What I said last night should not be taken literally.
My actions were out of frustration during the heat of the game, period.
The words expressed do NOT reflect my feelings towards the gay and lesbian communities and were NOT meant to offend anyone.

In other words:

Memo to all you faggots out there: I only gay-bash when I’m really frustrated.

Excuses are different from
explanations
, in which you offer background information on why you did what you did—without shirking responsibility. Your goal in offering an explanation should be helping the injured party feel better by giving them additional details that make them feel less disrespected, overlooked, or screwed over.

• No hedgy-wedgy language.

“I’m sorry you feel that way” and “I’m sorry you feel hurt by that” aren’t apologies but apology-flavored attempts to duck responsibility, making it sound like things would have been different if only the other person weren’t so damn sensitive. Granted, this approach can sometimes be an intentional tactic when somebody’s been unfair—a protest dressed up in a little apology suit.

Another no-go is speaking in passive voice—saying you’re sorry such and such “happened,” as if it were a news story you heard about. Wrong. It wasn’t a bank robber or giant cartoon squirrel that left your friend sitting alone in the restaurant. It was you. You flaked. Again. There’s no linguistic dance move you can do to change that.

APOLOGIZING, PART II: EXPRESSING REMORSE

For an apology to be meaningful, you actually have to feel bad about what you did, not just feel bad that you got caught.

Assuming you aren’t a sociopath, if you’re diligent about digging into the Why, What, and How of some wrong you’ve done, that queasy little feeling called guilt should come up. Guilt is the human moral alarm clock. When you recognize that you’ve short-shrifted somebody—on time, effort, niceness, 50 bucks you owe them—that icky, pit-of-the-stomach feeling you get should help keep you from snaking them again.

You add weight to your apology if, in addition to feeling guilt and remorse for what you’ve done, you feel shame for acting in a way that’s out of character with the person you want to be. By communicating exactly how crappy you feel, you help the person you’ve hurt believe you’ll behave more fairly in the future, which helps them forgive you and move on. Conversely, if you don’t feel bad about what you’ve done, why would you feel bad about doing it again?

APOLOGIZING, PART III: PLEDGING IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN (IF THAT’S ACTUALLY THE CASE)

Although your remorse doubles as an unspoken pledge that you won’t go all inconsiderate buttwad on somebody again, they may need more convincing that you won’t reoffend. If so, be prepared to offer supporting points and exhibits. And do keep in mind that your promise that you won’t repeat your behavior carries more weight if you actually don’t.

There was this large businessman behind me in line at the airport with a huge, sharp-edged wheeled suitcase that he kept smashing into the backs of my ankles. This hurt, plus my ankles happened to be ensconced in a brand-new pair of boots.

The first time he hit me, he said he was sorry. The line moved, and he slammed his bag into me again. “Sorry!”

A third time. “Sorry!”

I turned and glared. “Please be more careful.”

Unbelievably, there was a fourth time. And there it was, like a Swiss cuckoo clock: “Sorry!”

I whirled around and death-stared him. “You’re not sorry,” I fumed. “If you were sorry, you’d take care not to hit me again. And again. And again. But, you clearly couldn’t care less that you’re hitting me and hurting me, although it must be kind of a drag to have me turning around and calling you on it.”

As satisfying as I found it to lay into him, there’s a good chance the effect on him was like that in the Gary Larson cartoon where the man is scolding his dog and the dog hears only “
Blah, blah,
Ginger,
blah, blah, blah…”
The reality is, by the time somebody’s 250 pounds of narcissistic, inconsiderate adult, sometimes the best you can do in response to their rudeness is to take a shot at publicly humiliating them. There’s no reforming the hardcore narcissist, but making him want to avoid the angrywoman afterglow might inspire him to take a little more care with the next person’s ankle meat.

Good intentions, poor follow-through

While it’s best not to say “I’m sorry” while showing “Couldn’t give a squashed crap,” what matters a great deal is where your apology is coming from: whether you’re sincerely sorry or you’re just looking to minimize the post-offense hassle. The truth is, in our imperfect world, there are those who have every intention of rising to the occasion—especially for those they care about—but have a tendency to rise too little and too late or to sleep in entirely. In other words, as my boyfriend likes to joke, I should write a companion book to Stephen Hawking’s
A Brief History of Time
called Amy Alkon’s
An Even Briefer History of Being On Time
.

I love my boyfriend and feel guilty about that stressed look he gets when we have to be somewhere at a certain time and I come to the door in some state of semi-clad unmade-up-ness. But, I am a congenital multitasker, am rather vain, and have always been overly optimistic about the elasticity of an hour.

When I make us late, I of course apologize—but I sure don’t pledge that it’ll never happen again. Because it will. What makes my boyfriend feel better are two things: seeing that I’m really trying and seeing improvement in the wake of my reading a book on time management. I still sometimes fail, sometimes just by a few minutes and sometimes by more. When I do, I tell my boyfriend how bad I feel for making him wait (for the eleventy bajillionth time) and scold myself for not estimating that I’d need that extra twenty minutes to answer all my existential questions about my earrings. I put up a mental Post-it note to do that the next time around and will actually follow through—only to notice just as we’re walking out the door that the scarf I’m wearing is just
tragically wrong
.

APOLOGIZING, PART IV: MAKING AMENDS

When you do harm to somebody, the toddler in the china shop rule applies: “You break it; you pay for it.” Sometimes, a verbal apology alone is restitution enough. Other times, when an offense is greater, it takes time, energy, and cold hard cash. As for what, specifically, you should do to make amends, don’t be asking the person you hurt. Hey, Lazy,
you
wronged
them
; you do the work to figure it out. Just ask yourself,
How would I feel if somebody did that to me, and what would make things okay again?

It isn’t always possible to replace exactly what you took from somebody. You can’t unhurt a person’s feelings. You can speak the words “I’m sorry” and then say it again with flowers. Think of this as the baker’s dozen of reparations—giving the injured person what you owe them, plus a little extra on the top. (Kind of like a goodwill surcharge.) Say you are careless with your Coke and spill it all over somebody’s white jacket. Figure out what dry cleaning will cost the person (maybe $12), and then flip them a $20. You should also flip them your phone number in case the stain doesn’t come out and you (
sigh!
) need to buy them a replacement. If it seems clear to both of you that what happened is only partly your fault, offer to kick in for part of the cost.

Fine yourself when it’s impossible to make amends.

Sometimes when you put some feel-bad into the world, there’s no way to make amends to the exact person you did it to, like if it happened in traffic and that person is long gone. But if you can’t make good to them specifically, why not make good in general? Buy a homeless guy a sandwich; wash the elderly neighbor’s car; donate $10 to a good cause.

You get the forgiveness you seem willing to pay for.

A number of studies show that a costly apology is a more meaningful apology, that you’re more likely to be forgiven if your apology involves some sort of payout or is accompanied by a gift. But very often, in making amends, it really is the thought that counts. Being honest about what you’ve done and forthcoming about what you owe shows that you don’t take whatever you did lightly. You’re demonstrating that you value the person you wronged enough to invest in rebalancing your relationship. That’s why following up an apology with a sincere offer to make good, financially or in some other substantial way, may be all it takes for the person you’ve wronged to feel vindicated and forgive you—maybe after telling you there’s no need for you to go through with your plan to pay up.

Amazingly, many people who are apologizing end up being penny-wise and apology-foolish. They clench their little fists at their sides, keeping the dollars it would take to fix their mistake huddled in their wallet, and tell themselves they got away with something. They do get to go home with their $12 or $20 or whatever—as well as the knowledge that they’re an ethically-squat cheap bastard. They also reveal a lack of empathy—not exactly the stuff repeat business, solid reputations, and lifelong friendships are made of.

Though saying you’re sorry can cost you emotionally, a sincere apology has such power that it can end up saving the person who makes it thousands or even millions of dollars. Seen any medical malpractice awards lately? If you win one, you and your lawyer may be in line to buy the Canary Islands from Spain. Because an apology can be seen in court as an admission of guilt, malpractice attorneys often advise doctors who mess up in caring for a patient to refrain from apologizing to the patient or their family. Yet, research suggests that doctors who apologize are less likely to be sued.

In fact, it turns out that money isn’t always the motivator behind suits against doctors or healthcare facilities. In 1999, a medical malpractice attorney told health policy professor Albert Wu, MD, that in his experience, a great deal of patient ire at medical errors comes out of physician attitude and denial rather than the negligence itself.
⁵³
He believes that about half of the malpractice cases he’s been involved in could have been avoided. “What the majority of patients really wanted was simply an honest explanation of what happened and, if appropriate, an apology,” the attorney said. When neither was offered, “they felt doubly wronged and then sought legal counsel.”

When financial settlements are made, they’re typically more moderate if they come in the wake of an apology. The Lexington, Kentucky, VA Medical Center lost two big malpractice suits in 1987, paying out over $1.5 million. After implementing a policy for doctors to disclose errors and apologize to patients, they paid an average of $15,622 per claim (from 1990 to 1996), reported Steve S. Kraman, MD, the doctor managing their disclosure program.
⁵⁴