Seth's Blog : Modern apologies

Modern apologies

The AI driven voice mail system said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Of course, there is no “I” and by most definitions of sorry, it’s not.

But it made me feel better.

The overworked and slightly bitter front desk person who was the frontline flotsam in a poorly designed system couldn’t be bothered. Even though the person they worked for was cancelling the appointment, and I had just spent ten minutes returning their call through a maze of badly designed prompts and it was a hassle to reschedule, they couldn’t/didn’t/wouldn’t say, “I’m sorry.”

After all, they didn’t cancel the appointment or design the system.

“Sorry” doesn’t have to be an admission of guilt or acceptance of fault. It could simply be the kind way one human acknowledges to another human that things aren’t ideal right now.

The magic of this simple word is that it can make both people feel better.