Nan Connolly said I erred in saying women should decline additional assignments when they were already swamped at work by telling their co-worker, "I'm sorry. I'm on deadline."
"Too many times women say they are sorry," she wrote. "People bump into women in airports and they, the women, apologize. I see this all the time, everywhere. Someone out of your department waylaying you for additional work should not be told you are sorry not to do it."
She continued ... "I really think women give up some authority by frequently apologizing."
I've heard this idea before, that you shouldn't apologize if you haven't done anything wrong strictly speaking. I've heard various reasons given for this - that it makes it look like it's your fault, or it makes you look weak, or something like that.
But does anyone actually think this when someone utters the words "I'm sorry" to them?
I come from the traditional Canadian school of apologizing when someone steps on your foot. When I say "sorry" here, I don't really mean that I'm sorry, or that I accept blame, or anything. What I actually mean is "I am acknowledging the occurrence and now let's just get on with life." When I barge into a co-worker's cube with a question and say "Sorry to bother you," I'm not actually sorry. What I actually mean is "I have given thought to the fact that I might be bothering you, and this is important enough that I'm bothering you anyway." When they try to give me more work and I say "I'm sorry, I simply do not have room for any more work," I really mean "I do understand that this needs to be done, and I'm refusing because it's impossible, not just because I have the right to refuse overtime." In all cases, my key message is "It is not my intention to be an asshole."
And that's how I process a "sorry" when I hear it too. I process it as "It is not my intention to be an asshole," so I then assume goodwill on the part of the other party. It means they aren't just being cocky and self-absorbed, they have given some thought to the fact that they're inconveniencing me.
So is there anyone who gets a different message when they hear "sorry"? And if so, are there demographic patterns?
4 comments:
I wonder if outside of Canada the acknowledgement variety of I'm Sorry has the same meaning.
When I first got here, I noticed Canadians apologized a lot more than I was accustomed to, including using "Sorry...?" with a upward inflection when I would normally use "Excuse me".
I found it disconcerting, similar to an old roommate of mine who was constantly apologizing for everything, a function of her pitiful self-image (I'm sorry for living). This was an extreme version of the "women apologize too much" and it seemed like everyone in Canada had it.
When other ex-pat internet friends of ours arrived here a year we did, they had the same impression. Only by that time, I was used to all the I'm Sorrys, and had stopped thinking of them as negatively self-effacing way, and started thinking of them as the kind of acknowledgement you're describing.
An example of the reverse that proves your point (does that make sense?): when I was in the army, a sergeant gave any soldier hell for saying "sorry" in almost any context, because apologizing "makes you sound weak".
By which, I'm sure I don't need to add, had a subtextual definition of "weak" as "unmasculine".
Even to officers and stuff?
Actually, now that you mention it, officers were frequently considered feminized versions of soldiers. But that was class as much as it was gender, which muddies the waters far more than I can see through at this point.
I don't remember officers ever apologizing for anything, and for 2/3 of my military pseudo-career, I spent most of my time in a very small space with at least one officer, often two or three. Rank certainly is never having to say you're sorry.
As far as this anecdote goes, though, it was just a sergeant bellowing at some very low ranking soldiers. I've recreated the instruction in scene in a novel I'm working on, as it happens -- funny that it left such an impression on me; your post immediately made me think of it again, too.
Incidentally, I quickly went back to my civvy street ways and am fully sorry for all manner of things again. :)
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