Joss Rufus is an award-winning journalist and the author of numerous books, including Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto and Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself. Rufus’ drawings have appeared in Oakland Magazine and in such books as Europe Off the Wall, The Goddess in the Office, and The World Holiday Book.
Oh yes. Yes. This is my life. I even had my boss call me out for apologizing for something that wasn’t my fault.
I think the organization that treats this specific variant of LSE is Hasenpfeffer, Incorporated.
This is me in any situation where two people suddenly find themselves in close quarters and it would be appropriate for one of them to say “excuse me”. I am always the one to excuse myself.
For example, if one hears someone coming around a corner, the logical course of action is to pause and stay perfectly still so as to avoid collision, then excuse oneself vigorously when the other party does round the corner and is startled to find someone quietly lurking there. What else could you possibly do?
The most polite thing to do is to turn around and walk the other way, thinking up a plausible destination as quickly as possible in case you’re questioned. I’ve changed CAREERS before, all in service of “acting natural”.
I’ve spent many years perfecting my “oh no, I forgot something!” face for just such occasions.
OH MAN, this was me from about age 6 to age 18? Like I distinctly remember an incident in grade school, where two girls in my class (very sincerely) explained they didn’t like hanging out with me because I “said sorry too much”. (I did not say sorry when they told me, but sort of tried unsuccessfully to crumple in on myself.)
I have since unlearned this habit, as for me it was just a way of apologizing for exiting, and I no longer apologize for the space I take up in the world.
My boss has given me some valuable coaching about this. I’m not allowed to apologize in any emails — unless I actually fucked something up, then I apologize specifically for that thing and the effect on the other person. Like “I apologize for making you wait an extra day for these documents.” And I don’t say things like “sorry for not getting back to you sooner” when I’m not really sorry for it and I didn’t take that long! Or, what I used to do, which is if someone doesn’t do something right, say “Sorry, maybe I was unclear,” because i usually WAS clear and they’re an idiot. It’s been really cool seeing how this shift became natural after a while.
That’s really awesome! I do tech support, so I throw in apologies to customers if I think it will help, not if I’m actually sorry. But, bringing the number of apologies to coworkers etc down a notch is definitely something I’ve been working on.
Best of luck!!
“Sorry, maybe I was unclear” represents like 90% of my approach to confrontation, where I spend an amount of time massively disproportionate to the situation thinking up all the ways it could possibly have been my fault, and narrowing the other person’s responsibility to the tiniest sliver of the overall issue.
My current alternative to “sorry, maybe I was unclear” is some variety of “I think you misunderstood my previous email.” Misunderstanding isn’t always a terrible accusation – misunderstandings happen all the time, and they don’t automatically imply idiocy, so this approach tends to make people less defensive, without me having had to take responsibility for a problem that I didn’t create. It’s marvelous! I mean, it’s good to recognize and take responsibility if something is your screw-up, but you can also spend your whole life trying to justify other people being careless or whatever in order to pinpoint all the millions of ways you fall short of perfection so you can be like A-HA! I AM nothing, just as I’ve always suspected! Speaking from experience, that’s a mighty hard way to be.
This is great advice! I’m going to pay more attention to this when I’m sending emails.
Instead of saying “Sorry, maybe I was unclear,” I’ve started replacing it with “I think I must have been unclear,” because it just seems like a polite way of hammering someone over the head with their own stupidity/reading incomprehension, but in a nice way. I honestly don’t think it’s better.
Yeah, don’t apologize willy-nilly at work! And if you must, say “apologize,” not “sorry.”
Life in Canada accurately summed up in four frames. Minus the swearing, of course, that wouldn’t be polite.
I apologize when my purse hits a newspaper box as I walk past it. We deserve all the jokes from this cultural quirk.
I’d love to pretend that I can’t identify directly with this, but some of us are simply not self-B.S.ers. I have that terribly lame side of me called the Born Entertainer — the bane of my existence, the bitchy doubter of my moments of solitary peace. “Performer’s guilt” spills over into workaday conversations, brief exchanges and, of course, even hallway collisions. I must deliver; I must entertain. I laughed convulsively at this cartoon, and I love the sly way in which it manages to incorporate two things at once: not only the LSE element, but also the habit of catastrophizing.
I’ve dated women who thought like that: If you bump into someone, of course it’s not merely going to be the fleshy equivalent of a fender-bender. It will lead to spilled coffee and debilitating burns! The insouciant drawing/caption style is perfect for communicating such a panicky mindset. I hope to see more of this strip!
Feeling this! See, I apologised to a desk I jostled as I was hurrying to take a seat.
Feeling this! See, I apologised to a desk I jostled as I was hurrying to take a seat.
Awesome!!! Just awesome!!! How you know what goes on inside my mind boggles me! Rock on, Anneli!
Awesome!!! Just awesome!!! How you know what goes on inside my mind boggles me! Rock on, Anneli!
People have told me, “Oh, that’s a gender thing — you females apologize for everything because you were taught that self-abased groveling is ladylike and polite.” And while yes, I personally was taught self-abased groveling early in life — “Now say ‘I’m stupid, ugly and worthless’ like you mean it” — I reject the gender theory on this one as one of the biggest apologizers I ever knew was a manly man who wore manly neckties and trousers and shiny manly shoes and apologized even after paying people compliments. “Good work in that courtroom today. Oh, sorry.”
A man once apologised to me for, as far as I could see, existing in a physical state so that I had to walk past him on the pavement (I did not have to step out of my way to do this. There was plenty of room.)
I then apologised to him for walking past him.
It was a very British afternoon.
A perfect cartoon for our Age of Anxiety.
You have captured a universal human experience and made us all laugh at ourselves. But it also has particular relevance for our stressed western culture where everyone is in a hurry and the rules of etiquette have become unclear.
This is great that Anneli is bringing her humor and insight to a new genre and audience through a cartoon strip. In a very funny way she is shining a light on the great unspoken epidemic of our times. Especially true among young people, and maybe the country as a whole. Great mind at work here – can’t wait for more.
This is awesome! I can really relate to this and have found myself in very similar situations and saying the exact same things! Now I’m actually laughing at myself a bit. Can’t wait for more posts.
This is awesome! I can really relate to this and have found myself in very similar situations and saying the exact same things! Now I'm actually laughing at myself a bit. Can't wait for more posts.