Ahhhh! The conditional apology. This one modified to blame you for being so emo as to ‘feel’ that I may be thoughtless. How dare you ‘feel’ wronged or hurt my my actions and force me to be, in some way, conciliatory.
I hate these conditionals. They show a lack of respect to those who have been wronged and a lack of acceptance of blame. In my reality, an apology is to accept blame for an action and express remorse to those wronged. The conditional apology does not meet those requirements and should be rejected.
Why the rant? Netflix’s Reed Hasitings blog posting.
Hasitings makes two conditional apologies in his posting. Neither which really accept blame for treating his customers thoughtlessly and disrespectfully.
“It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology”
Close, but, no apology. There is no acceptance of wrong doing. Hasitings places the blame on those customers who felt Netflix “lacked respect and humility”, rather than accepting responsibility for those actions.
A proper apology would have looked something like: “It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that we have not treated our members with respect and humility”. See, respectful, acceptance of blame, and (Bonus!) a touch of humility.
The second ‘It’s not my fault you’re so Emo” apology is as follows:
“I want to acknowledge and thank our many members that stuck with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.”
Again, no acceptance of blame and no remorse for the actions taken. A proper apology would be:
“I want to apologize to our current and former members who we treated thoughtlessly” Again, this form accepts blame and shows respect to those who were wronged.
I was just annoyed with the split of the DVD and Streaming plans. Now, I’m pissed off with Netflix for sending this crap, half-assed “you’re so Emo”, explanation of why I’m wrong about being annoyed at how the split was done.
Now, what I’d like to see is a real apology to the blog posting, tweet and email send by Netflix and Hastings, followed by a real apology for the way we, the past and current customers, have been treated in the last few months.
I apologize to Reed Hastings and the team of drunken monkeys who wrote the posting if they, in their insecure, Emo way, feel they may have been, in some wronged, by this posting. I understand that those with large egos are easy deflated by words and apologize for any emotional damage I may cause through this weakness of spirit.
