Long story short, we were having a long night at work last week, just prior to Christmas (typically the job runs 8:00 - 6:00, but this particular night it was nearing midnight, and there were only about three of us left there - everyone else had left hours earlier).
Out of frustration (and some level of exhaustion), I made a comment to my boss that simply came out wrong (he and I are borderline-“best friends”, so it certainly wasn’t personal), but he took it as being “insubordinate”.
Is there a better way to later explain “look, I had something stupid come out in a way other than what I intended it, so quit being so sensitive” – other than the dreaded “I’m sorry you felt that way”?
I’m sure this comes up a million times a day (especially for the married Dopers :)), but how do you say “I’m sorry you felt that way”, other than using those words, and without it coming across as a bullshit-“fake apology”? Is there a better choice of words?
“I apologise - I didn’t mean any offence” - or similar, if “offence” is the wrong word. I think the key thing to avoid is inserting the phrase “if you were offended”, even if that’s what you want to say - evidently they were offended, even if you felt they had no right to be! So the quickest way to move past it is to apologise without reservation. It’s not worth making a big deal over.
Are you sorry you said it in a way that was open to misinterpretation, or do you think he’s overreacting and out of line? If it’s the first, you don’t say “I am sorry you felt that way”, you say “I am sorry I said that, it wasn’t what I meant”. If it’s the later–you aren’t sorry about what you said, you don’t think you did anything wrong–then you aren’t actually sorry, and you have to decide what you want to do about that. It’s more complicated. But you ought not apologize for how he feels: you should apologize for what you did, or not at all.
“I’m sorry you felt that way” is not an apology. It’s a polite way of saying “I don’t care what I did and why don’t you stop acting like a little bitch”.
This. “I’m sorry you felt that way” does not accept that the fault was yours in any way, yet in the OP you admit that what you said “came out wrong”. I’m with the other posters who say that you apologize for it “coming out wrong” and you did not mean to offend.
How about “I’m sorry you feel that way but X is still required, how can I make this less upsetting for you?” Sometimes you don’t get a choice, sometimes you have to do something to someone that is unpleasant. You can acknowledge this is an icky situation for all concerned even if you still have to proceed.
Medical and dental personnel have to face this all the time, hurting someone as part of making them better or finding out what is wrong.
When you say “I’m sorry I offended you” you’re making a genuine apology - you’re apologizing for something you did. But when you say “I’m sorry you were offended” it’s not an apology - by saying the other person was offended rather than you offended them, you’re passing the responsibility off on to them. And when you do that it’s no longer an apology. You can apologize for things you did but when you say you’re sorry over something somebody else did you’re essentially just saying they annoyed you.
We’ve got a four-year-old, so there’s been a fair bit of discussing how to apologise properly around here.
An apology doesn’t begin with ‘I’m sorry that you…’. That’s not an apology, it’s a way of shifting the responsibility for the problem onto the other person (the way you’re doing with your boss, saying the problem is that he’s too sensitive). An apology begins with ‘I’m sorry that I…’
In your case, the way to phrase an actual apology would’ve been ‘I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I didn’t mean to; it came out all wrong.’
I like that one. The problem can be that you’re really not sorry for what you said, but are sorry that you offended the person. Just because they were offended doesn’t always mean that what you said was wrong.
They said it better than I could. Not-pologies are a pet peeve of mine.
Think about the purpose of an apology. If it’s to soothe hurt feelings and heal a relationship, don’t shift the blame to the other person. This is something four-year-olds and politicians do so they can look at a third party and whine, “Look, I apologized!”
I always like to think of a “good” apology as having two components: A) An acknowledgment of the *specific * fault and B) An expressed desire of taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.
How many times have we had people “apologize” with an “I’m sorry, man” repeatedly for the same thing, over and over again over the course of a friendship? I don’t really care if you’re “sorry.” All I want is for you realize what you’re doing and actually care about stopping it.
That said, “I’m sorry you feel that way” doesn’t express either.
Also, even IF you mean it a genuine sense, that expression is so ingrained in the lexicon that its reputation kind of precedes it.
“I’m sorry you felt that way” isn’t an apology at all. It’s like saying “I’m sorry your dog died.” It means that you pity the person for what they’re going through but are not taking any personal responsibility for it. An apology involves saying that you regret something that you have done. An expression of pity is appropriate in situations where you truly are not responsible, but it’s not an apology and it’s a jerk move to try to pass it off as one just because it contains the word “sorry”.
“I’m sorry you felt that way” is fine. But I wouldn’t say it to his face, I’d post it on Twitter.
Or go with kambuckta’s idea. Toss of a coin really.
The simple thing I learned years ago was that your apology usually works out OK if the first word after sorry is I and not “if” or “you”. Like, “I’m sorry I said…”