I used to have a boss who loved saying, “that’s not a reason, it’s just an excuse.” Her explanation was that a reason is a cause, a clear logical link exists so that if not a then not b.
An example between the two of us. On the way to work I stopped off at a booking office to queue for tickets to some event I wanted to attend and was late for a meeting at work. She asked me why I was late. I explained that it took far longer to queue for tickets than I realised. She invoked, “thats not a reason, that’s an excuse,” and she was right. The truth was the lenghty queueing only made me later, the reason that I was late was that in this instance I considered getting the tickets more important than keeping my appointment. If the queue had been shorter I may still have been late however if I had considered the meeting more important than the tickets I would have been on time.
Well said. I think the only difference between an excuse and a reason is semantics. Most people are very competent in telling the difference between a genuine reason/excuse and bogus covering up for shite behaviour.
I leave home at exactly the same time everyday. This time sees me arriving at work beween 10-15 minutes before my starting time MOST days, but at least once a fortnight I am 5 minutes late. Those days I am late I walk in, roll my eyes and say “bloody traffic”. This is both my excuse and my reason for being late. I work in a place where this is understood, accepted and the day goes on.
Anal clock watchers need to be beaten severly (I can’t remember the last time I left work less then 15-30 mins after finishing time so any 5 mins I cheated my boss on they got back in spades).
Ultimately, “excuse” has a moral dimension. “reason” does not.
You offer an “excuse” in hopes to avoid blame. You hope the story you provide will “excuse” the behavior. That is, lay the blame for the (presumed bad) outcome elsewhere than upon your decisions and actions. Absent a bad outcome or blame, there’s no reason to think of it as an “excuse”.
A true “reason” contains no moral dimension. Said another way, a “reason” has to consist solely of things utterly beyond not only your control, but beyond your prediction and any conceivable mitigation.
The reality amongst rational and emotional humans is anything involving human interaction contains some things truly beyond your control or reaction, some things within your ability to react to, and some things you chose (rightly or wrongly, for “good” or “bad” reasons) to act or not act upon.
At which point the dividing line between “reason” and “excuse” in practice is wherever within that continuum somebody wants to draw it. e.g. the various manager-jerks listed above choose to draw the line that any failure of outcome is purely excuse. Contrast with lazy or psychologically damaged folks where absolutely everything is always entirely somebody else’s fault and they are always mere victims of bad Fate and outrageous circumstance.
I really doubt we can draw a more precise dividing line than that. Ultimately it’s just a bell curve of different peoples’ habits as both excuse givers and excuse recipients / evaluators.
To me, an excuse is a reason that justifies a failure to do something one is generally obliged to do, or that justifies doing something one is generally forbidden to do.
If I promise to prick my wife up from the airport but get so involved in binge-watching Mad Men that I leave an hour late and leave her stranded, that’s a reason but not an excuse.
If I promise to pick my wife up from the airport, leave on time to do so, but am prevented from arriving on time because there’s a sudden, massive pile-up on the expressway, that’s an excuse.
As many have said, there is a subjective component, and one blends into the other.
Also as others have said upthread, my view is that:
a reason is an authentic explanation for the issue,
an excuse is used to avoid blame.
When a problem arises at work, I sometimes find myself offering an explanation for how I think things went wrong, offering at the end that, “This is an explanation, not an excuse.” (That is, “This is an authentic effort at problem identification as a step to problem solving, not an attempt to escape blame.”)
