# Situations in which apologizing increases people anger rather than decreasing it **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 4, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189 "2020-10-04T15:42:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189/21 "2020-10-06T20:45:41Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > I’ve found you can very, very quickly take the wind out their sails by immediately and without question catering to their demands as if they were completely reasonable That only works if the demands are reasonable. I can’t unfreeze a bank account. I can’t explain why an EBT card isn’t working. I can’t knock 90% of the price of something. If we don’t have it on the shelf or the backroom I can not magically pull something out of my ass. So on and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189/22 "2020-10-06T21:11:05Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I can’t explain why an EBT card isn’t working. There’s no end to the people that think that the cashier is the one that decides whether or not to decline your card. I had one in here a few days ago. I could hear someone getting upset from the backroom, so I walked out to see what was going on. She was already pretty worked up. Too make a long story short, she put in her PIN wrong over and over and over, each time yelling about how she had plenty of money in the account. Eventually her card was locked and she’ll go to her grave believing that we (or our machine?) decided it wasn’t going to let her keep trying as opposed to her bank freezing the account to protect it. Once she got to the point where she was in full Karen mode, swearing loud enough for the entire place to hear, she was escorted out of the building. But yeah, as I mentioned upthread, the demands have to be reasonable. I’m talking about people yelling and screaming over something like a bad apple or grabbing something past it’s date that we missed. You quickly and politely make it right and you can literally watch them not know what to do with all that angry energy. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189/23 "2020-10-06T21:59:14Z")
That, and being excruciatingly polite. Or, if they’re angry about something you can agree with - yes, that tomato is moldy! - then they won’t know what to do with the anger. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189/24 "2020-10-08T21:57:42Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I think it’s often really easy for someone to tell that you’re apologizing not because you think you did something wrong, but because you think the apology is a way to get them off your case. The problem is, this is actually how a lot of people get taught to apologize as children. The excellent SorryWatch has a [great article](https://sorrywatch.com/apologize-to-your-mother/) about this. Also [research, here](https://www.studyfinds.org/sorry-not-sorry-forcing-children-apologize-makes-matters-worse/). It’s all too common to make children apologize for things when they don’t actually think they were in the wrong, or understand why they would be in the wrong (spoiler: don’t do this) and when that’s your childhood experience, you’re likely to think of apologies as basically a meaningless ritual designed to get other people to stop shouting at you. And in fact, modern society is rife with this. The majority of widely-seen apologies on social media are apologies from a famous person to groups of people they’ve never met - they’re certainly not “repairing the relationship” apologies because there was no existing relationship to repair. They are totally “to make you stop shouting at me” apologies. I myself would never ask for an apology from someone. It seems completely pointless. Unforced apologies are nice. But as far as asking for something from someone who’s bugged you - “please stop doing thing-that-bugged-me” pretty much does all of the job that can be done. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189/25 "2020-10-09T16:16:08Z")
Scott Adams was trolling the entire time, so this really doesn’t relate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/situations-in-which-apologizing-increases-people-anger-rather-than-decreasing-it/922189.md?page=1)