So I received a letter of apology via snail mail.
The person doing the apologizing didn’t sign the letter.
Name, position/title and company in text was all there. No signature.
Faux pas or not.
(I’m not mentioning how poorly written it was, it was like a first draft and they wanted it edited by the person they were apologizing to, according to grammarly.com there were 16 critical writing issues, scored a 38/100)
Two thoughts, either since it was written poorly they just forgot/didn’t know to sign it since they aren’t good at writing letters and really, who practices writing formal letters anymore
or
They wrote it like they would have spoke it, like it was their side of a conversation and you don’t really sign off on a conversation so they ended up forgetting. Kind of the same way you type a casual email and send if without putting your name at the bottom.
If it was written well, I’d chalk it up to a faux pas, but if the grammar and spelling were terrible, I wouldn’t think much off it and probably just read it as if they were speaking it and take from it what you will. Whether or not the lack of a signature makes the apology less sincere is really going to depend on a lot more information then you gave us in your post (dynamic of relationship, what they are apologizing for you, tone of letter etc…)
ETA, OTOH, someone apologized to you, and you’re the one counting the grammatical errors. I think that says just as much about the dynamic of the relationship as forgetting to sign the letter.
dynamic:
I’m an employee, person apologizing is an administrator.
reason to apologize:
they are apologizing for making an offensive remark via email to fix a mistake on their side. Most likely, I should not have seen offensive remark but it was part of email of the whole conversation in which another employee kept when replying to me with an answer.
If they wanted it casual/conversation, they could have just called me, they have my phone number.
I did a grammar check because reading the letter made my brain hurt. I can see that there’s an apology but reading it was an effort.
You didn’t say if the letter was handwritten or typed. If it was handwritten and the name was there I think it’s fine. If it was typed, then to not sign it would seem kind of cold and lacking in sincerity to me.
Sounds to me like the person just doesn’t know how to write a letter.
When I was a kid they taught how to write letters in school. Now they just teach how to use PowerPoint. (Seriously. I have two school-age children.)
letter was typed.
Was it on letterhead? Does that person have a secretary? It could have been printed off on letterhead by the secretary but then accidentally not given to the person to sign off on, and simply popped in the mail - but that’s a bad error for a secretary to have made.
It’s also quite likely that for legalish reasons, the person who had to make the apology was told it had to be on paper, but said person is young/inexperienced with real letters enough to not realize it should be signed.
Side thought: I’m wondering what the legal ramifications might be of an unsigned letter - but one on personalized letterhead would at least help “authenticate” it as not everyone would have access to that.
To my knowledge:
no secretary involved.
letter printed and typed on company letterhead, not a personalized letterhead.
I’m quite sure the person apologizing was told to write the letter of apology.
It sounds to me like said person did the minimum possible to follow that order. After all, they weren’t told to write it well, they weren’t told to sign it, and it would appear they weren’t told the thought behind the remark was wrong, rather that it was a mistake to get caught. I’d say the lack of signature is just one of several indicators that the letter is all but meaningless to the one who wrote it. I can’t help but suspect that the one who ordered it written is more concerned with protocol than with your feelings. Still, I’d be tempted to show him the letter while complaining that the unmistakable disdain shown by this less than half-assed attempt is more offensive than the original remark.
Was the offensive remark directed specifically at you, or directly relevant to you (e.g. derogatory remark about blacks, and you’re black), or a more general shouldn’t-have-said-that (e.g. derogatory remark about Asians, and you’re Hispanic)?
Are you the only one receiving an apology, or is this part of a mass mailing?
the offensive remark can be taken that way by the reader. But it was not a racist comment or derogatory regarding race/religion/sex/etc. If it was there would be a bigger problem for them.
The apology is specifically directed at me since I was the one asking a question for assistance and the administrator sent my request to another employee to get it resolved. To their error, the employee answering my question left the conversation attached in the email on the bottom like in not deleting a questionable offensive statement. So I got to read the remark and was not exactly happy. The gist of the remark is “tell him want he’s asking for so he’ll stop pestering me!!!”, and yes there were lots of exclamation points.
I may be thin-skinned but when an administrator whose job it is to help out in matters of which i was seeking assistance writes something like that, i was not at all pleased.
What bearing does this have on whether or not the letter should have been signed?
Context.
I would interpret it as a half-assed attempt to carry out the literal interpretation of their direction to apologize to you, without actually going through any real effort - and probably intending to make their displeasure obvious to you. I’d also, at the very least, keep it and a copy of the original offending correspondence in a secure place.
I am going to the head office on Monday to get this all explained. Hopefully I will get some answers regarding the lack of care and effort put forth into writing the apology letter I received. I guess I should take as much documentation in hard copy format with me so I have proof. I really want to just type out the horribly written letter so you guys can read it but I need to have some sort of discretion.
Opinions belong in IMHO. MOved from General Questions.
samclem, Moderator
I didn’t notice if you mentioned: Did you actually, in fact, get fixed whatever you wanted fixed in the first place? And promptly enough to your satisfaction, without hassle? And before the offensive remark became part of the issue? One view might be, if you’re an in-house user and he’s there to give you support for you computer (or whatever) technical problems, as long as you get wanted in the first place, and quickly enough without much flak, then you should be happy with that.
There seems to be some implication that you did get some hassle or flak in getting done what you wanted done, as evidenced by your remark that there was an on-going chain of e-mails here. Did the admin give you flak for no good reason, or was there really some kind of genuine problem with him helping you? Was he being a jerk from the start? Was he ever jerky directly to you (either in person, on the phone, or by e-mail)?
My conclusion: As long as you got what you wanted soon enough and without undue flak, you should drop the matter and be happy with that. IF in fact that’s what happened, that is.
(Disclaimer: This, coming from a sys admin!)
issue was a payroll problem. They overpaid me, the admin (apologizer) called to say they’ll take it out of my vacation accrual. I said okay. Next pay stub, they took it from my pay and not vacation. I called to have it fixed, another employee said they’ll leave a note and get it fixed. It didn’t happen. After a month had passed and no actual proper fixing was done, I left a message and no one was responding.
I was cordial and polite in asking for assistance and requested they email me when they get it done as they said it would. I got an email saying they got it fixed, but I didn’t know what my vacation accrual was, so i asked a follow up question regarding my vacation accrual. Admin now sent an in-house email to another employee with offensive remark. Other employee sends me the offensive remark in his reply to me regarding my vacation accrual. I was not at all pleased reading that email.
I forwarded the email to employee care, I assume they told the admin to write a letter of apology. I get a call from head office saying that I should be getting a letter of apology in the mail from the admin. I get the horribly written letter with no signature in the mail. I am not at all pleased with the situation. I will be going to the head office to get it sorted out.
So what kind of resolution are you seeking here? Another insincere apology letter, but better written? The employee reprimanded/fired?