When's the Last Time You Heard a Proper Apology?

Being sorry because you got caught is not a proper apology

Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta by Benjamin West, 1768 (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

“The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.” — P.G. Wodehouse 

I’m sorry.

How often do you hear those words? I mean hear them applied sincerely. These days, probably not much.

The journalist Ambrose Bierce lived from 1842 to 1914 and in The Devil's Dictionary, he wrote that to apologize was “to lay the foundation for a future offence.”

And isn’t that what we constantly see from businesses, celebrities, executives, and more? They’re only sorry that they got caught. Because if they were truly sorry, they would have caught the slip-up themselves — rather than waiting until they were outed by the media.

So they offer their meaningless apology, and it typically smooths things over.

For a while.

Until the next time they get caught, doing the same thing over again.

Do we really need apologies? And for those who offer them…