All Appallogies

You can't misspell the word appallogies without the word appall and there is good reason for it. I highly doubt (notice I left a slight window for error here) that any apology ever made in the history of personkind has been sincere. 


First, allow me to clarify. An apology isn't the programmed and direct response you would have when accidentally bumping into a stranger on the street. An apology doesn't occur when you math skills momentarily escape you at a drive thorough window and you short the burger serving technician a quarter. A "real" apology only occurs after you have willfully chosen to say something or participate in an act that you later come to regret. These apologies however are not sincere because we never truly feel regretful of the act. We feel bad that we got caught yes. We feel bad because the person or person(s) we hurt make us feel guilty yes. However, there is no one thing that while we are in the act of doing it do we think of how sorry we will be for doing it. 

How often do we carefully craft a peanut butter and jam sandwich just to throw it in the trash? Was there not a conscious choice to make and eat the sandwich? How often do we speed somewhere in the hope that a cop will pull us over and give us the opportunity to try and apologize our way out of a ticket? Rarely.

If anything, apologies are more often used as devices to escape arguments, scrutiny, lectures or anything else that a truly sorry person would embrace if they actually felt that they had wronged someone. Below I have compiled a list of a few tactical ways of apologizing in order to do anything but reveal remorse. 


The Man Apology: I'm sorry because you are mad.


The Over Apologizer: They apologize about everything almost once per sentence/4 times a paragraph. The over apologizer blurs the lines between reality and apology until you can no longer discern one from the other. The OA apologizes with the same quickness and conviction regardless if they are apologizing about using the last cup of milk or if they killed your parents. The aim of the over apologizer is to make everything seem meaningless.


The Hostile Apologizer/The Thinly veiled Hostile Apologizer: The hostile apologizer apologizes in a threatening way. They may combine the words "I'm sorry" with "What was I supposed to do?" The tactical purpose of this apology is to threaten the other person into accepting their apology through intimidation. The Hostile apologizer is often seen hanging around the Italian community. 

The Thinly Veiled Hostile Apologizer: more common among the female community and often found at retail stores. They are marked by their crazy eyes with an otherwise stoic face. Often they will be heard using the expression: "Well, I'm sorry that you feel that way." Loosely translated it means "Get the F&%K out of my store.

The Avoiding Judgement Apologizer: "I'm sorry but the meatloaf might be bad tonight. I ran out of several important ingredients chief among them, meat."


The Reduced Sentence Apologizer: "I'm sorry I killed your entire family and ate their corpses but if possible I'd like to be paroled in 10-15 years. Kthanks buh."

The Excuse To Say Something Horrible a.k.a The Simon Cowell Apologizer: Self explanatory.

The Manipologizer: The Manipologizer only apologizes for something that they did in the past when they want you to do something for them right now. Sadly, the thing that they want you to do "right now" is the very thing that they will be apologizing for the next time that they want you to do something "right now." 


Unless the next apology you hear starts with the phrase: "I'm an asshole, you caught me and I hope you still love me enough not to kick me out of the house" chances are that person is tactically apologizing. All apologies are appalling manipulations employed to trick you out of making logical decisions about an individual's behavior.