I'm sorry, however...
A client apologized and then billed me for it. On apologies with a toll attached.
An apology with a “however” in it isn’t an apology. It’s a toll you pay to say the thing you actually came to say.
A client sent one of my teammates eleven words.
“This is very plain and boring. I don’t approve.”
Then they cancelled the subscription. That was the whole thing.
Work getting rejected isn’t what stings. Sometimes it’s plain, sometimes it’s boring, sometimes you’re wrong and you go again. That’s the job.
What came next is what I’m still thinking about.
What happened
This person had been a problem for a while. Settled decisions getting unsettled. Feedback that never came back on any workable cadence, stalling the project over and over. We raised it directly, more than once. They even agreed they were the bottleneck, and then nothing changed in their behavior.
Then they said that to someone on my team.
So we went to their supervisor and laid out what we’d seen. Partly for the record, mostly because I wasn’t going to let my team’s reputation get written by the person who’d been the problem.
Then this arrived:
“I’m sorry for what I said about the design. However, your going to my supervisor was wildly unprofessional.”
That’s not an apology. That’s shifting blame with a preceding toll.
Where I land
I don’t accept apologies with hedges. Not “I find them frustrating,” I don’t accept them. Period.
Here’s the mechanism at work in a hedged apology:
The "sorry" isn’t the message. It’s the fare. You pay it at the booth so the barrier lifts and you can drive through to the thing you actually got in the car to say. Six words of apology buying one full accusation.
It leads us to the question of what is a real apology and how would I define it differently than the one that I was given. After thinking about it, this is what I came up with:
A real apology has three parts.
I’m sorry for doing this specific thing. Named. Not “for how that came across.”
I won’t do it again. A commitment, which is the part that costs something.
Because I understand it was wrong. Which is what proves the first two weren’t just noises made to end an uncomfortable conversation.
Anything with a "however," "but," "although," or any of their deceptive cousins welded on fails all three at once. The however announces you don’t think you were wrong. You think you were even.
Or... you're not sorry and an apology is unnecessary.
The strongest case against me
The real one is simple: what if I actually do something wrong? Because if I did, then that however isn’t a toll. It’s them accounting for a debt I owe.
Two answers.
First, in this scenario, I don’t think I did. The order matters here. I didn’t go over anyone’s head as an opening move. I went after they’d taken a shot at someone on my team, at the end of a long run of behavior we’d already flagged openly with a concession (recorded in black in white). Protecting my people from being characterized by the person who caused the problem isn’t an unprofessional escalation, that’s the job.
Second, and this holds even if you disagree with me on the first: it wouldn’t matter. If I was wrong, that’s a real conversation and I’ll have it. My wrong is a separate ledger. It doesn’t get collected inside their apology and their debt isn't garnished by mine.
Those are two different things and they were treated as one on purpose: to make a shift in blame feel warranted.
What would change my mind
Nothing about the rule itself, and I want to be precise about why rather than just stubborn.
An apology and a reckoning over mutual wrongs are two separate conversations.
Both are legitimate and both can happen between the same two people about the same week. They cannot happen in the same sentence.
The moment you join them, one consumes the other. The apology stops being a repair and becomes a down payment on a complaint.
So here’s the actual challenge, and it’s open. Show me a hedged apology that repaired something. One where the sorry and the however arrived together and the relationship was genuinely better afterward, not just quieter.
I don't know about you, but I'd sooner bet on seeing a leprechaun dancing in my bathtub next to a pot of gold.
Until then: apologize like you mean it. Then, separately, when it’s landed, hash out the other wrongs. I’ll listen to the second conversation and I’ll take it seriously.
I don't accept hedged apologies and neither should you.
— Zach 😎
