It’s been answered when a reader, Jack posted this parable of the broken plate. Did you check the plate yet ? You did ? Is the plate still broken ?

An alpha male doesn’t apologize, because he doesn’t do stupid things to begin with.

So that’s it with your doings. No more doing dumb things, then apologizing. You do something stupid, you get hurt. That simple.

What about something you said or thought you said ?

Recently in the news was the firing of Roseanne Barr from her show, the cancelling of her show because of a racist tweet she tweeted in the middle of the night.

In the NY Times Margaret Renkl had an opinion piece June 4th, 2018, quote:

A child who learns these words learns that an apology consists of four parts:

1) Genuine remorse (not “I don’t remember it that way” but “I am truly, wholeheartedly sorry.”)
2) The expectation of unpleasant but entirely deserved consequences (not “I wouldn’t have fired me” but “I’m seeking help to confront my racism.”)
3) A resolution not to commit the same error again (not “I’m not as bad as some of these stories suggest” but “I’m much worse than I ever imagined, and I plan to devote the rest of my life to making amends.”)
4) A sincere effort to avoid the circumstances that led to the error in the first place (not “I won’t take Ambien any more” but “I will no longer hang out online with racists.)”

Twitter is not the place for a celebrity to make off-handed remarks, and it’s not the real world either, it’s an “outrage porn” theater of cretins.

I think the ABC Network CEO came in the next morning, and said to herself: “I either fire her, or they [the board] fire me.” Not such a hard choice, after all. [And they keep saying CEOs make the hard choices..]

Some smart people will get this takeaway lesson from this affair: a statement or a tweet can cause somebody to lose a job, no matter how ridiculous that sounds.

Back into the real world, if you said something that proved damaging, when the hurt person confronts you:

I know I said that…

That hurt as hell.

Tell me more…That was 10X wrong. What a duche…etc.

Try to match their sadness, outrage or upset, then exceed it. Become your executioner/critic. See how they follow.