Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsuwabuki
I find the generalisation of the USA apology to be slightly offensive. Nyororin was joking, but I am unsure if MissMisa was. That being said, let me rewrite the apology to how I would say it:
"I'm sorry I'm late, I woke up late, my alarm clock's batteries were dead. I also spoke to my mother before I went to sleep asking if she would be my back up, she agreed but did not follow through. I plan to replace the batteries, buy a second alarm clock with a plug, and ask a buddy to call me as well. This way I will prevent the mistake from happening again. It's my fault that I didn't put even more protections in place, and I will endeavor to prevent a repeat of this mistake."
This is very different from the tone used above in the other posts. When a subordinate makes a mistake, I expect all of the information above. Not just an apology, not just a promise that it won't happen again, but an explanation of why it happened, and how the subordinate will attempt to prevent it from happening again. I cannot evaluate how a subordinate learns if I don't know what processes are involved.
If you would read into the "mother" line as shifting the blame to her, you would be wrong. No blame is being shifted. Blame remains on the person apologising. It was my fault for trusting my mother to be a reliable back up, just as it was mine for not checking the batteries, and mine for not having a second alarm clock.
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No no, I wasn't stating that's how it was, I was asking if it was like that. I've never been to the USA, I wouldn't know, but from reading this thread, that's how people are suggesting that people in the USA respond.
And to be honest, that whole paragraph just sounded like a blame shifting lame excuse to me, but maybe that's where we are culturally different. I personally don't think it was a very different tone at all, it was the same excuse with fancy language.
Oh yeah, and as well as that, you can say 'It's all my fault,' but mentioning the alarm clock, and your mum, and the batteries just makes me feel like your just saying it.
If someone were to give that excuse at my school/university, they would be told to stop making excuses, stop wasting time, to sit down and not do it again. Who cares how it happened, as long as it doesn't happen again, it doesn't need a long winded pointless explaination.
And to address some earlier points: There SHOULD be an option for girls to wear trousers in school. How backwards and old fashioned it would be to be forced to were skirts in winter! Some girls are consious about their appearance, and it would be unfair to force them to wear a skirt if they don't want to. Skirts are culturally a female item of clothing, whereas trousers are now considered unisex. That's why it would be odd for males to have the option of wearing skirts.
And if my gym class WASN'T seperated, I would have certainly NOT done it. In England, gym classes (It's called PE over here) are seperated at high school. Why? It's because that's when young people are developing and growing as teenagers. It's the time when they are body consious, and PE usually requires gym clothes, shorts, tshirt and so on. I would feel wholly uncomfortable to be with males at this time. To change the clothing would be impractical when doing sports, so they just seperated the two. If you wanted to do sports with the guys, it was fine, you just had to go to the after school classes.
In class in England, you are usually sat 'girl, boy, girl, boy.' They claim it's to 'encourage people to mix,' but it's really so you aren't sat next to your friends, which for most people are usually of the same sex, and chat and disturb the class. I thought that this idea is pretty old fashioned, but I wasn't particularly bothered because the majority of my friends were male anyway.