We’re an interesting bunch, the English. We apologise when someone else has done something wrong.
I was in the shop yesterday and because we’re not supposed to be using plastic bags anymore (bollocks), the staff are putting fewer and fewer of them out at the checkouts.
While the sales assistant was busily occupied with his back to her for several moments, she had to ask several times for bags, apologising profusely for requesting and it was honestly like witnessing some bizarre social experiment of inversion.
“I’m sorry” is one phrase, another is “excuse me.”
Again! Most often used when someone else is getting in the way, blocking a concourse, taking up all the space on a path.
You can tell that this stuff bugs me because it’s all unnecessary and I believe it is actually symptomatic of an ever-encroaching state and organisations that just won’t leave us alone, won’t stop interfering. There is also the fact that a lot of people have simply ‘given up’.
Standards are hard to find. I choose to be the man who picks up the litter when I see it.
I will acknowledge that people are confused, all of the old structures and principles have vanished (mostly because we’re not really Christian anymore as a people).
The solution, stop apologising when you’re asking perfectly reasonable things. Stop apologising when you’ve done nothing wrong.