My old boss told me public apologies never work - he was dead wrong

I got dragged after a dumb tweet in 2022 and my boss said to just lay low. Instead I apologized directly to the people I offended and offered to donate to a local group. The apology thread got 300 replies and most were positive. Has anyone else found that owning up beats going silent?

2 comments

2 Comments

danielhenderson13d ago

You said "public apologies never work" and I gotta gently push back on that a bit. In my experience, it depends a lot on who you're apologizing to and what you actually did. A blanket apology to your whole audience can feel hollow, but what you did - reaching out directly to the folks you hurt - that's a totally different thing. Most people don't go that far, and that's why your thread went positive. So it's not that public apologies always fail, it's that shallow ones do. Yours had some real substance behind it, which is probably why it worked better than your boss expected.

parker_park813d ago

Ngl my public apologies usually look like me trying to explain myself while accidentally liking the angry reply. But your approach actually had teeth. You didn't just post some corporate "we hear you" nonsense, you got personal and put money where your mouth was. Tbh most of us panic and either delete everything or write a novel of excuses. The direct hit to a local group thing is smart because it shows you actually listened instead of just wanting the heat to stop. Honestly I bet your boss was just scared of how messy public apologies can look when they're shallow.