When is sorry the wrong thing to say?

From the age of fourteen-and-nine-months, and for six years thenceforth, I worked at Franklins.

Franklins (blessed Franklins) is no longer. In its heyday it was a discount supermarket to rival the best — wide aisles to fit any mobility vehicle, teetering stacks of Coke boxes placed right by the trollies for minimum carry-time, a bountiful line of 89c No Frills staples. None of this fancy $9 artisanal cheese and Master Chef sauce calling itself coulis. Franklins was white bread and raspberry jam, 500g of devon and the cheapest hot chook in town.

I was a checkout chick most days, and a deli girl some others. I learned a few things from those days — how to pack a plastic bag to the exact correct weight so as not to strain the thin plastic, but to maximise its potential — with heavier items on the bottom and fragile items on top, so never may an avocado be sullied by the corner of a box of laundry powder. How to turn a messy pile of groceries into a perfect set of 12-to-18 bags, separated neatly into produce, cans, dairy, frozen, kitchen chemicals and bathroom supplies. I learned how to grab, on the first go, a to-the-10g amount of deli meat. 250g of mortadella? No worries. 300g leg ham? 5 slices mate.

I also learned some things at Franklins that I still use today.

On really busy days (like the day before Easter, or the weekend of the Bathurst 1000), despite having all 8 checkouts manned, the lines of people waiting with their trollies would grow long.

I wasn’t slow. I had a scan rate in the top 90th percentile of checkout chicks at Franklins, actually.

But if someone had been waiting a long time, I’d say, feeling bad, “sorry about the long wait”. Their reaction would, in general, be negative. A displeased nod, a “yeah, I’ve been standing here for ages!” They’d look at me like, “If you’d just move faster I wouldn’t have had to stand here for so long.” These negative interactions didn’t make those already stressful and unpleasant days any better.

One day I tried something different. I started to say, to those long waiters, “thanks so much for being so patient.”

The difference was immediate. The reactions were positive. It would be a smile, a “No worries!” An “it’s okay!” A “don’t worry about it honey.”

I was a relatively chatty checkout chick. I usually got placed on checkout number 8, being the furthest from the smokes desk, which I assume is because I was experienced and didn’t need much help, and not at all because as a 16 year old book nerd I wasn’t that much fun for the much older full-time employees. Because it was the ‘wide’ checkout, the vast majority of customers who went through checkout 8 were the ones with a fully-packed trolley, or sometimes even two. The rural mums who only came into town once a week, or dads with families of 7 who bought 30 cans of tuna and 8L of milk a week. So it was to my advantage to get off to a good conversational start with my customers, as I’d be spending a good ten or more minutes with them putting through their groceries. I can also tell you this. Spending eight full hours scanning and putting groceries into bags is a level of brain-numbing indescribable to anyone comfortably couched in challenging white-collar work. Doing it in a tense silence is ten times worse.

What I learned in those days was that sometimes that “sorry” would be better as a “thank you”, and that that “thank you” can frame a new relationship to be more successful than it would’ve been otherwise.

Here’s why.

You say: “I’m so sorry about the wait.”

By saying sorry, you’re indicating that the situation is your fault — even if it isn’t. This puts the person you’re apologising to in the position of forgiving you for something you did wrong.

You’ve created a relationship that’s now predicated on the basis of “I do things wrong and you forgive me”.

It’s a relationship where everyone feels bad. The person you apologised to feels maybe a little angry, maybe a little self-righteous, maybe a little hard-done-by. You handed them that feeling along with your “sorry”.

The easiest thing for them to do now is to acknowledge or agree with your apology. For them to be nice to you, they would have to actively deny your apology, with a “no, it’s not your fault”. But the path of least resistance that you set up for them is to agree with you — “yeah, I’ve been waiting a long time. You could have done better.” It was a bad situation, that wasn’t your fault, and your sorry made it worse.

With just a tweak of language, you can set up a very different path of least resistance.

You say: “Thanks so much for waiting.”

If instead, you thank them for being so kind as to be so patient, the emotions the relationship is based on suddenly become positive.

The path of least resistance you laid out for them is completely different. The easiest thing for them to do now is to acknowledge and agree with your thanks. “No worries, it’s all good.”

You now framed the relationship on the foundation of “you do nice things for me, and I appreciate it.” You’ve put them in a position of being the good person, and people love to live up to other people’s expectations of them. The path of least resistance you laid out for them became for them to be kind to you, rather than annoyed.

It’s stunning how well this worked for me in the tiny, brightly-lit world of the checkout.

But I’m not a checkout chick. How does it work for me?

I actually used this technique with my neighbour a few weeks ago. I live in a tiny inner-city terrace, so I share walls with my neighbours. When they have young relatives over, I can hear them running up and down the hall. Actually, I can hear my neighbour blowing his nose in the shower every morning. It’s kinda gross. But whatever, that’s inner-city life.

Recently I had a new housemate moving in, and there was a lot of clanging and banging and I know I disturbed the neighbour. I know this because he came and knocked on the door at 11pm to check if I was being murdered. Sweet guy. Literally, he said, “Hey, I just wanted to check you’re not being murdered? You’re making a lot of noise.” At which point I realised it was 11pm on a Sunday and I was half drunk on red wine trying to dismantle a really uncooperative wrought iron bed. Oops.

The next week I baked some some brownies and took them to him. I said, “I wanted to let you know that the moving in is all finished, so the banging and clanging should be all done. I wanted to say thank you for putting up with it and being so patient. And thank you so much for checking in that I was okay — it really makes me feel safe to know you would do that.”

I really was thankful. He was happy, he said thanks and we had a little chat. Now he’s my friend, and we have nice chats when we see each other on the street.

The way I presented those brownies was calculated, though. Instead of thank you brownies they could easily have been sorry brownies. I think that would have set our relationship up differently.

It felt like a pivotal moment in our newborn neighbourly relationship. By making a grand apology, I would have been strengthening our relationship on the foundation of I do bad things to him, then I apologise.

When our next neighbourly interaction came, would he feel like being nice to me, when the last time we interacted I did bad things to him that required an elaborate apology? Maybe — but it takes actual effort on his part, as that’s him not following the path of least resistance that I set up.

Instead, by thanking him, our relationship is built on this foundation: he does nice things for me, and I say thank you. In fact, he does such nice things that they require an elaborate thank you. Now when our next neighbourly interaction comes, the easiest thing for him to do is to continue to do nice things. It’s literally just changing a word or two here and there, absolutely within the bounds of genuineness (don’t do this if you’re not actually thankful!). It’s not about manipulation, it’s about framing. It just works to help set relationships up for success.

We have a great relationship now, for the record. Last week he helped me carry some hard rubbish out and when he gets on a stool to water his hanging plants and thus has a direct view into my kitchen (inner city life), we always have a chat.

This works in a lot of situations. Right now I’m sitting in a delicious, wonderful Vietnamese restaurant, and I’ve been here writing for 3 hours. When I get up and pay, I could say “Sorry for sitting here for so long!” But I won’t. I’ll say “Thanks, this is a great place to write!” Boom, positivity.

A disclaimer: this is not about never saying sorry. If you have done something you’re genuinely sorry for, you should absolutely apologise. This isn’t about that. This is about being mindful of your sorries, for those apologetic among us (like me) who scatter sorries like croissant crumbs outside the Franklins bakery.

So: the next time an errant, un-required sorry is about to pop out, think about whether it really needs to be there. Be mindful of the path of least resistance it blazes, and how it positions the person you’re talking to.

People live up to your expectations of them — think the best of them, and see what happens.