this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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This exchange centers on excuse vs explanation.
An excuse intends to justify or remove blame.
An explanation simply retells the events without motivation or justification.
If someone ever says "I don't want your excuse" simply reply "I'm explaining what happened without excusing anything. Would you like to hear that?"
That never worked for me. The "I don't want your excuses" types were never looking for an answer they just wanted to be dicks.
Trying to further explain like in your quote above always produced "that's just more excuses!" or, "don't talk back to me" or "likely story..." or, "don't be a smartass!"
All bullshit. There are reasonable people out there but those who ask a question then berate the person they asked for answering (or for refusing to answer, when they already know the outcome) are just assholes who today will lose both my respect and attention.
Let me tell you a few secrets
First, anger uses up social energy. They get it back from your response to them... If you don't let them read any emotion from you, they'll tire themselves out very quickly.
You just have to control your body language, keep your tone calm, and let them talk. Make it clear you're paying attention to them, but otherwise give them nothing
You don't have to listen to what they say, they're just making angry human noises. Just listen to their tone, it'll rise and fall in energy cyclically until they run out of energy
When they stop talking, just give them a few moments of silence so they can feel embarrassed, then disregard their little temper tantrum and progress the conversation like it never happened, focusing on solutions
And that's the second secret - you can prompt-break a human. In every interaction, humans take on roles. Customer-employee, public official-citizen, manager-worker... Humans naturally fall into roles
You can pull a human out of their role by not playing your part, and in that moment of confusion you can recontectualize the interaction
In this case, you change the conversation roles from "you being mad at me" to "I'm the expert helping you fix your problem"
Obviously, if you just say that, people will generally just get more upset. But if you pull them off balance and start acting a new role, they'll take on the counterpart role
It's all third path conflict resolution, it's honestly harder to explain then it is to do it
If they say anything like that, just say "alright I'm gonna get back to work, cya" and quickly disengage. If they say like "we aren't done here" reply as professionally as possible to the effect of: "I was describing the events as plainly as possible. You don't seem to want that and this disagreement isn't helping me do my job. If you want the facts I have them."
If you are in an adult situation, don't allow someone to treat you like a child. Even if you've made a mistake.
That said, not sure if I mentioned it in this thread or another, but if you are in a weakened position, like you desperately need the job, then the only response is "yes sir, sorry it happened."