Cab Note #005: The Apology Economy

I said sorry eleven times before lunch today. I counted.

Sorry for being in the way of the book cart. I was not in the way of the book cart. The hallway is eight feet wide. I was against the wall.

Sorry for asking a coworker to repeat something. She was whispering. The HVAC was running. Asking someone to speak up when you literally cannot hear them is not something that requires an apology.

Sorry when a patron bumped into ME. He was looking at his phone. He walked into my shoulder. I said sorry. He did not.

Sorry for existing in a doorway. Sorry for reaching for the same book at the same time as someone else. Sorry for having a question. Sorry for answering a question correctly when the person wanted to be wrong in peace.

Eleven. Before noon.

I started counting three weeks ago because I read something about autistic masking that described "preemptive apologizing" as a social survival strategy, and I thought: that's not me, I don't do that.

Then I counted.

The math is ugly. Eleven before lunch is a conservative day. Call it twenty per full workday. Five workdays per week. Fifty weeks per year (I don't apologize as much on vacation because I don't leave the house).

Five thousand apologies per year. For nothing. For being in rooms. For occupying the amount of space my body requires.

If each apology is a small withdrawal from a finite energy account — and it is, because every single one involves a split-second social calculation: is this situation my fault? probably not, but will it be smoother if I just apologize? yes, always yes — then I am spending approximately five thousand micro-transactions per year on a product that doesn't exist.

I'm not buying forgiveness. There's nothing to forgive. I'm buying permission. Permission to be in the hallway. Permission to ask a question. Permission to exist at a volume and a density that someone might find inconvenient.

The economy runs on a simple principle: if I apologize first, you can't be annoyed. I've already acknowledged that my presence is a potential inconvenience. The debt is prepaid. You don't have to do the emotional work of being irritated because I've done it for you.

This is, I'm realizing, exhausting and insane.

I'm trying to stop. Not all at once — I tried that, and it turns out that forty years of social programming don't uninstall with a decision. But I'm editing. Downgrading. "Sorry" becomes "excuse me." "Sorry, can I ask a question?" becomes just the question. "Sorry, I didn't catch that" becomes "say again?"

It's harder than it sounds. The apology is a reflex. It fires before the conscious brain engages, like flinching. By the time I've decided not to apologize, the word is already half out of my mouth and I'm standing there saying "soh—excuse me" like a person rebooting mid-sentence.

Progress is not linear. But I'm down to about eight before lunch. Which isn't nothing.