I stopped saying 'sorry' at work for a month and it turned into a huge mess

I read this thing about women over-apologizing, so I decided to cut the word 'sorry' from my work emails and meetings for 30 days. The first week, my boss asked if I was mad at him because I sent a correction without my usual 'sorry for the confusion' opener. A project handoff got really tense when I just stated a fact instead of cushioning it. It actually took me about three months to figure out a balance, using phrases like 'thanks for your patience' instead. The social pushback was way stronger than I expected. Has anyone else tried to drop a polite habit and had it blow up?

3 comments

3 Comments

markhall11d agoMost Upvoted

Honestly, I tried that once and came off like a robot who just learned human speech. It's wild how one little word does so much heavy lifting, and you have to basically learn a whole new language to replace it. Took me forever to stop sounding like I was reading a legal document.

jake18921d ago

Yeah, that tracks. I tried something similar and my coworker pulled me aside to ask if I was having personal problems. The social scripts are way more rigid than you'd think, and breaking them just makes people nervous. Took me ages to find those neutral phrases that didn't sound aggressive.

the_piper21d ago

How did you handle the project handoff tension? I found swapping "sorry" for "just to clarify" or "here's the update" helped a lot, but it took practice.