Re:Longtime Mozilla Support Japanese Community Shuts Down ov...
by gsck on Thursday November 06, 2025 @07:44AM
(#45834604)
"I'm sorry you feel that way" was literally the first thing I ever got taught when doing front of house/customer service training. Its definitely a super common phrase, at least in English speaking countries
Re:Longtime Mozilla Support Japanese Community Shuts Down ov...
by DrammBA on Thursday November 06, 2025 @11:32AM
(#45837022)
Not sure if this is what you intended but you're just proving his point. Customer service is full of corporate-speak, scripted deflection, and hollow niceties. Of course the first thing you were taught was an empty apology.
Re:Longtime Mozilla Support Japanese Community Shuts Down ov...
by dcminter on Thursday November 06, 2025 @07:00AM
(#45834271)
"I'm sorry you feel that way" is shaped like an apology, but is essentially blaming the other party's feelings as being the problem.
"I'm sorry I did that" is an actual apology.
To be clear, I'm agreeing with you. I think that the former version emerged as it's litigation proof. Corporate PR can say that without it being an admission of anything if whatever they fucked up results in a lawsuit.
It has spread to personal communications from corporate ones and it's now so prevalent that it is possible someone might use it and actually mean a real apology. But it's ... tainted.
The "I'm sorry you feel this way" is quite a recent phenomenon. It started showing up in public apologies by companies and celebrities, purely for PR. It's basically a deflective euphemism for "I'm sorry that you don't like whatever happened" without really admitting culpability, sidestepping all responsibility.
With that said: I don't even know if the author (Kiki) is a native english speaker, since she's part of other language translation groups, so it might be 100% without intent. But that's how a lot of people perceive it today.