The minefield of apologetic etiquette

The following column can also be found published by The Felix, the student voice of Imperial College London. On-line version here: http://felixonline.co.uk/comment/1393/the-minefield-of-social-etiquette/

How many times have you ever wanted to tell someone who is apologising to you, to **** off?—Not because they slept with your best friend, brother/sister etc, but just because of the grovelling sick-making nature of it.  I amaze myself about how fervently I want to, some times.  But equally, how often has the fact of the apology barely scratched the surface?

            These two are relatively easy, but what about the middle ones, when someone probably should apologise and does?  There are various approaches one could take.  Some people thank them.  I am not so sure about this but it would show an acknowledgement of the apologiser’s effort.  However if you think they should apologise, why thank them?  I suppose the opposite reaction would just be to say nothing and walk away, but this is hardly positive re-enforcement.  What if they need to again?  The chances are that they simply will not bother.  Telling them “It’s fine/It doesn’t matter” is one I have done in the past, but I feel a pang because often it does matter.  Though I am pleased they have said so, I do not necessarily want to wear that pain on my arm.  I want to move on.  I suppose there is the big hug and “I’m-so-pleased-you-called” combination, but anything more clearly taken out of cheap American drama, and vomit-inducing, I cannot imagine. 

            Dodgy coloured hair, breast augmentations and accents that make me want to rip off my ears aside, it is not just apologies that make for a modern etiquette minefield, but a variety of ‘new’ situations.  I was asked if I wanted to go Speed Dating last week.  I am reliably informed that this has changed a lot since it first started – it is not the lonely hearts/stalkerfest that it once commonly believed to be.  But that does not help with the etiquette of the situation.  Clearly in one’s three minute slot, the need for jokes about unchristian acts with a banana are unlikely to go down well.  After all, one has hardly met the person, it is just not time for that sort of thing yet.  However a more circumspect approach might just leave me with nothing to say and so I would come across much like ‘Tim nice but dim’, or ‘Tim nice but not much to say’ at any rate. 

            Though it is not just these sorts of things people worry about – what to say and when, how to behave, what one expects in a flatshare and so on.  There is even an unwritten rule about the use of mobile phones on trains, i.e. the more people there are on a train, the more you should try to avoid using your phone.  Of course some people do not care about such rules, but everyone around them is silently firing large and entirely telepathic daggers squarely at them.  I suppose the question is partly ‘why does any of this happen at all?’  Why do I worry about what to say to someone when they apologise to me, or when a woman with a scary predilection for 80s fashion invites me to a party that I do not want to go to?  We are supposedly a less ‘buttoned-up’ society (disgusting word) than we were 50 years ago.  People dress differently and formal names and titles are less common.  However casual racism and people who wash only once a week have also become less common as well.  Ironic really, as people who indulge in casual racism and rarely wash are normally called common.  Or at least are thought of as common—no one is allowed to say it, that would be snobbish.  Etiquette is clearly as tricky a mistress as ever she was—be her in a spandex boob tube or grovelling for your forgiveness.