Daniel sent us this one — he's been living in Israel for about a decade after growing up in Ireland, and he's noticed something that's been quietly driving him up the wall. It's about apologising. Specifically, who does it, who doesn't, and what it means when they do or don't. He gives the classic Irish example — in a supermarket, someone says "sorry" when they mean "please get out of my way." It's not an apology, it's a social reflex. Then you've got Israel, where a business sells you something it doesn't actually have in stock, calls you up to sell you a replacement, and never once says "sorry for the inconvenience." Because the person on the phone didn't personally cause the problem, so why would they apologise? And then there's the American version — "sorry for the inconvenience" — which has become so corporate and hollow that people think you're joking if you say it sincerely. So the real question underneath all of this is: when should someone apologise, and what are these different cultures actually doing when they do or don't?
This is one of those topics where the surface observation opens up into something genuinely deep about how different societies handle responsibility, face, and social repair. The Irish "sorry" as a get-out-of-my-way token is the perfect entry point, because it's almost completely detached from the dictionary definition of an apology. It's not an admission of fault. It's not a request for forgiveness. It's basically a linguistic lubricant.
There's a phrase that should never be said aloud.
You know what I mean. It's what linguists call a phatic expression — words that serve a social function rather than conveying information. Like saying "how are you" when you don't actually want to know how someone is. The Irish "sorry" in that supermarket context is essentially saying "I acknowledge that I am about to briefly inconvenience you by asking you to move, and I'm signalling in advance that I mean no social disruption by it." Packed into one syllable.
Which is remarkably efficient. One word doing the work of a whole social contract. Everyone understands the code. It's almost like a verbal hand signal — the blinker you put on before changing lanes.
That's what makes cross-cultural friction around apology so interesting. You can take the exact same word — "sorry" — and in one culture it's a heavy moral admission of culpability, in another it's barely more than punctuation, and in a third it's a corporate shield against liability. Same word, completely different social machinery underneath.
Let's map this. What are the actual categories of apology we're talking about here?
I'd say there are at least three distinct functions. One is the moral apology — "I did something wrong, I acknowledge it, I regret it, I want to make it right." That's the heavyweight. Then there's the social-harmony apology — "I didn't necessarily do anything wrong, but I want to acknowledge your discomfort or inconvenience and signal that our relationship matters." And then there's the phatic apology — the linguistic tic, the conversational grease. The Irish supermarket sorry.
The Israeli approach, from what the prompt describes, seems to reject at least the second category outright. If it's not my fault, I'm not saying sorry. Because saying sorry would be dishonest.
There's actually a coherent philosophical stance behind that. In a culture that values directness and authenticity — Israel is famously direct, what linguists call a dugri culture from the Arabic word for straight or direct — an apology that doesn't correspond to actual culpability reads as fake. It's almost offensive in its own way. Like, don't insult me by performing remorse you don't actually feel.
Which is exactly the opposite of how it would land in Ireland, where refusing to say sorry in that situation would read as hostile or antisocial. The Israeli is thinking "I'm being honest with you," and the Irish person is hearing "I don't care about your experience.
Neither interpretation is objectively correct. They're both operating within coherent but incompatible social grammars. A single behaviour can mean completely opposite things depending on the cultural operating system.
Let's talk about the business example specifically, because I think it's the most instructive. You order something online. The website says it's in stock. It's not. The company calls you. They try to sell you a substitute. What's actually happening there?
There are a few layers. One is exactly what the prompt identifies — the person on the phone didn't personally fail to update the inventory system, so in their framework, they have nothing to apologise for. Apologising would mean accepting personal responsibility for something they didn't do. That's the individual-responsibility reading.
There's another layer, which is that in a lot of Israeli business culture, the transaction is seen as fundamentally adversarial in a way that's just... The customer is trying to get the best deal, the business is trying to make the sale, and both sides know this. In that framework, apologising for the inconvenience is almost a sign of weakness — it's conceding ground in a negotiation.
Compare that to the American model, where customer service is built around the idea that the customer is always right and the apology is part of the script. It's not necessarily sincere — in fact it's often transparently insincere — but it serves a function. It's a ritual of deference that's supposed to smooth the commercial relationship.
The American "sorry for the inconvenience" is the business equivalent of the Irish supermarket sorry. It's phatic. Nobody thinks it's a real apology. But in America, the fact that it's become so rote has actually made it a liability. The prompt mentions that people think you're trolling if you use it sincerely. It's been hollowed out.
Which is a real problem, because it means you've lost a tool for expressing genuine regret in commercial contexts. The phrase has been so overused as a deflection that it can't do its actual job anymore. It's the boy who cried sorry.
The boy who cried sorry. That's a children's book waiting to happen.
Here's what I think is the deeper question. The prompt says — and I think this is the real thesis — that even if you're not personally responsible, you should apologise to the other person. Is that right?
I think the answer depends on what you think an apology is for. If an apology is exclusively about moral culpability — "I did this bad thing and I need to atone" — then no, you shouldn't apologise for things you didn't do. That would be dishonest. But if an apology is also a tool for acknowledging someone else's experience — "I see that you've been inconvenienced or hurt, and I regret that this happened to you" — then yes, you should.
That second kind of apology — what some researchers call the "empathic apology" — doesn't require you to be at fault. It just requires you to care about the other person's experience. "I'm sorry this happened to you" is not the same as "I'm sorry I did this to you.
I think this is where the Israeli approach, for all its honesty, can sometimes miss something important. Because refusing to apologise for an outcome you didn't personally cause can feel, to the recipient, like you're refusing to acknowledge that anything bad happened to them at all. The message they receive isn't "I'm not at fault" — it's "your inconvenience doesn't register with me.
That's a real cost. Even if it's not intended that way. The Israeli business that doesn't apologise for the inventory error might be thinking "I'm being scrupulously honest about where responsibility lies." The customer is hearing "this company doesn't care that it wasted my time.
What do we actually know empirically about apology across cultures?
There's a pretty robust body of research. One framework that gets used a lot is the distinction between individualist and collectivist cultures, though I think that's sometimes too blunt. In more individualist cultures — the US, much of Western Europe — apologies tend to be about personal responsibility and individual face. In more collectivist cultures — much of East Asia — apologies are often more about group harmony and saving collective face.
Where do Ireland and Israel fit in that framework?
That's where it gets interesting, because neither fits neatly. Ireland is Western and individualist in many ways, but it's also a culture with a very strong emphasis on social harmony and not standing out. The Irish social penalty for being "full of yourself" is famously severe.
Oh, it's brutal. The tall poppy thing in Ireland is no joke. If you get above yourself, the community will cut you down. And apologising — even for things that aren't your fault — is part of how you signal that you're not getting above yourself. It's a humility display.
The phatic sorry is a small, constant performance of "I'm not more important than you." It's egalitarian signalling. In a culture where social hierarchy is suspect, everyone's constantly doing these little deference rituals to show they're not claiming status.
Which is almost the exact opposite of what's happening in Israel, where hierarchy is... Israel is actually quite egalitarian in many ways — very informal, first-name basis with everyone, bosses get challenged openly. But it's also a culture where asserting yourself is not just accepted but expected. If you're too deferential, people wonder what's wrong with you.
The Israeli social mode is more "I'll assert, you'll assert, we'll figure it out." It's a higher-friction mode of interaction, but within the culture it doesn't necessarily feel hostile. It just feels normal. And apologising when you haven't done anything wrong reads as unnecessary deference — almost like you're weakening your position for no reason.
This connects to something we've talked about before — the concept of friction comfort. Different cultures have different comfort levels with interpersonal friction as part of daily life. Israel is a high friction-comfort culture. Ireland is a low friction-comfort culture. And apologies are one of the main tools for reducing friction.
That's a really useful lens. In a low-friction culture, you apologise preemptively to prevent friction from arising. In a high-friction culture, friction is just the medium everyone's swimming in, and apologising for it would be like a fish apologising for the water.
The Israeli who doesn't apologise isn't being rude by their own cultural standards. They're just not doing extra work to reduce friction, because the baseline level of friction is considered normal and acceptable. And the Irish person who apologises constantly isn't being weak or obsequious by their standards. They're just maintaining a low-friction environment, which is what everyone expects. Both behaviours are pro-social within their own context.
Here's the thing — when someone moves from one culture to the other, they experience the other system as a moral failing. The Irish person in Israel thinks "these people are rude and inconsiderate." The Israeli in Ireland thinks "these people are fake and obsequious." And neither of them is necessarily right about the moral content of what they're seeing.
This is one of the hardest things about cross-cultural adaptation. It's not just learning new customs. It's learning that behaviours you experienced as morally loaded in your home culture — "that person is rude," "that person is fake" — are actually morally neutral in the new context. They're just different.
There's another dimension worth pulling out. The prompt mentions the American "sorry for the inconvenience" as something that's become hollow. But I'd argue that the American case is actually a third model entirely — it's the corporate-legal model of apology.
In the American corporate context, apology has been thoroughly lawyered. Companies are terrified that saying "sorry" will be interpreted as an admission of liability. So you get these carefully crafted non-apologies — "we regret any inconvenience" or "we apologise if anyone was offended" — that are designed to sound like apologies without actually being apologies. They're legal shields.
The passive voice is doing a lot of work there. "Mistakes were made.The passive voice apologises so the company doesn't have to.
This creates a weird dynamic where the word "sorry" has been so thoroughly drained of meaning in commercial contexts that when someone actually uses it sincerely, it lands wrong. A phrase that's been used as a shield so often that its sincere use is now illegible.
It's like the corporate world has accidentally destroyed a piece of social vocabulary. They used "sorry" as a get-out-of-jail-free card so many times that the word stopped working for anyone.
This is distinct from both the Irish and Israeli models. The Irish model uses "sorry" as social grease, but it's sincere in its own way — it sincerely signals "I want to maintain harmony with you." The Israeli model withholds "sorry" for cases of actual culpability, which preserves its weight. The American corporate model uses "sorry" as a legal strategy, which destroys its weight entirely.
We've got three models. Irish: sorry as social harmony, used freely, low moral weight, high social function. Israeli: sorry as moral admission, used sparingly, high moral weight, low social lubrication. American corporate: sorry as legal shield, used cynically, no weight at all, counterproductive.
I think the question the prompt is really asking is: can you take the best of these? Can you have a culture where "sorry" retains its moral weight but is also available as a tool for acknowledging someone else's experience?
I think you can, but it requires a distinction that most cultures don't make explicitly. You need two different kinds of apology. One is "I was wrong and I'm sorry." The other is "that happened to you and I'm sorry it did." They're different speech acts. They do different work.
Some languages actually encode this distinction. In Japanese, for instance, there are multiple apology words that do different things. "Sumimasen" can mean everything from "I'm sorry" to "excuse me" to "thank you" depending on context. And then there's "gomen nasai" which is more specifically an apology for wrongdoing. The language itself gives you tools for different kinds of apologetic work.
English kind of does this with "sorry" versus "I apologise." "I apologise" is more formal and carries more weight. "Sorry" is lighter and more flexible. But English speakers don't consistently use them differently, and in some contexts — like the corporate one — both have been hollowed out.
There's an interesting study by some cross-cultural psychologists who looked at apology patterns across something like forty countries. They found that in cultures with stronger social hierarchy — places like Japan, Korea — apologies are more frequent and more elaborate, because they're serving a social-positioning function. In more egalitarian cultures, apologies tend to be simpler and less frequent.
Which would put Ireland in an interesting spot. Egalitarian in ideology, but with very strong norms around social harmony. So you get frequent but simple apologies. Lots of "sorrys" but not a lot of elaborate apology rituals.
Israel is egalitarian in a different way — more confrontationally egalitarian. The social norm isn't "everyone should get along" but "everyone should speak their mind." So apologies are reserved for cases where someone actually crossed a line, because the baseline expectation is robust, direct interaction.
I want to go back to something the prompt mentions that I think is really important. The idea that when you come from one culture, it's very easy to be critical of another just because it doesn't fit your prior background. And the prompt is explicitly trying not to do that, even while acknowledging real frustration.
That's a level of self-awareness that's rare. Because the natural human response to cross-cultural friction is moral judgment. "These people are rude." "These people are fake." It takes real work to step back and say "this is just a different system, and my reaction to it is shaped by my own system.
Yet — and I think this is the tension the prompt is sitting in — understanding that it's a cultural difference doesn't necessarily make the frustration go away. You can know intellectually that the Israeli customer service rep isn't trying to be dismissive, and still feel dismissed. The emotional response doesn't always follow the intellectual understanding.
This is actually something that comes up in the research on expatriate adaptation. There's a phase that a lot of long-term expats go through where they understand the new culture well enough to know that behaviours aren't intended as hostile, but they still experience them as aversive. It's sometimes called the "adjustment plateau." You've gotten past culture shock, you're functioning fine, but there's a set of things that still just...
Apologies — or the absence of them — seem like exactly the kind of thing that would sit on that plateau. Because apologies are so emotionally loaded. They're not just information. They're signals about whether the other person sees you, acknowledges you, cares about your experience.
There's actually a neurological dimension to this. Studies using fMRI have shown that receiving a genuine apology activates areas of the brain associated with empathy and forgiveness. And the absence of an expected apology activates areas associated with social pain. So when you're culturally wired to expect an apology in a certain situation and you don't get one, your brain processes it as a minor social injury.
Which means the Israeli who doesn't apologise for the inventory error is causing real distress to someone from a high-apology culture, even though they're not doing anything wrong by their own cultural standards. And they probably have no idea they're causing that distress.
The person experiencing the distress might not even be able to articulate why it bothers them so much. They just know it feels bad. Meanwhile the Israeli is thinking "I offered them a solution, what's the problem?
What do you do with this? If you're the person who's frustrated by the absence of apology in a new culture, what's the move?
I think there are a few options, and they're not mutually exclusive. One is the cognitive reframe — reminding yourself that the absence of apology isn't hostile, it's just a different norm. That doesn't make the feeling go away, but it can take the edge off. Another is to recognise that you can still value what your home culture does well without condemning the new culture. You can think "Irish apology norms produce a social environment I find more comfortable" without thinking "Israelis are bad people.
I think there's also a case for being explicit about it in relationships where it matters. Not in the supermarket, obviously. But with friends or colleagues, saying "hey, in my culture, when X happens, people usually say sorry — so when you don't, I sometimes read it as you not caring, even though I know that's not what you mean." That's a vulnerable thing to do, but it can actually help.
Cross-cultural communication isn't just about decoding the other culture — it's also about helping the other culture decode you. If Israelis don't know that their non-apology is being read as dismissive, they can't adjust even if they want to.
Though I will say — there's a difference between relationships where you can have that conversation and the daily friction of commercial interactions. You're not going to explain Irish apology norms to the guy on the phone who's trying to sell you a substitute product. That's just going to be grating, and you have to decide whether it's worth the energy to be grated by it.
This is where the expat experience differs from the tourist experience. Tourists encounter cultural differences as novelty. Expats encounter them as daily life. The same thing that was charming on day three is exhausting on day three hundred.
There's a quote I'm trying to remember — something about how the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. And I think there's a version of that with cultural adaptation. The opposite of culture shock isn't loving everything about the new culture. It's not being shocked anymore. It's just... this is how it is. Some things work better, some things work worse, and you stop having strong feelings about most of it.
The things you do still have strong feelings about — those tell you something about your own values. If the absence of apology still bothers you after ten years, that's data. It tells you that acknowledging other people's experience is something you value, not just something you were socialised into.
Which I think is exactly where the prompt lands. "Even if you're not personally responsible, I think you should apologise to the other person." That's not a cultural reflex. That's a moral stance. It's saying: the function of an apology isn't just to assign blame. It's also to acknowledge harm.
I think that's defensible. You can make a case that the Israeli approach — only apologise when you're personally at fault — is too narrow. Because it ignores the fact that institutions and systems can cause harm even when no individual is culpable. The company's inventory system failed. Nobody personally caused that failure. But the customer still lost time and experienced frustration. Acknowledging that isn't dishonest — it's just recognising that harm exists on a different level than blame.
The company is a moral agent even if the customer service rep isn't individually responsible. And the rep is the face of the company. So when the rep refuses to apologise because they personally didn't cause the problem, they're conflating two different kinds of responsibility.
There's individual moral responsibility, and then there's institutional responsibility. In a lot of high-apology cultures, people understand that when a company representative says "I'm sorry," they're speaking for the institution, not confessing personal guilt. The Israeli resistance to this might come from a culture that's more individualistic about responsibility — if I didn't do it, I'm not saying sorry for it.
Which is admirable in its own way. There's an integrity to it. But it also creates a gap where institutional accountability should be.
This connects to something broader about Israeli culture, which is that it's very personalistic. Relationships matter enormously. Personal connections, personal trust, personal responsibility. But institutional culture is weaker. The idea that you're speaking on behalf of an organisation and that the organisation has obligations that are different from your personal obligations — that's less developed.
Which is why protektzia is such a big deal. If the institution won't help you, you need a personal connection to someone inside who will. The personal relationship fills the gap that institutional accountability leaves.
In a culture with stronger institutional accountability — like, say, Germany or the Nordic countries — you don't need to know someone. The system is supposed to work regardless. And part of how the system signals that it's working is through institutional apologies when things go wrong. "We regret the delay." "We apologise for the error." It's the institution speaking.
We've got a spectrum. On one end, institutional apologies that are so routinised they've lost all meaning — the American model. On the other end, a refusal to apologise institutionally at all because only individuals can be sorry — the Israeli model. And somewhere in the middle, the Irish model where apology is so woven into daily social life that it's almost invisible.
None of these is perfect. Each has failure modes. The American corporate apology becomes a shield against actual accountability. The Israeli non-apology leaves people feeling unseen and unacknowledged. The Irish over-apology can become so reflexive that it loses its force — if you say sorry for everything, does sorry mean anything?
I think that's the paradox at the heart of this. An apology that's too easy loses its weight. An apology that's too hard loses its social function. You need it to be available enough to smooth social interaction, but costly enough to mean something when it matters.
Different cultures solve that paradox differently. Some err on the side of availability — more apologies, lighter weight. Some err on the side of costliness — fewer apologies, heavier weight. And some just break the whole thing by using apologies cynically.
Where does that leave our prompt-writer, ten years into living in Israel, still frustrated by the absence of "sorry" in contexts where it would be automatic back home?
I think it leaves him in a position that a lot of thoughtful expats end up in. You can see the logic of both systems. You can appreciate what your adopted culture does well. And you can still miss what your home culture did well. Those things aren't contradictory.
I think there's also a case for being the change. If you think that acknowledging other people's inconvenience is valuable even when you're not personally at fault, you can do that. You can be the person who says "I'm sorry that happened" and means it sincerely. In a culture where that's unusual, it might actually land with more force precisely because it's not expected.
In a high-apology culture, saying sorry can be cheap. In a low-apology culture, saying sorry — sincerely, for someone else's experience — can be meaningful because it's not the default. The scarcity gives it weight.
The Israeli who does apologise, who says "I'm sorry this happened to you" and means it — that person stands out. They're not following a script. They're making a choice. And that choice registers.
Which is the flip side of the frustration. Yes, the baseline level of apology in Israeli commercial culture is lower than what someone from Ireland might expect. But when an apology does come, it's more likely to be real. It hasn't been hollowed out by overuse.
Though I'll say — the prompt's example of the business calling to sell a replacement product without apologising for the inventory error — that's not just a cultural difference. That's a business choosing not to acknowledge a failure. And I think there's a case that some of what gets attributed to Israeli culture is actually just... bad customer service.
That's fair. Culture can become a convenient explanation for things that are actually just poor practice. "Oh, that's just how it is here" can be a way of not improving things that could be improved.
The prompt is careful not to do that — it's not saying "Israeli culture is wrong." It's describing a specific dynamic and asking what's underneath it. But some of what's underneath it might be cultural, and some might just be that certain businesses don't prioritise customer experience.
That's true everywhere. The American company that says "sorry for the inconvenience" in a robotic monotone isn't expressing a cultural value. It's expressing that they've built a system that requires the rep to say the words without meaning them. That's not American culture — that's corporate bureaucracy.
To bring this together — what's the actual answer to the question? When should someone apologise?
I think the most honest answer is: it depends on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to assign blame, apologise when you're at fault. If you're trying to maintain a relationship, apologise when the other person has been hurt or inconvenienced, regardless of fault. If you're trying to navigate a crowded supermarket in Dublin, apologise constantly as a matter of course.
Three different tools for three different jobs. And the problem arises when you try to use one tool for all three jobs, or when you encounter someone who's using a different tool than you expected.
Cross-cultural apology friction is mostly a tool mismatch. Both people are trying to accomplish something socially, but they're using different instruments, and the result is noise instead of music.
That's a good metaphor. The Irish supermarket sorry is a piccolo — light, frequent, keeping the rhythm. The Israeli moral apology is a bass drum — used sparingly, but when it hits, you feel it. The American corporate apology is a player piano — technically playing the notes, but nobody's actually there.
Now I'm imagining an apology orchestra.
Conducted by a Canadian. "Sorry, could the strings please come in a bit earlier? Sorry, that's my fault, I should have been clearer.
The Canadian apology is a whole other category. It's actually been studied. There's something called the Apology Act in Ontario — it's a real law, passed in two thousand nine — that makes apologies inadmissible as evidence of liability in court. The government literally had to pass a law so that people could say sorry without getting sued.
That is incredible. The legal system had to step in to protect a cultural practice from the legal system.
Because the Canadian "sorry" was doing exactly what we've been describing — it was being used as social lubricant, not as an admission of fault. But the courts were treating it as an admission. So the legislature had to clarify: no, when Canadians say sorry, they're just being Canadian. It's not evidence.
That's the most Canadian thing I've ever heard. "We need a law to protect our right to apologise for things that aren't our fault.
It connects directly to what we've been discussing. The Apology Act explicitly distinguishes between an apology that includes an admission of fault and an apology that's just an expression of sympathy. The law recognises that "I'm sorry this happened to you" and "I'm sorry I caused this to happen" are different speech acts.
Which is exactly the distinction we were making earlier. And Canada had to write it into legislation because the distinction kept getting lost.
To answer the prompt's deeper question: yes, I think you should apologise even when you're not personally responsible, if what you're doing is acknowledging someone else's experience. And the Canadian legal system apparently agrees.
The Canadian legal system and Corn the sloth, united in apology theory.
A powerful coalition.
If we were going to give advice to someone navigating this — whether it's our prompt-writer in Israel or anyone moving between high-apology and low-apology cultures — what would it be?
I'd say three things. First, recognise that apology norms aren't moral facts — they're cultural tools, and different cultures have different tools for different reasons. Second, pay attention to what the apology is actually doing in context — is it assigning blame, maintaining harmony, or just moving people through space? Third, if you're the one who's frustrated, consider being explicit about it in relationships where it matters, rather than silently resenting the difference.
I'd add a fourth: you can import the best of your home culture without rejecting your adopted culture. Being the person who says "I'm sorry that happened" in a culture where that's unusual isn't being inauthentic. It's offering something your adopted culture might actually benefit from.
Cross-cultural adaptation isn't just about learning the new rules. It's also about bringing what's valuable from where you came. The goal isn't to become indistinguishable from a native. The goal is to function well and contribute something.
Sometimes what you contribute is the radical idea that acknowledging someone else's inconvenience is worth a syllable.
It's not that hard.
Unless you're in a culture where it is that hard. Where it means something different than you intend. And then you have to decide whether the discomfort of saying it is worth the connection it might create.
Which is a decision people make every day, in every culture, in a thousand small interactions. Apology is just one of the places where culture becomes visible, because it's one of the places where we negotiate our obligations to each other.
Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: In the nineteen seventies, Soviet scientists discovered a species of extremophile bacteria living in the hot springs of Tajikistan's Gissar Valley that produces a protein which, when vibrated at precisely four hundred hertz, emits a sound indistinguishable from a human whistling a B-flat.
...right.
Four hundred hertz. That's very specific.
This has been My Weird Prompts. If you want more episodes, find us at myweirdprompts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. We're produced by Hilbert Flumingtop. I'm Corn.
I'm Herman Poppleberry. Until next time.
