They stopped dead in their tracks, shrugged and nodded, and left. Owning mistakes is an extremely powerful tool when used correctly.
Having said that I don't think a current NTSB investigation would take "i f--ed up" for an answer. They'd want to know why and how. But those were very different times.
It's understandable when a pilot forgets about that one obscure button that's only used in some edge case only happening on one in 100.000 flights.
These days being a pilot is a lot like being a system engineer especially since the dedicated flight engineer position is gone. Yet also requiring the spatial awareness and manual skills of flying. I'm often surprised how well it still goes with the complexity of modern aircraft.
Most of that "complexity" are systems that help the pilots, reduce workload and possibility of error. It's really hard to crash a modern airliner.
When everything is working as it should be. If it isn't, you want the pilot to understand what is not working and act on it.
Essentially the same as ignorance of the law not being a valid defence. I do not know all the laws. I am nevertheless held accountable to them if I am (allegedly) found in contravention of them.
They have recurrent training so they don't forget about those buttons though.
Mechanical failures, maintenance errors, ATC errors, bird strikes, incorrect weather forecasts, etc. are all very common accident causes that are not attributed to pilot error.
EDIT: This article cites a study saying that 69% of general aviation crashes in 2020 were due to pilot error. The remaining 31% is, obviously, still a large number!
Most of the aircraft used in general aviation are about as good at flying themselves as a motorcycle.
The incident investigation might conclude pilot error, the NTSB isn’t responsible for punishing pilots.
Law enforcement might though, and the employer may too.
That just isn’t in the NTSB report.
I've done it all my life, personal and professional. I will (not happily, but I will) explain how I fucked up, and why. But similar to your experience, this catches people completely off guard. They don't expect it and I know why, because in my interactions in turn with people who also, categorically, fucked up: they will NEVER admit it. Most people will die on the hill of not just owning a simple fucking mistake and it's so bonkers to witness. Like... it's fine. You're human. You made a human error. Just like... acknowledge it so we can get on with whatever?
So long as you're not so incompetent that you're repeatedly doing stupid stuff or cynically causing issues so that you can make yourself look virtuous by owning up, of course.
I also find it effective when talking to people that may not be angry at me specifically, but angry at the company I work for. I may not have written the code that fucked up, but I certainly can apologize on behalf of the company and empathize with the user. I’ve found when I do this I’m able to quickly get to a solution rather than degrade further into finger pointing.
I guess my framing of these things goes something like:
* Person A made an error that made things worse for Person B
* A sorta owes B now. Could be A making up for the error—like if A knocked over B's coffee, A could get them a new one. Or another, perhaps disagreeable, sorta justice is B now getting to do something back to A—like B knocking over A's coffee, or just cursing at A for a bit.
* These things would put them back to even.
I feel several comments are thinking of "owning the mistake" primarily as a tool to neutralize B's ability to get back to even. This, rather than owning it to take responsibility or just because it's honest. Saying we're "owning our mistake" is not owning our mistake. The point is to know you were in the wrong—whether that's by introspecting on it, having to buy an extra coffee that day, or getting cursed at.
For something like knocking over a coffee, certainly, the knocker owes the knockee a new coffee, and acknowledging fault and apologizing is the first step to getting there.
(B retaliating by knocking over A's coffee is always going to be unproductive and childish, even if A is unrepentant and rude about it.)
I agree that just saying that you own your mistake isn't enough; owning it means doing the best you can to make amends. But sometimes the person you wronged is fine with just an acknowledgement and an apology. For example, if someone knocked over my coffee, and it seemed like a genuine mistake (that is, it wasn't because the person was being careless or negligent), I probably would accept an apology but decline a new coffee. The apology would be enough for me. Not saying that it would be for everyone, but people are different.
If it's, "Oh, B will be mad, what can I do so that this doesn't take too long? I could apologize and buy them a coffee", it feels less right. It inches toward that phrase that goes something like "the fastest way to get someone to shut up is to agree with them." It might be true in a practical sense and yet it's woefully sociopathic.
In other words, disarm means the "emotional" center of the brain can safely disengage and the logical center can take over. When someone is angry, most likely, their emotions have taken over and, once that happens, you're going to spend a lot of time dealing with emotions and not moving toward a mutual solution.
Therefore, if you look at it this way, how is the pure emotional response from the aggrieved helping them get to a sort of recompense? I would argue the short answer is that it is not helping at all, it's just pure lashing out. Which, of course, could be a rational response to the situation. However, no matter how justified the aggrieved may feel in lashing out, the act of lashing out itself doesn't actually move the needle.
If I can show compassion and empathy toward the customer, including saying the simple words "I'm sorry" I'm trying to move out of the emotional state and into a logical state where we can come to some sort of agreement on the next course of action. I'm not trying to "get out" of anything, just trying to literally disengage a part of the brain that is not doing anyone any good for either party.
To your point though the apology has to be authentic. And, yes, I do empathize with the customer's anger in the moment. I've been there myself. So I can easily put myself in their shoes. Of course, as the great philosopher Daniel Tiger says, "Saying I'm sorry is the first step, now how can I help?" [0]. So unless you just want to enrage the customer further, you need to immediately follow that apology up with action - in my case, it could be escalating to the right engineering group, finding a workaround, helping identify the root cause, whatever it could be...
Hope this helps clarify. I'm in no way trying to "pull one over" anyone. I truly want to help - which is probably why it works so well.
[0] https://pbskids.org/videos/watch/saying-im-sorry-is-the-firs...
disarming means that we can move past the "I'm pissed at you, why can't you fix your stuff" useless conversation
disarm means the "emotional" center of the brain can safely disengage and the logical center can take over. When someone is angry, most likely, their emotions have taken over and, once that happens, you're going to spend a lot of time dealing with emotions and not moving toward a mutual solution.This is an aside, but I find this shift in a lot of places. Someone double parks on a busy street, a person gives them a honk (doesn't lay on the horn, doesn't curse them out, doesn't flip them off), and the doubleparker gets pissed (lays on the horn, curses at them, flips them off). This seems a rather common scene today. One honk is a fairly low form of accountability for the inconvenient/selfish behavior, but culturally we often treat the honk as the bigger faux pas. We expect the driver to "chill out" and "move on" and don't expect the doubleparker to accept the tiny consequence let alone own the mistake.
I think this may ultimately involve some amount of personal philosophy. I would stand by the notion that disarming shouldn't be a particular goal of owning mistakes. It focuses too much on the victim. Owning mistakes is a kind of hygiene for the mistake maker (which they/we often skip) yet the victim is getting a lot of scrutiny. Totally agree that saying "sorry" is only the first step of being sorry—that phrase has been used by friends/myself before, though I didn't know it was a wider one. Thanks for the thoughts, definitely no concern on my end about intent.
The average line of code that I type has three typos and one syntax error, so I'm accustomed to making mistakes (and fixing them).
I used to cycle commute to work. This one time I caused a guy to miss a gap in traffic, wasn’t something I was trying to do, just the timing worked out that way.
I saw him starting to curse, I don’t think it was directed at me, but I blew him a kiss anyway.
The cursing transformed immediately to a bust of laughter from both of us, I think made his day.
Truthfully, I believe I have this attitude to thank for why I've never been fired as a software engineer.
I'm not stupid, but I have a pattern of making mistakes that goes way back to childhood. I can mitigate it but probably will never reach a normal error rate. Any time I cause a problem, no matter how severe, I just own it and make sure anyone affected or involved in mitigation gets their due credit. There is just no sense in pretending a spade isn't a spade when there is a learning opportunity to be had, or making an already tense situation worse.
Did you forgot it existed, or was it a not completely honest apology?
k
Brains are weird.
I worry a bit about the "when used correctly" part because it suggests only owning mistakes sometimes, but it could be read many ways.
For example nobody except another old lady is gonna scream at an old lady.
Edit: Some of you seem to have missed the point about human nature here.
- 6'0, 30s guy that has had many old lady scream at me due to temper tantrums
Exactly. They don't hold you to a lower standard. If it was a teenager they might've cut some slack. Most people will cut an elderly person or a person who's very outnumbered by kids in the car a little slack. Etc, Etc.
So perhaps that person in the other car looked at you and decided for whatever reason you deserved to be held to a lower standard than they project upon everyone if no other information is available.