After reading the first sentence of the post, I paused and tried to imagine what would come next. I had three guesses:

1) A clean, unconditional apology, like: "I screwed up, I'm going to fix it". I had very little hope since people don't often admit this type of things.

2) A defensive apology (that is, not really an apology): "Yeah I kinda screwed up a tiny little bit, but really it wasn't my fault, the predecessors..."

3) A smart-ass offensive strategy: "aha, you don't get it, our t-shirts are really cool, you should be happy that we even offer gifts and recognitions, you ungrateful bastards"

My ideal answer would have been 1) of course. Turns out, he exceeded my expectations (I'm the cynical jerk, here). He was a good guy in the story, explained the situation without fake apologies, or anything. Great answer.