Social faux pas 3: on excuses, excuses, excuses

Hi there guys, in today's post, I want to talk about one aspect of the transition from childhood to adulthood that is somewhat tricky. My regular readers will know that I am helping my nephew with his A level economics and I want to talk about something he has done more than once which somewhat irks me. A few weeks ago, we were looking at a case study from South Korea - the South Korean government had slashed interest rates in a bid to stimulate spending in South Korea, so we were using this case study to look at the cause & effect of how government policy on interest rates can affect the economy. I asked my nephew a question which he couldn't answer but what I got instead was an excuse from him. He claimed that his teacher in school hasn't taught him anything about South Korea, so he couldn't be expected to know the answer to that question. His response irked me because he is already 18, I expected him to take responsibility for the gaps in his knowledge. I wasn't going to scold or punish him for not knowing the answer, all I wanted him to do was to be honest about not understanding certain aspects about the topic and then I would know where to focus the future lessons. Instead I got an excuse, I don't even think it was a carefully planned out course of action - he just went into blind panic when he couldn't figure out the answer to the question, thus he then offered an excuse instead. 

The reason why I reacted so badly to his 'excuse' was because he couldn't write something like, "my teacher didn't cover this topic in class, so please give me full marks for this section" in his A level exams. No, the people marking the exam scripts don't get involved at all in evaluating the quality of the teaching that the students have received - they merely mark the answers that they have in front of them. Even if the student is majorly disadvantaged by having a terrible teacher, that's still not something the examiner can fix by showing mercy and accepting this excuse. The second reason why I was upset was because this question wasn't specific about South Korea at all, it merely dealt with some very basic concepts of economics. Many countries' governments have slashed interest rates in the past in order to stimulate their economies, so you could have easily replaced 'South Korea' with the name of any other country for that question and you still had to understand how the interest rate is related to so many other aspects of how the economy functions. Hence it was a very fair question about a topic that his teacher should have already covered in class already and even if the true 'excuse' was, "my teacher is really terrible at explaining complex concepts, that's why most of the people in my class don't understand this chapter at all", offering me any kind of excuse still wouldn't have been an appropriate response in this case for another reason: he is already 18. I would accept that excuse from an 8 year old child but in my nephew's case, I am treating him like an adult as he is already 18. Oh yeah, time flies - my reader Amanda just commented recently that she thought my nephew was a lot younger but he has already turned 18 this year so he is no longer a child. 

So if there was a gap in an 8 year old's knowledge and the 8 year old revealed that the teacher at school had completely missed out a chapter that was a part of the curriculum, then I wouldn't blame the young child at all and place the blame squarely on the teacher. At that age, young children are completely dependent on their parents as well as other adults in their lives such as their teachers - they are way too young to fend for themselves. But as an 18 year old, my nephew is already an adult and thus I am expecting him to act like one; sure I know I can come across as quite harsh at times but I stand by the approach I have adopted. Why do children give excuses when they think they are expecting punishment? Let me give you an example from when I was in primary school. I have a classmate whom I shall refer to as Sue, she was playing with a group of us in the playground when she ripped her uniform. When Sue's mother came to pick her up from school later that day, she noticed the damage to Sue's uniform and got angry: either she would have to try to mend the uniform or have to by a new one for Sue. Note that Sue's family were quite poor, so having to buy her a new uniform would have cost money that the family did not have, it was an unexpected expense. So Sue came up with a vivid story that she was going down the stairs when two older boys came running down the stairs and bumped into her from behind, causing her to fall down the stairs and that was how her uniform was damaged. It was a lie of course, I saw her Sue damaged her uniform when we were playing but I could see why Sue came up with that excuse. Her mother was very angry and upset at that point, so Sue needed to find a way to defuse the situation and credit to my friend Sue, it worked!

So if an 8 year old girl knows nothing about South Korea, then I wouldn't blame her - if the adults in her life (her parents, her teachers, her relatives etc) have not made an effort to introduce her to some Korean culture, then fair enough, I wouldn't expect her to know much about South Korea. But my nephew actually knows a fair amount about South Korea - he takes an interest in K-pop, he has watched some K-dramas and his parents enjoy Korean cuisine. When you put all those factors together, my nephew actually knows plenty about South Korea despite his teachers never having mentioned South Korea in the context of the classroom. This tells me two things: firstly, my nephew lacks confidence to use the knowledge that he has picked up over the years about South Korea and secondly, he still thinks that knowledge is somehow more valid if it is passed on by a teacher in a classroom compared to the way he may learn about South Korea if he watches a K-drama series or takes an active interest in Blackpink. So another reason why my nephew's response irked me was that he didn't take the initiative to try to use his knowledge of Korean culture to try to create an answer, instead he focused his efforts into giving me an excuse. Here's the thing: I've made it very clear that I would never scold or punish my nephew in my lessons as a golden rule so why did he react like Sue and scrambled to give me an excuse as if I was about to punish him for not knowing the right answer? So, is this a cultural thing or just a sign of immaturity? Or could this be even a lack of social skills when dealing with a situation when you can't answer a question? 

But I have another theory about this: perhaps my nephew isn't really offering me that excuse at all, maybe my opinion of him doesn't matter that much to him - rather, he is offering that excuse to himself to try to feel better about the situation. It is a coping mechanism when people feel inadequate and they're trying to reassure themselves that it is not their fault. I remember doing exactly that when I was a teenager in Singapore training gymnastics: there were times when I had a bad session and I would leave the gym feeling extremely frustrated. My brain would then automatically start finding excuses: I blamed everything and everyone from the equipment to my coach to my team mates to the gymnastics association to my parents - I blamed anyone but myself; I think I reacted like that because the alternative would be to accept that I was not talented enough to succeed in this sport and that I should just give up. Let me be the first to admit that this was not only a very immature way to deal with the situation but also the wrong way: if I had taken responsibility for the poor results during my training, I could then take control of the situation. If I am the cause of the problem, then I can then fix myself to make the problem go away and in so doing, I can then take charge of the situation. However, if I constantly blamed others instead, it could be a short-term solution to make myself feel better about the situation (such as a bad training session when nothing goes right), but in the long run, it would cultivate a very passive and unhelpful attitude when faced with any kind of problem. One should instead focus on fixing the problem rather than appropriating blame - the former would get us closer to a solution, whilst the latter does not bring us a step closer to a better outcome. 

So please allow me to put myself in my nephew's shoes for a moment: I remember I was at an event in Brussels (this was back in the pre-Covid days) when I met someone who started talking to be about cryptocurrencies, let's call him Mr Malta (since he is Maltese). Admittedly, I don't know enough about it - it has simply an area of finance that I had never taken much of an interest in and here I was talking to an expert. Did I start making excuses about why I didn't know enough about cryptocurrencies? No, after all, Mr Malta wasn't going to scold me or punish me for that - we're not in the same situation as Sue and her mother after she had damaged her school uniform. Instead, I simply turned the situation around by asking Mr Malta to tell me more about his area of expertise and I showed interest by demonstrating that I was happy for him to teach me more about a topic that he was clearly very passionate about. In fact, Mr Malta was more than happy to have that conversation with me, it wasn't awkward at all since I was asking him plenty of intelligent questions about how cryptocurrencies worked and more importantly, how Mr Malta has managed to make so much money from trading Bitcoin. I don't know all that much about cryptocurrencies but it didn't matter - I just asked Mr Malta plenty of questions and he did the answering. So what my nephew could have done was simply acknowledge, "uncle Alex, you know so much about South Korea, please teach me more about South Korea," before asking me some more questions about South Korea. That would have been a carbon copy of the approach I took with Mr Malta; it requires a mix of social skills and street smarts to know just how to handle situations like that without feeling the urge to offer any kind of excuse.

I think there's also an aspect of self-confidence at play here: I wasn't afraid to admit to Mr Malta that my knowledge was lacking when it came to cryptocurrencies because I was good at other things (that he knew little about); we acknowledged that we were simply two guys working in quite different parts of the financial services industry and had very different skill sets. Mr Malta then spent some time asking me what I did for a living, thus we both realized that I could not do what Mr Malta did and likewise, he couldn't do what I did. I wasn't ashamed of not knowing enough about cryptocurrencies and Mr Malta wasn't ashamed either about not knowing much about debt capital markets. I suppose it is somewhat unfair to compare that to the situation with my nephew where I am playing the role of the teacher whilst he is the student - of course it is taken for granted that I know more than him (otherwise I have no business being his teacher), but it is his tendency to offer an excuse that bothers me. This begs the question: why is he doing it? Is he often subject to punishment by his teachers in school if he didn't know the right answer, hence the instinct to react the way Sue did when it came to her damaged school uniform? If children come across as overly defensive, it suggests that they are not relaxed and comfortable, that this defensiveness is caused by an anxiety about a possibility of punishment. It does make me wonder why my nephew feels the need to get defensive with me even over a topic like that? After all, if he knew all the answers then he wouldn't need my help with his economics syllabus. Was he afraid that I would judge him harshly for not knowing the answer to that question about South Korea? Or have I come across as such an unapproachable uncle?! 

But allow me to give you another scenario which is somewhat different: my friend Andy was coming to London and I told him that he could stay with me whilst he was in town. I had expected his flight to land at 5 pm and for him to arrive at my place by 7 pm at the very latest, at which point we were supposed to have gone out for dinner together. I waited and waited, no sign of Andy and finally at around 8 pm, I get a text message from him that his plane was delayed and that he had only just touched down at Heathrow airport. When I finally met him much later, he told me that there was a drunk and disruptive passenger during the boarding of the flight which resulted in the police boarding the flight and removing that disruptive passenger before the plane was finally able to take off, causing a further delay since the plane had missed their take-off slot. Andy's plane sat on the runway for what seemed like a very long time before it was finally able to take off; so how would you classify that story? Is it a reasonable explanation as to why his flight was delayed? Or was it an excuse to make it clear to me that it wasn't his fault that he turned up so late? Obviously it was clear that Andy wasn't responsible for the delay to that flight, so I couldn't blame him for ruining our dinner plans that evening. After all, it was clear that Andy was late because his flight was delayed and I was curious to find out what caused the delay - he volunteered that piece of information not so much to deflect blame for turning up late, but because I had asked him for that piece of information. Will you consider that an 'excuse' then, or just an explanation as to why the flight was delayed? 

This then begs the question: is there ever a good time to use an excuse? Let's go back to my old classmate Sue - her uniform was already damaged, she didn't just use an excuse to avoid an punishment, she outright lied to her mother. Her actions made sense - after all, a scolding and/or a beating from her mother wasn't going to make things any better, so she may as well tell a little white lie to make her mother feel less angry about the situation. Likewise, I had a forgetful episode recently - I told my husband I was going to the supermarket and he asked me if I could get some tomatoes. I said sure, I then went to the supermarket, got distracted and promptly forgot to get him the tomatoes he had asked for. Instead of telling the truth, I said, "there were very few tomatoes left in the supermarket by the time I got there - they all looked rather bruised and over-ripe. We have plenty of other vegetables in the fridge and I'll get you the tomatoes tomorrow. I will make sure I go to the supermarket earlier tomorrow." Did I lie and come up with an excuse just like Sue did?  Yes, of course I did. Admitting that I forgot the tomatoes might just cause a lot more angst - I would then be admitting that I was disorganized and forgetful, I should have written it down and made a shopping list. In both cases, the excuse made the other party feel better about the situation. I definitely believe that there are times when you can quite justifiably use an excuse or even make up one that is entirely fictitious if the end result is one that is more desirable than simply telling the truth. However, did my nephew's excuse make me feel better about the situation? No it didn't, not at all.

In fact, I use excuses all the time at work - a few days ago, I was reading my emails at lunchtime when I realized I had completely missed one that came in very early in the morning from one of my directors. I had no idea why I didn't see that email, the truth is it was just one of those mornings when I had so many emails I somehow missed one and it had to be that one from my director. Since we're mostly working from home these days because of the pandemic, I didn't want him to think that I was being very lazy and only getting out of bed in time for lunch! So instead, I told him that I saw that email first thing in the morning but had not answered it as one of my clients in Taiwan had a rather urgent issue so I had been on the phone with her for much of the morning trying to help her resolve that issue. My director simply said, "sure of course, don't worry Alex - always deal with the clients first before answering internal emails - they are our priority." Once again, simply being totally honest would have only gotten me into more trouble because it would have given my director the impression that I was rather disorganized. Hence my excuse made my director feel a lot better about the situation, after having waited a few hours for me to answer a simple email. Thus I'm not against people using excuses at all, but I think you have to be very clear what your objective is. If the outcome is going to improve when you deploy the right excuse, then sure, by all means do come up with the best excuse for the situation. However, I don't think my nephew has mastered this fine art of using excuses this way yet - it is just another facet of social skills that he does need to work on. 

I would compare the use of excuses to the bottle of light soy sauce I have in my kitchen. I use it for a range of dishes but really only when it would improve the flavour. Recently I made a vegetable soup that was a bit bland, so I gave it a splash of soy sauce to give it that umami kick. There are times when I can use it but I won't because it is unlikely to make much of a difference, such as when I make a pot of curry - it would be pointless adding soy sauce to that as there are already so many strong flavours going on in the pot, the soy sauce would be completely lost in there. Then there are times when it would only make things worse: sometimes I would buy a nice tub of vanilla ice cream and then make it exciting by adding toppings like chopped walnuts, dried cranberries and matcha powder to create my own sundae. However, would I put soy sauce on my vanilla ice cream? Hell no, I have seen recipes for some kind of soy-infused salted caramel ice cream before but to simply splash soy sauce onto vanilla ice cream is bad idea! An experienced chef will know when to use the soy sauce appropriately, it is when it will improve the dishes but not waste it on something like a curry or ruin a perfectly good bowl of vanilla ice cream. I'm afraid in this aspect, my nephew is like an inexperienced chef who pours soy sauce on everything whether it will improve the recipe or not. He has no idea when it would be appropriate to offer an excuse and when it is better to be totally honest. If he didn't know the answer to the question, all he had to do was say, "uncle Alex I don't understand this topic - could you explain this to me please?" Well, that is precisely what I am there for.

So that's it from me on this issue, what do you guys think? Are you someone who always uses excuses be it at work or with your family and friends or perhaps you know someone like that? How do those excuses make you feel about the situation? Do you think it is unethical to outright lie when coming up with an excuse? Or do you think lying is perfectly justified as long as you make the other person feel better about the situation? Why are students like my nephew putting too much faith in their teachers instead of taking their own initiative to learn? Why do you think children feel the urge to always give an excuse and how do we train them to come up with a better response? Furthermore, how would you distinguish between a reasonable explanation and an excuse? Do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.