Is it something in the air? How do my carefully chosen words get changed in the short distance from the speaker to listener? Distorted meanings cause so much trouble.
“I never meant harm”. A simple statement of fact, a remark or an observation…
“Anyway, that’s how I am; what you see is what you get, I can’t change, it’s just how I am…” Or, “It’s not my problem if you can’t take it…” etc etc.
I hear it often (usually in the workplace); somebody who habitually offends, letting their unacceptable behaviour off the hook with self-serving statements like these.
It’s not acceptable, and feeble excuses won’t make it so. The trouble is, nobody tells them, and so it continues.
Whose responsibility?
See also Communication Breakdown? Really?