Dress code: blue tie and male

If a nutjob were to tell you, "Hey gfodor, your comment is extremely offensive to those of us working in public relations. We're the people who are actually trying to placate the population, yet you paint us as disingenuous, calculating, and shallow. Even though we have NO other job than to placate the public after we mess up. That's the ONE THING we do. How can you be so offensive to us?"

Then the proper response would be "Well, I'm very sorry if you are offended. I do like companies to take genuine corrective action, and any company that has public relations employees who make true apologies out of regret for the hurt and other negative effects they have caused, especially if these people also have enough power and will within the organization to effect policies to ensure the company can't do such a thing in the future, is a company that I support."

see, the nutjob was completely misreading you. You don't have to apologize to them.

This is the CORRECT use for "Well, I'm sorry you feel this way." It means you disagree, but still, would prefer the other side see things correctly. You care about them, but you stand by your actions.

In summary, I completely agree with you. But given the number of nutjobs out there, sometimes a nutjob-placating response is appropriate. Whenever I see nutjobs attacking a company for completely stupid reasons, I am glad to see this response trotted out. In the present instance, like you, I am not happy to see it.

Also, if an intelligent person uses this formula with me, "I'm sorry you feel this way" it means that they are interested in my understanding and feelings, and interested in talking about why I feel this way, but feel that they are justified (without crossing their arms and lifting their chin about it). This is very valuable feedback, and can open the dialogue to where either I or this person modifies their view. It's a lot better than just shutting down or blindly apologizing! No one should apologize 'genuinely' just to placate people, if they feel they did the right thing. They should at least give the reasons for their actions. On the other hand, if they know they did do the wrong thing, then they should take responsibility for it.

Several commenters underline that it was only comedy and not intended to be taken seriously - and noting that it is typical for women not to be able to take a joke and overreact and play the victim and wanting special treatment.

So I don't know if Dell have a culture of misogyny, but they clearly have their share of stupidity.

Avoiding having a guy that is blatantly sexist and misogynistic is not exactly hard nowadays.

Yes, but the world does not owe us to deserve apologies every time that we are offended.

Sometimes we are offended, but we shouldn't be (because we are wrong), other times we are offended and it is arguable if we should or should not be (because it's a complex issue that can be seen either way).

So people can both be sorry that you were offended and _still_ feel like they have the right to say what they said. I.e they don't like offending people, but they feel that what they did was right and you should not feel offended.

Here's an extreme example:

I might say in a conversation that "Republicans are creeps". This might offend someone. Now, I could truly feel sorry for making that other person feel bad, but that does n't mean that I also regret my opinion.

The key here is that other people are not summed entirely in that one _thing_ that I might have offended them on (ie. my friend is not described entirely by the fact that he is a card-carrying republican). So, I might like them as people, as friends, as colleagues, etc, and feel sorry if I made them feel bad, but still dislike that _thing_ about them.