In honour of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which this year begins the evening of Sept. 29 and ends the evening of Sept. 30, and indeed in honour of atonement rituals in religions everywhere, K&K revives its yearly atonement series, begging forgiveness for past mistakes, misdeeds, egregious errors in judgment and moments of all around douchiness. Once again, we’re sorry.
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A few months ago, we went out for drinks with several friends and imbibed three delicious alcoholic beverages. Were the drinks delicious on their own or because they contained alcohol? Sadly, probably the latter.
However, when the bill arrived we noticed our tab only included two of the three drinks we had downed like a champion, while the other drink had mistakenly been put on our friend’s tab.
When the waitress came around with the Interac machine, did we notify her of her mistake and pay for all the drinks we consumed?
No, we did not.
Instead we quickly pulled out our credit card to be the first to pay, and justified our deceitful actions by making a mental note of all the drinks we had provided our friend in the past while hosting get-togethers, dinners and the like.
When it came time for our friend to pay, he scrutinized his bill, noticed the extra drink, told the waitress she had made a mistake and asked the table if anyone was missing a drink from their bill.
At this point we feigned confusion, reassessed the bill and “discovered” that we hadn’t paid for one of our drinks. Since we had already paid, and to avoid further hassle, our friend kindly told the waitress to keep the drink on his tab and we’d “figure it out later.”
We have never brought it up again.
Sorry, friend, for knowingly and passively letting you pay for a drink we should have paid for ourselves. Sorry, waitress, for not bringing the mistake to your attention right away, and instead letting it become a far bigger fiasco than was necessary and, in turn, magnifying the mistake so it involved the entire table and perhaps made you feel worse. Sorry, self, for being so petty and cheap, because in the end the guilt for our dishonesty lingered far longer than any financial savings of not paying for a drink, which went straight to our increasingly chubby belly anyway.
Sibling passivity
There are times when one of our siblings will annoy us. But instead of telling them directly, we will casually mention the thing that annoys us to our mother.
We do this knowing full well that our mother will at some point be in contact with our siblings and, in a roundabout way, address the thing that is annoying us to them.
Our siblings will then phone us and, although neither of us will address the thing we find so annoying, they will make amends in some unspoken way and all will be better.
Sorry, siblings, for not directly addressing our misgivings like an adult and instead employing a third party to broker a resolution. Sorry, mom, for using you as a pawn in our relationship with our siblings, even though deep down we think you enjoy it.
