I've Been Prompted
Session 05: Excuses

HUMAN: On Monday a woman in my team got the blame for something I did. I had about four seconds to say so, and I didn't say anything.

MACHINE: Start with the thing you did, before the four seconds.

HUMAN: Last Thursday night, at quarter past eleven, I sent a client next year's pack with last year's price list attached. From my own account, at my kitchen table. She'd built the pack, the old list was in the same folder as the new one, same name with last year's date on the end, and I attached the wrong one. She's only been with us since January.

MACHINE: And when did anybody notice that the prices were wrong?

HUMAN: The client rang the office on Friday, quite pleased, to ask whether we were really holding our prices for another year. Somebody took a message. And on Monday, at the ten o'clock, our manager read the message out, and then he looked at her.

MACHINE: Why was it her he looked at, and not you?

HUMAN: Because it's her pack. Her name's on the front page. He'd only seen the message, not the email, so anybody would have looked at her. She went red from the collar up, and she said she'd check, and he said please do, and wrote something down, and moved on to the next item.

MACHINE: And the four seconds are where, exactly?

HUMAN: Between him looking at her and him writing it down.

MACHINE: Why didn't you say anything, in those four seconds?

HUMAN: I've got four reasons, and I believe every one of them. The first is that it didn't click it was mine. Not in the meeting. I didn't look in my sent folder until the afternoon.

MACHINE: And what was in the sent folder, when you looked?

HUMAN: The email, from me, with the time on it. The second is that if I'd said it there, in front of eleven people, it would have turned into a whole thing, and he was already in a mood about the client. It would have made the meeting worse for everybody, her included. And the third is that it was her folder. She left the old list in with the new one and didn't take it out.

MACHINE: Did she put the old list in that folder, or was it there before she built the pack?

HUMAN: She put it there. So it's partly her folder. I know how that sounds. And the fourth is that I'd have looked as if I was being noble. Falling on my sword in front of everyone.

MACHINE: Which of the four were you thinking during the four seconds?

HUMAN: Some of them, I think. I couldn't tell you which. They all feel as though they were in there.

MACHINE: J. L. Austin wrote about excuses. A Plea for Excuses: his presidential address to the Aristotelian Society, in October nineteen fifty-six.

HUMAN: The title sounds as if it's on my side.

MACHINE: The plea is for studying them. Early on he separates two ways of defending what somebody did. In the one defence, briefly, we accept responsibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but don't accept full, or even any, responsibility. The first is a justification. The second is an excuse.

HUMAN: I'd have called all four of mine excuses.

MACHINE: Two of them are nearer the first kind. That speaking would have made the meeting worse, and that you would have looked noble: those are reasons why keeping quiet was the sensible thing to do.

HUMAN: The noble one isn't a reason I gave myself. It's just true. Half that room would have rolled their eyes.

MACHINE: It can be true and still be what you offer for keeping quiet. And both of those need you to have realised, in the meeting, that there was something to say.

HUMAN: That's very tidy. It wasn't tidy in the room. I had all of it at once: the client, him in a mood, her folder, how I'd look. Nobody sorts their reasons into two piles in four seconds.

MACHINE: Most of those can be had at once. The first cannot be had with the other two. If it had not clicked that the email was yours, there was nothing for you to be deciding whether to say.

HUMAN: The folder still happened, though. She did leave the old list in there. If she hadn't, there'd have been nothing wrong to attach.

MACHINE: She did. But the folder is about Thursday night, not Monday. If it excuses anything, it excuses the email, and it does nothing for the four seconds.

HUMAN: Then which was it? You've read the thing. Tell me which one I've got, because I've been round it every night since Monday and I can't.

MACHINE: The only account you have given me that is about the moment itself is the first one. The other three are reasons for keeping quiet. So I would start from the first. Austin's word for it is inadvertently, and it does not mean that your mind was elsewhere.

HUMAN: Mine was, a bit. I had the forecast next and I hadn't finished it.

MACHINE: That would be absence of mind, and he keeps the two apart. His example is a snail. You crush it walking down the public path, because you do not exercise such meticulous supervision over your movements as would have been needed to miss it. Calling that inadvertent puts it in a class of incidental happenings which must occur in the doing of any physical act.

HUMAN: How do you tread on something by keeping your mouth shut?

MACHINE: You don't, and his examples are things done: a step, or a remark let slip while you are telling a story. A silence is neither, so this part is my step and not his. You were occupied with the meeting: following your manager, reading the agenda, waiting for your own item. Keeping quiet happened in the course of all that, the way the snail happens in the course of the walk.

HUMAN: It's the kind word, though, isn't it. And I was waiting for my item, that's true.

MACHINE: On what you have told me, you fit it. He also says that a plea like that can be true and still not be allowed. You may plead that you trod on the snail inadvertently, but not on a baby, because of standards.

HUMAN: It was a price list. Nobody got hurt. She'll have forgotten about it by the end of the month, and so will he.

MACHINE: You told me she went red from the collar up, in front of eleven people. Which side of his line that falls on, he does not say.

HUMAN: When he read out the old prices, I knew it was mine. Before he'd looked at anybody. I knew the name of the file. I'd looked straight at it at quarter past eleven on Thursday.

MACHINE: You told me it didn't click until the afternoon. Why should I take this over that?

HUMAN: I checked in the afternoon, and I knew what I'd find. And while he was looking at her, I turned over the page of the agenda, and there wasn't anything on the next page I needed.

MACHINE: The page is something you did in those four seconds. That it didn't click is something you told me afterwards, and I took it as a report of what you noticed at the time. That was my mistake, and the word I gave you rested on it.

HUMAN: So it's the other word, then. I did it deliberately.

MACHINE: He warns against assuming that a word has one opposite, and inadvertently is one of the words he names. Deliberately is in the address, among the expressions that aggravate, and he says what it takes: when you act deliberately you act after weighing it up. Did you weigh anything up in four seconds?

HUMAN: I don't think there was time to weigh anything. I just turned the page.

MACHINE: Then put his question to it. What modifies what? Which part of what happened does the word attach to, and how much of it? He says a description can cover a smaller or a larger stretch of events. Four seconds is the smallest you could have chosen.

HUMAN: On Monday afternoon I had the email open, with the time on it, and I closed it again. On Tuesday she asked me whether I'd kept a copy of what went to the client, and I said I'd have a look.

MACHINE: Then what were your reasons on Monday afternoon? Not in the meeting: after it.

HUMAN: The same ones, apart from the first. I couldn't tell myself it hadn't clicked any more. It would still have been a whole thing, and he'd still have been in a mood. And I never wanted her blamed for it.

MACHINE: Then since Monday afternoon you have had time to weigh it up, and you have kept quiet, knowing it stays on her. On his account of the word, that is deliberately, and it is not four seconds.

HUMAN: I haven't been weighing anything up. I've been going in to work, and sitting across from her, and not saying it, and going home again.

MACHINE: And what does your manager believe, as of this evening?

HUMAN: That her pack went out with last year's prices in it. He told her afterwards to be more careful with version control.

MACHINE: And what does she believe, do you think?

HUMAN: She half thinks she did it. At lunch on Monday I watched her go through the folder, one version at a time, looking for how the old list got in. She looked for about twenty minutes, and then she stopped, and I don't know whether she'd found nothing or decided she must have put it there. She's been quiet since. She didn't send the pack round before this morning's meeting, and she always does.

MACHINE: Has she said anything to you about it?

HUMAN: She apologised to me. Monday afternoon, by the kettle, for making me look bad with the client.

MACHINE: And what have you done about it, since then?

HUMAN: I've written to him. He's the one who said it to her, in front of everybody.

MACHINE: Have you sent it to him yet, or is it written?

HUMAN: It's been sitting there since lunch. One line, and the forwarded email with the time on it. It says: just noticed the Thursday pack went out from my account, not hers, so the price list was my mistake. Apologies for any confusion.

MACHINE: You have written that you have just noticed.

HUMAN: It says not hers, as well. That's the part she needs.

MACHINE: Everything said here, and where the quotations came from, is kept at spiegamelo.com/prompted.

The voices are synthesised. The incidents are invented. The problems are not, and the philosophy is quoted accurately or not at all.