IN every team-building session Mae has attended — endured, actually — in her 34 years of corporate life, there is one ritual that refuses to go extinct: the gratitude letter.
Write one. Read it aloud. Try not to cry. Applaud politely. Pretend you aren’t thinking about the coffee outside slowly losing its will to live.
Mae has written many gratitude letters over the years. Mostly heartfelt. Mostly sincere. Some clearly written before caffeine had done its job.
Gratitude letters are good. They make people feel appreciated, affirmed, and briefly important — right before the next agenda item appears.
But in all those workshops and freezing-cold function rooms, there is one thing she has never encountered: a forgiveness letter.
Not the vague, cosmic kind addressed to “the universe,” but a real one — written to someone in the room you may have offended.
Because in any group that has met more than once, someone has been offended. By a tone. A look. A “per my last email.” Or by someone taking the last cup of coffee and not making a fresh pot.
Mae doesn’t believe she deliberately offends people. But she has lived long enough — and sat through enough meetings — to know that some offenses are unconscious. Efficient. Accidental. Occasionally caffeinated. And sometimes, tragically, food-related.
She once confessed this during a pantry talk, because that is where truths surface.
In Grade One, Mae was punished by her teacher and made to “sit on air,” a squatting exercise meant to discipline both legs and ego. Her crime? Turning a classmate’s family name into a song. The classmate cried. Mae didn’t laugh, but the class did.
Silence, she later learned, is not always innocence.
That memory resurfaced years later after Mae watched Flatliners. Guilt came knocking — uninvited and well-timed. She even considered looking for that classmate, not to reconnect, but simply to say: “I’m sorry. I was seven. And musically irresponsible.”
Still, corporate culture remains loyal to gratitude. Write one randomly, they say. Just don’t overdo it.
Too many gratitude notes and people grow suspicious. They’ll think you’re resigning, asking for a favor, or launching a podcast. Overdo it, and you risk being coldplayed — thanked warmly, smiled at kindly, then quietly ignored forever.
But saying sorry is harder.
Thank you is easy. It’s neat. Polished. Often paired with pastries.
Sorry gets stuck somewhere between pride and fear. It requires humility, courage, and the discipline not to follow it with, “But I was under pressure.”
Apologize too much, of course, and you become the office welcome mat — stepped on daily, cleaned occasionally, respected never.
If Mae were to design a team-building session, she would skip the trust falls and install a Sorry Station. A quiet corner. Strong coffee. No HR forms. Just pens, paper, and accountability.
Because some wounds run deeper than words.
Like walking into the pantry, already exhausted, only to find the coffee pot empty. Or discovering that Lyn’s puto — soft, carefully wrapped, mentally reserved since morning — is gone. No note. No apology. Just crumbs and betrayal.
That kind of damage doesn’t need gratitude. It needs forgiveness. Or at least a suspect list.
So yes, gratitude lifts morale. But forgiveness restores balance — especially when caffeine and carbohydrates are involved.
And if Mae has ever offended anyone — with her words, her tone, or her efficiency — she didn’t mean it.
But if someone took the last cup and the last of Lyn’s puto?
That wasn’t unconscious. That was personal.
Still brewing thoughts — no sugarcoating, just stories steeped in truth.
