The word that costs nothing

The text that morning said the table had been moved from eight to nine, and it opened with an apology. Nobody wrote it. A booking system sent it, and it still landed softly.

That evening in Salalah, after the drive and the wait, the waiter explained that the slow-cooked lamb everyone comes for was finished for the night. He said it the way someone reads out a bus timetable. Then he waited for an order.

He had not cooked too little. He had not decided the portions. He was simply the person standing at the table when the news arrived, and I suspect that is exactly why he did not apologise. To him, sorry would have meant owning a fault that was not his.

That is a narrow reading of the word. Said between two people, sorry does not have to be a confession. It can just be an acknowledgement: this is not what you hoped for, and I can see that. It takes no blame, costs nothing, and changes the temperature at the table.

The odd thing is that the machine understood this better than the man. It has no feelings and no fault, and still it led with the courtesy. The guest felt looked after by software and brushed off by a person.

Most of the disappointments people meet in a day are nobody's fault in particular. A finished dish, a late delivery, a form that rejects your name. The person in front of them did not cause it and cannot fix it. What they can do is say the small word that tells the other person they have been noticed.

It turns out to help the one saying it, too.