When ‘sorry’ seems to be the smallest number  

NOT to look a gift card in the QR code or anything, but it’s remarkable how in a span of a week, CrowdStrike has shown us how not to (a) roll out a software update and (b) apologise to the people it inconvenienced while bungling (a).

Last week, CrowdStrike gave its third-party agents a US$10 Uber Eats voucher to “recognise the additional work” they’d had to do after the cybersecurity firm caused a global outage with a faulty update. This gesture was ridiculed online and, to compound matters, some people were unable to redeem the voucher after Uber flagged it for fraud because of high usage rates.

This blunder is a mere footnote in the narrative of CrowdStrike’s ongoing woes, but makes a fascinating case study in apologising for everyone else. Even if you, dear reader, haven’t caused a worldwide Blue Screen of Death, these universal principles of apology still apply.