Tim Armstrong, the chief executive who most looks like he should play an evil CEO in a futuristic technothriller, made an unpopular announcement last week. He made employees’ 401(K) packages much less favorable, then blamed that decision on $7.1 million in unspecified “Obamacare costs” as well as “two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general.” Ungrammatical, illogical AND dickish!

The public outcry began immediately. And that evening, Armstrong sent a helpful email to AOL staff (as reported in Capital New York):

AOLers –

As we discussed at the town hall, we care about you and the company – a lot. This morning, I discussed the increases we and many other companies are seeing in healthcare costs. In that context, I mentioned high-risk pregnancy as just one of many examples of how our company supports families when they are in need. We will continue supporting members of the AOL family.

We provide a wide range of benefits – including our 401k plan – and conduct open information sessions each Fall on all available benefits as well as any changes being made. We will continue to do that.

The spirit of the town hall and the spirit of how we choose benefits are the same – we want to be open and transparent about the choices we make and why we are making them.

As I have said over and over again, our employees are our greatest asset. Let’s move forward together as a team. – TA

This is not an apology, and it is terrible. When people are angry, you do not respond with “I just SAID we care about you a lot!” This is Bad Boyfriend talk. Armstrong goes on to point out that the whole God-these-annoying-preemies thing was just ONE EXAMPLE of why everyone’s benefits have to be cut, ferchrissake. ONE OF MANY! How can everyone not appreciate that he’s being totally open and transparent? That he’s opening the kimono? That he’s running this statement up the flagpole?

The statement is an open and transparent attempt to soothe the riled without actually saying anything. “Let’s move forward” is a conclusion straight out of Bad Apology Bingo: All it means is “Can we please, please stop talking about this?” (No.) And on the heels of Armstrong very publicly firing an employee during a conference call for taking a cell-phone picture of him — go to Romenesko if you want to listen to that one — the whole human-people-skills thing appears to not be going so well here.

It just makes you want to travel back to 1997 and put all those free AOL discs in the microwave. (Sparkly!)

Over the next couple of days, as the story spread, horror at Armstrong’s decision only grew, especially after one of the mothers of the “distressed babies” wrote a piece for Slate about how she felt after recognizing her family in Armstrong’s dismissive statement. She’d had no risk factors; going into early labor and having a very sick baby wasn’t something she and her AOL-employee husband could have averted. “We experienced exactly the kind of unforeseeable, unpreventable medical crisis that any health plan is supposed to cover,” novelist Deanna Fei wrote. “Isn’t that the whole point of health insurance?”

Being able to put a (very cute) face on one of the babies — who is now doing well — and reading a mother’s personal story about her grief and her awareness that her child might not live made Armstrong look even more like a weasel. Wrote Fei:

I take issue with how he reduced my daughter to a “distressed baby” who cost the company too much money. How he blamed the saving of her life for his decision to scale back employee benefits. How he exposed the most searing experience of our lives, one that my husband and I still struggle to discuss with anyone but each other, for no other purpose than an absurd justification for corporate cost-cutting.

Again, remember that Armstrong had provided no evidence to his workers that rising health care costs (which are no means a certainty anyway) were the reason to roll back their 401(k)s.

On Saturday, dripping with terrible publicity like bat guano, Armstrong actually apologized.  Here’s the full text, courtesy of Capital New York:

AOLers:

We began our journey together in 2009, and for the last four years have had an employee-first culture. As I have said before, the ability to change is a strategic advantage for us.  With benefit costs increasing, we made a strategic, financial decision last year to revise our employee matching 401K program from a per-pay-period contribution to a yearly lump-sum contribution.  We then communicated this decision in the fall through multiple channels to every AOL office in the US.

The leadership team and I listened to your feedback over the last week.  We heard you on this topic.  And as we discussed the matter over several days, with management and employees, we have decided to change the policy back to a per-pay-period matching contribution.  The Human Resource team will be in contact with all employees over the next week to explain the change and to answer any other benefits related questions you might have.  We are proud to provide AOLers with a robust benefits offering that spans from exceptional healthcare coverage to 401K’s to AOL fitness programs and beyond.  On a personal note, I made a mistake and I apologize for my comments last week at the town hall when I mentioned specific healthcare examples in trying to explain our decision making process around our employee benefit programs.

Thursday we announced an outstanding Q4 and end to our fiscal year.  More importantly, it validated our strategy and the work we have done on it.  AOL is positioned for future growth and our long-term strategy to be one of the world’s leading media technology companies.

Now, as we begin 2014, let’s keep up our momentum.  Thank you for the great 2013 year and for your ongoing passion.  And know that I am a passionate advocate for the AOL family

– TA

Oy. Again, no. Do not start with telling everyone you’re an “employees first” culture when you just very publicly did not put employees first. The word “strategic” does not belong in an apology, and it really does not belong TWICE. In the first paragraph. Arguably, the lead is buried in the second paragraph: We’re going to continue matching monthly 401(k) contributions. Unless you think the apology should be the lead, in which case the lead is buried after the announcement that we’re not going to slash your benefits after all. And even this apology is meh: He apologizes for the examples he gave, but does not do the essential thing of naming his offense and showing that he understood its hurtful impact on others. It’s as if he’s apologizing for voiding a confidentiality agreement rather than for causing pain. Still, he did the meaningful reparations work of restoring his employees’ benefits. It would have felt better with a true apology attached, but hey, I’m guessing most AOLers would rather have the benefits than a good apology, if they had to choose.

Finally, Armstrong should have apologized to Fei and the parents of the other burdensome preemie before apologizing to the company. Always do the private penance before the public one. (Don’t be Chris Christie, apologizing about Fort Lee before apologizing to the mayor of Fort Lee.) Armstrong did call Fei on Sunday night, she said on the Today Show: “I really feel like he spoke to me as a person to another person, and not in his public role as a CEO,” she said. “He spoke to me in a heartfelt way as a father of three kids to a fellow parent. His apology was heartfelt and I appreciated it, and I do forgive him and I understand that we all sometimes say things that we wish we could take back.” That’s decent of her.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose. A benefit of folks having very low expectations of you as a person: It’s easy to exceed them.