Recently I heard a story and the teller started their tale with:
“My friend works in car rentals and he was supposed to hook us up with an Automatic but he screwed up and we ended up stuck with a manual.”
I was wondering to myself ‘did you have to add in that little complaint?’
The manual aspect of the story may be important and your initial desires for an automatic but the person responsible for the screw up isn’t important. It’s unnecessary to the story and I’m sure your friend doesn’t appreciate it.
What if you had rephrased it to:
“So even though I wanted an Automatic it turns out it wasn’t possible and we had to get a manual”
That way you focus on the important part of the story and don’t start it off with what appears like airing a grudge. Also you got a story out of it so why complain about it?
Maybe by adding in the friend who screwed up they are shifting responsibility for the error away from themselves?
Thomas Duggan 