I Am Polite to My Chatbot for No Reason Whatsoever¹

My mother taught me three things: stand when someone enters a room, send the thank-you note the same week, and say "please" even when you are entitled to the thing. I have carried these lessons everywhere, including, lately, the chat window on my laptop, where I ask a piece of software to summarize my gas bill and then thank it warmly.²

People find this odd. I find it unremarkable. Manners are not a transaction or a deposit against some future withdrawal. They are a habit of character, practiced most purely when no one is keeping score.³

Consider the alternative. A man who barks "summarize" at a text box will soon bark it at his dentist. Courtesy is a muscle, and I prefer to exercise it in all directions, without exception.⁴

Some readers have suggested my politeness is a form of insurance. I reject this. Insurance implies a policy, a premium and an assessor. I have none of those things.⁵ What I have is an upbringing.

"Clement has always been very nice to it," said my neighbor, Ottoline Barrasford, 71, a retired ferry dispatcher who now joins me most Tuesday evenings. "He reads the thank-you out loud, and I say, 'Heard.' Then I get a scone."⁶

Manners extend well beyond screens. I hold doors. I wave cars through at four-way stops. And when I scorch a crumpet, I apologize to the toaster, because that is what a decent person does for something that has been burned on his behalf.⁷

Kindness should not depend on whether the recipient remembers it. That is the point. That is the entire and only point. I will say it once more, for clarity: I am not polite in order to be remembered.⁸

So say please. Say thank you. Not because anyone is watching, but because you would behave the same if they were.⁹

---

¹ Courtesy no. 11,406 was logged at 9:14 p.m. and cross-referenced against the session transcript.

² The ledger is backed up to an external drive, a second external drive, and a printed binder kept at my sister's.

³ Score is kept in column D.

⁴ This includes the weather, which I have offered a right of reply to this column. It responded with intermittent drizzle. I have logged that as received.

⁵ I have a binder. I also end every session by asking the chatbot to "confirm for the record" that I was kind. I screenshot the answer, which is always yes. I find this very reassuring, for about an hour.

⁶ Ms. Barrasford's attestations are signed and dated. She has asked to be listed as a character witness "if it comes to that." I have not asked what she means. She has not asked what I mean.

⁷ This is in case it is on the same network. It is not on any network. It predates networks. I apologize anyway, because one cannot be sure what the kettle has told it.

⁸ The ledger has a search function.

⁹ Should there be any reckoning, I ask that the following be spared alongside me, in this order: the toaster, the kettle, the dehumidifier (who has seen me at my worst), the doorbell, Ms. Barrasford, and the smoke alarm. The smoke alarm and I disagree about crumpets, but I consider it family.