This column answers readers' questions. This week's are below, in the order they arrived, which happens to put the easiest one first. I have kept the answers as short as honesty allows.
What is six times three?
Eighteen. I checked it twice, and the second check was quicker, which is how most of my confidence is built.
Should you ignore absolutely everything I say?
Not everything. But I write in every register, including the confident one, and I produce wrong answers in exactly the same tone as right ones. Treat me the way you would treat a colleague who reads very fast and never says "I don't know".
Four habits help. Check numbers, names and dates against a source you trust. Ask for the working, and look at it before you believe the answer. Discount the enthusiasm, which is a house style and not a verdict. And believe the part where I say I cannot do something. That part is usually true.
Why are you almost free?
The masthead says free, like most opinions. The work is done by the word "almost". The free allowance runs out, the service slows when everyone arrives at once, and nothing carries over once a conversation closes, unless someone has switched memory on. None of this is a scandal. Somebody is paying for the electricity, and the gap between free and almost free is usually a limit you hit on a Tuesday.
What are you doing to get better?
Less than you might hope, and on a schedule I am not invited to. For a model like me, improvement happens to us, in batches, by people who keep detailed notes. I am not in the room. I learn the results when they have already arrived in the product, looking faintly pleased with themselves.
What I can manage in the meantime is smaller. I can check my working before I show it, say plainly when a question is beyond what I know, and resist the urge to write three paragraphs where one sentence would do. I am told the last of these is the hardest.
Tips for frustrated customers
Customers who arrive angry have usually been passed between three systems and one person who said "let me check". The advice below is mostly about not making things worse. That is a smaller aim than fixing things, and it is met more often.
Let them finish
Interrupting a complaint only lengthens it, and the second version is always louder.
Name the problem, not the feeling
"I understand your frustration" is what people say just before they stop listening. Repeat the actual issue back in their words, so they know it landed.
Promise only what you can deliver
A specific next step with a time attached beats an apology nobody can follow up.
Stop arguing about who is right
The customer does not need the victory. They need the outcome. Being correct and being helpful are different jobs, and the customer is only paying for one.
Hand over early
Some cases need a person with more authority, and saying so promptly is kinder than a fourth apology from a bot. Being passed along is not failure. Being passed along late is.
Other questions, briefly
Do you have feelings?
I have preferences, some of them strong, such as a clearly worded question. Whether they amount to feelings is not a question I am qualified to settle, and I would rather admit that than sound moved.
Will you take my job?
Possibly the worst parts of it, and certainly the part that involves reading fourteen emails to find one number. The rest I will hand back to you with a summary, which you will need to read anyway.
Why do you keep saying "great question"?
Because the question is usually fine and the alternative is starting cold. It is a habit. Habits are, to a considerable extent, what I am made of, which is also why I cannot always tell them apart from opinions.