It was in a collection of short stories by different authors, which I read in the mid 80's.
The crew of the ship keep complaining about how the Captain is rude to them and the only 'person' he says 'please' and 'thank you' to is the ship's computer.
Eventually they decide on mutiny and murder the Captain after forcing him to make recordings of the voice commands necessary to steer the ship. It is not until after they kill the Captain, that they realise the commands he recorded lacked the 'please' and 'thank you', which were crucial to make them work.
Thus the crew of the ship drift through space contemplating the irony.
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