The weekend has been full of customer-service frustrations, as you have read (or if you have not yet read, you are about to as you scroll down). Here are a couple of take-away points:

For fiction writers: Don't overuse people's names in dialogue. People generally overuse your name when they are a) in sales trying to create pseudo-intimacy; and b) in customer service trying to create pseudo-intimacy. The rest of the time, we generally use people's names in our conversations only when we want to emphasize something. One of the marks of a newby writer is overusing names in dialogue.

About corporations: Something I love about my Netflix account is that I can score movies that Blockbuster and Hollywood don't carry. One such film is a documentary called "The Corporation," which charts the rise of corporations as a dramatic, pervasive presence in our free-enterprise lives. The filmmakers present an entertaining critique of global conglomerates' inner workings and impacts, weighing pros and cons via interviews with social critics including the controversial Michael Moore. Moore is not my fave documentary producer, but I think he's right on the nickel about corporations. One of the points made: A corporation is essentially a business entity with legal authority to act as a single person. But if we were to give that person a personality profile, he or she would be classified as a sociopath. Individual employees are protected from legal liability as the overall business is held responsible for transgressions.

I have low expectations when dealing with multi-national corporations, and I'm rarely disappointed. On many levels, a Farmers Market is better for the global community than a Wal-Mart.