We've all been there, waiting at home for the cable guy to come and install the system "sometime between noon and 5:00". When he finally shows up, the interaction you have with that one individual will play a major role in determining your attitude towards the brand going forward.

I am a late-adopting iPhone user and, while I like it, there is one element of the device that is simply too smart for its own good — that is, the autocorrect of e-mail spelling, which has a habit of interpreting my rather basic vocabulary choices as arcane proper nouns. For example, a slowly typed "which" will sometimes translate to Whig, "have" becomes "Han," and the word "paying" for some reason morphs into "Latin."