Outright co-founder Kevin Reeth believes that customer service only works if the guys who designed the product are also taking the calls. When you divorce support from creation, you break the feedback loop - the designers lose sight of the users, while the support folk don't understand the product well enough to help them.

 Unsurprisingly, a similar communication breakdown plagues much of the federal bureaucracy.

 Like any good freelancer (who haven't been nominated for Obama's cabinet), I have to pay my taxes quarterly. To do so, I had to register for the EFTPS's online payment system. In the letter confirming my registration, my name is misspelled, alongside a request that I call in with any corrections.

 In an attempt to avoid the IRS's painfully unorganized automated call tree, I called the EFTPS. Making it clear that they are a separate Treasury division, the agent explained to me that while they consume the IRS's data, he cannot push any changes upstream: It would take another half an hour of waiting on hold with the IRS to get this stupid typo fixed. Annoyed, I asked the EFTPS agent if he thought his relationship to the IRS was similar to that between the FBI and the CIA before Homeland Security. Laughing, he refused comment.