Usually I’m a pretty friendly and easygoing person. I smile at strangers, start conversations and generally go with the flow. But more and more since “the bailout,” I’m finding myself to be incredibly testy when big companies try to rip me off for a few more dollars. Take Dollar car rental. Their promo on Southwest Airlines website promised a discount of 15 percent on a rental, to be awarded at time of rental, but when I got to the counter this weekend, they couldn’t even find the promo code in their computer. Fortunately I had a printout, but it didn’t do me any good; they refused to honor their offer. Now we’re not talking about a lot of money here. Less than $10. But you know that I-gave-at-the-office feeling? I keep feeling like the American public are such chumps for compensating these corporate hogs for stupid decisions. And yet, not really having a choice about it. It reminds me of some weird torture I read about where the one thing you need to save your life (and of course I forget what that is, maybe a key to get you out of a buried alive kind of situation) has been surgically implanted in your eye, so you have to poke out your own eye to save your life. We’re having to poke out our finances in the hopes of ultimately saving the economy, and we really don’t even know if it’s going to work.