Buying a mobile phone means sifting through a dizzying array of options, from the type of phone to the data plan. And with some wireless companies dinged for their customer service, it's not always clear whether you're getting the best advice from the salespeople.

But one anonymous Verizon Wireless (VZ) store manager is telling all to readers at website Reddit, taking questions on topics ranging from his view of the iPhone (bad) to how to break the dreaded contract.

One thing is clear from readers' questions: The wireless market often seems like a confusing morass of obligations, tricks and loopholes. 

Here are five secrets revealed by the store manager, a six-year employee of Verizon Wireless: 

 

Cities chosen to host the NCAA men's basketball tournament celebrate the event as a slam dunk for the local economy -- but it's a layup at best. 

Philadelphia and Kansas City have hosted games 27 and 29 times, respectively, and they'll reap about $10 million each in economic benefits from hosting parts of the March Madness games this year, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.  

Though the games do benefit local businesses, their impact on the regional economy will be minuscule. For instance, Philadelphia's regional gross domestic product is about $353 billion, and Kansas City's is about $100 billion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The impact is probably similar in Detroit ($176 billion), Atlanta ($283 billion) and Washington, D.C. ($433 billion), which are also hosting games in the 2013 tournament. 

It's bad enough for a couple of Girl Scout troops in Oregon to get stiffed on a $24,000 order for 6,000 boxes of cookies. It's even worse when the perpetrator isn't some big uncaring company or soulless adult, but one of the scouts' own.

As ABC's Good Morning America reported on Sunday, two troops from the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington were left with huge stockpiles of cookies when an email order they received turned out to be a fake. What GMA didn't report, and what The Oregonian found out later, was that the order was approved because the email came from an acquaintance of a troop leader.

The troop leader exchanged dozens of e-mails with the sender over the next few weeks, but the person on the other end turned out to be a girl using her mother's address to have some fun at the scouts' five-figure expense.

 

What if U.S. workers were paid more as the nation's productivity increased?

If we had adopted that policy decades ago, the minimum wage would now be about $22 an hour, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week. Warren was speaking at a hearing held by the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. You can see the video here.

Warren was talking to Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the issue of minimum wage. "With a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75?" she asked Dube. "It sure didn't go to the worker."

The $22 minimum wage Warren referred to came from a 2012 study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. 

Even after a damaging economic crisis and recession, some American households are recovering nicely. If you're 47 years old or older, you've actually done pretty well in the past few decades.

But younger generations are just getting poorer, according to a new study from the Urban Institute. People younger than 47 just haven't been able to accumulate much money or build up their net worth through homebuying or other investments.

The authors looked at how Americans' average net worth has changed from 1983 through 2010 and found a dramatic difference between older and younger generations.

Those 56 to 64 and those older than 74 more than doubled their net worth, with gains of 120% and 149%, respectively. The picture was still rosy for those 47 to 55 and 65 to 73, with a rise in net worth of 76% and 79%. 

Here's another sad milestone, if you're a fan of interesting, informative and investigative news: One more city is losing an important local news outlet.

The Boston Phoenix, the alternative weekly magazine, announced last week it would cease publication after 47 years.

In a letter to staffers, Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich cited the rising challenges print media advertising has faced in recent years as the journalism landscape has radically changed and the established outlets deal with the ongoing economic sluggishness.

"Despite the valiant effort by many, many past and current staff to attempt to stabilize and, in fact, reverse our significant financial losses," he said, "we have been unable to do so and they are no longer sustainable."

 

What's the point of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010 freeing up corporate campaign contributions if companies don't shovel truckloads of money at candidates to protect their political interests?

At least one Starbucks (SBUX) shareholder seems to think that not making those contributions is a far more powerful statement than just passing out venti servings of funds to any candidate who might be coffee-friendly. According to Reuters, shareholder John Harrington wants to prohibit the company not only from making political donations, but from forming a political action committee to throw its weight around Washington, D.C.

Harrington, who owns 800 shares of the company and is chief executive of Napa, Calif., Harrington Investments, is putting his proposal up to a vote at the company's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday.

 

For the first time, one of the big three fast-food chains will start selling turkey burgers.

Burger King (BKW) is unveiling the new burger this week in an experiment of sorts. The burger is a limited offering as part of the chain's new spring menu. If it becomes a hit, the company will likely make the turkey burger permanent.

But are American diners ready for a turkey burger? We've known for years that too much red meat is unhealthy -- a study last year claimed that one 3-ounce serving of red meat a day appeared to hasten death -- but the major burger chains haven't cooled their love affair with beef one bit.

McDonald's (MCD) and Wendy's (WEN) have never offered a turkey burger, according to The Associated Press, making Burger King a pioneer of sorts.