There are of course reasons to care about the axiom of choice because there are categories in which epimorphisms do not split. However if one sticks to the category of sets my position could be (provocatively) described as follows: The axiom of choice is obviously false but that doesn't stop me from using it.

Before I go on to explain why I think it is false let me make a general remark. Set theory is a mathematical model for mathematics it isn't mathematics itself. We all know that all models usually manage to model some part of what they model but they almost never correctly model everything. Things are a little bit more complicated in the case of set theory but it is also supposed to be the common language of mathematics. However, it really works as such only as a protocol for conflict resolution; in case we disagree over a proof we are supposed to work our way down to formal set theory where there couldn't possibly be any conflicts. However, most mathematicians would rather, I believe, voluntarily submit to extended flagellation than actually work with formal set theory. Luckily, in practice all disagreements are resolved long before one reaches that level. Furthermore, most working mathematicians show a cavalier towards set theory. It is quite common to speak of the free group on isomorphism classes of objects in some large category which is not possible in formal set theory as the the isomorphism classes are themselves proper classes and hence can not be members of some class. Of course, when pressed a mathematician using such a phrase would probably modify it by speaking of skeleta but I have once been criticised when using a slightly different formulation that avoided the problem without speaking of skeleta as being wrong for set-theoretic reasons. (This is not meant as a criticism of the person in question, a working mathematician should have the right to ignore the horny parts of set theory, at their own peril of course.)

Now, the reason why I believe that the axiom of choice is obviously false is that gives us an embedding of the field of $p$-adic numbers into $\mathbb C$ which seems fishy as they are constructed in such different ways. In fact if you try to pin down such an embedding by asking for it to fulfil more conditions then it doesn't exist. This is true if you ask that it be measurable or take definable numbers to definable numbers and so on. My own feeling is that its existence is so counter-intuitive that it couldn't possibly existst. On the other hand such an embedding is used over and over again in say the theory of $\ell$-adic cohomology. It is true that in that case at least it can be avoided (Deligne seems to share some of my disbelief as in his second paper on the Weil conjecture he starts with a short discussion on how to avoid it but still uses it as it cuts down on uninteresting arguments).

My feeling about the axiom of choice is pragmatic; it is useful and doesn't seem to get us in trouble so I have no qualms using it (even though I don't believe in it fully). I have also a picture of sets which could be used to justify this contradictory (I am not trying to formalise it so it should not be considered a competing model of mathematics). To me all elements of a set are not on equal footing. Taking my cue from algebraic geometry, there are closed points which are "real" elements but also non-closed points. Hence, the set of embeddings of the $p$-adic numbers in $\mathbb C$ is under the axiom of choice a non-empty set but in my opinion it does not contain any closed points. (In fact all its elements are probably generic, i.e., their closure is the whole set.) As long as you only deal with "concrete" objects (which should be closed in any set in which they are contained but maybe should be something more) the conclusions about them that are obtained by using the axiom of choice should be OK.