There are few greater pleasures than sharing a bottle of wine with a good friend

We had a meeting after work, and all of us had to stay and watch a film on all the ways to magically lift our J.D. Power ratings. The film ended with a little boy catching a fly ball, after two of our employees had rescued his Grandpa's mitt from the conveyor at the material recovery center, a catch you could see coming from the second scene. Agonizing and a thorough waste of time. Sometimes I'm afraid the blog is that way, hackneyed and falsely inspirational. It can happen when you lead from your heart.

Sometimes at work I feel like Peter from "Office Space": "I don't really like my job; I don't think I'm going to go." In the last year our breaks have been shortened from 15 minutes to 10, our lunches from an hour to 45 minutes, floor support and the flex scheduling CAP plan were eliminated, our health plan was cut back, we get a daily email about the length of our trips to the bathroom and they've added 115 new policies and 29 rules and 50 terse emails about our errors and unnecessary aftercall. The exact numbers do not matter. The point is I feel wired up and measured like an astronaut, and all the false economies and pressurized urgencies get in the way of actually helping the customer and being ready to receive their concerns with genuine concern of our own. What if a company really measured productivity by the number of problems solved, the number of customers truly satisfied, instead of call volume and average speed of answer? I'm not a bad employee; I've won two national customer service awards and an employee of the month in my first year, but the pressure to behave in a certain way and stick to a certain script just takes years off my life sometimes: I can feel my heart and head start to constrict just thinking about it.

I hope this is the last work rant I ever do, and just this one could get me fired if it falls into the wrong hands. I love my boss, she's the most human and supportive boss I've ever had; I love my coworkers and all their little zaniness and complaints. We get ourselves through the day with wisecracks and shared Happy Panda, but we spend our workday in a verbal toxic waste dump, 90 people a day snarling at us about a can of trash or the size of their bill or getting the red one instead of the green one. I don't mind helping them in fact I enjoy it, but why do so many of them lead with anger and nastiness and the desire to make the random human being who happens to answer the phone suffer before allowing me one breath to ask politely how I can help. I understand it, I do, and I try to make the best of it every day, to retreat to my car and turn on the good jazz and heal my heart a little--I just wish the minute-by-minute of it didn't have to be so irredeemably nasty and pointless. It's just trash people. I'll do everything in the world I can to get it hauled away for you. Just give me four hours at the end of the day to write, that's all I ask. But I need a little more sleep. Thanks for listening. I feel way better now.

The day got immediately better after I punched out and hit I-205 and the cell phone rang. I looked down like you're not supposed to and answered the phone call like you're not supposed to because it was Doug and I was eager to hear his voice. He is a great man and a great friend and when I have more time I have to write about him at length. This summer we're taking a hike to Mirror Pond Lake and a bike trip to Eastern Oregon: I wrote it down in here so now it has to happen. Doug, the pressure's on.

He was just leaving work also so I asked him, "What are you doing tonight?" He didn't have any family commitments so we made plans to meet in 40 minutes at wine bar in Tualatin, a new one called Taste of Wine in a little strip mall between Fred Meyers and Cold Stone Creamery. A nice space with lots of light and a picture window leading out to an open marshland. We sat at the bar and met the owner Sharon and her assistant Brian, who came in one night with his wife and liked the place so much he asked for a part time job. If you're going to moonlight, the second job ought to offer some fun and lots of possibility, particularly if you're going to stay up till 4 am and not make a dime.

The wine was terrific, a Three Rivers Merlot that Brian suggested. I'm far from a wine expert but this one was really enjoyable. We nibbled on some pita bread and humus and cheese and crackers and talked till ten. "We've closed down worse places than this," I told Sharon. She and her husband Mark opened the place about two months ago. They are wonderful hosts, providing a true refuge from a one-hour postwork meeting and 4.20 gas. There are few greater pleasures than sharing a bottle of wine with a good friend. Three hours in Doug's company was a conversational roadtrip, an absolute tonic. I told him about the blog and we chatted about our jobs and his family and things we'd like to do, a little news and sports. He is the smartest man I know. "OPEC is smarter than Wall Street. They'll let this go to the level of discomfort, but not to the level of pain. They know not to incentivize the alternatives, to create new market forces they can't control." He studies things I've never appreciated and I admire him for that, but what I really look forward to is his genuineness and booming laugh. A man needs friends, men friends. A lot of those prescription medical ads show guys being guys doing stuff, but that doesn't happen enough in real life. I like the fact that tonight we just did it; we didn't make an idle promise to get together soon--he picked up the phone and I made an invitation and 60 minutes later we were across town and shaking hands. I wanted to hug the ornery bastard but I didn't want to freak him out. We need to become a more expressive culture.

I was seriously late to get there and he sent a text but didn't complain. I had some stuff to do along the way. I called Marie for the first time in two weeks, I called Abby's Grandpa Stan and Abby's mom. I'd like to write about those calls but it's 4:30 and I need a nap before work. God it's wonderful to be in this chair. Thanks for coming along.