My manager and I like to have a lot of arguments, all friendly, about a lot of stuff. Since we are flying together and hanging out together, we get a lot of chances to argue over seemingly simple topics.

For example, over the weekend, I told him about a company in Mendocino called Thanksgiving Coffee Company, which picks coffee only from the countries and companies which don’t employ kids in sweat shops. A simple statement with an absolutely innocent intent on my part.

He jumped on this statement and said that it was b.s. His point is that if the kids were not employed in the sweat shop, they would not get any money to eat and would die anyway. It is in fact a better option to have them employed, in any fashion, than not at all.

And that sparked an argument which went on for about 15 minutes, till we got distracted with something else.

Other similar thoughts occur all the time, and we engage in a lot of structured, fact-based arguing. I love it. But the wife probably hates it because I am getting ‘trained’ in arguing :-)