When did lunch become such a miserable, furtive chore? In the wealthiest nation on earth, why have co-workers at my last four jobs lived on irradiated butter sticks? How come the man who shares my office eats peanut-butter-and-jelly every single frigging day? Whence comes this cornucopia of raspberry power bars, Big Macs and cups of shrimp-flavored ramen noodles? Why do we feel worse afterward than if we'd eaten nothing?

It's mainly us mid-level office drones who suffer the most from this, too. When I used to have a job loading supplies onto oil tankers, I'd eat huge meals of adobo chicken, pea soup, chicken potpie. And people of the upper crust can spend an afternoon hour or two at a good restaurant. But here in the middle, we chew on leftovers over the lunchroom wastebasket. I'm making a steady, middle-class income for the first time in my life, and entire weeks go by in which I eat nothing but damp sandwiches.

One reason behind this, according to Chet Zalesky, president of the research group Consumer Metrix, is that the era of the subsidized office cafeteria is over. They got downsized over the last 10 years with all other things corporate. Ninety percent of all on-site eateries are now run by businesses outside the company, and only about half of those get any subsidy from the companies whose grounds they occupy, according to a study by Metrix last year.

That also could be why fewer and fewer employees are using the cafeterias that remain. In 1994, 56 percent of the total workforce served by on-site food services still came down to the company canteen, according to Metrix's study. It has gone down a percentage point or two nearly every year since.

Where the patrons seem to be going instead, however, isn't much better - fast food joints and vending machines. Americans have never really enjoyed food properly.

“People are standing up and eating lunch,” said Ron Aspell, who is a business director at Wood Dining Services in Allentown, Pa., and has been in food service for 40 years. “Everybody does everything fast. The way kids eat, it's going to be impolite to use a knife and fork in 20 years.”

One area of unqualified success for office cafeterias is with grab-and-go items - the plastic-wrapped chicken salad sandwiches in a tortilla that can be snagged at the check stand and eaten tidily during the elevator ride back up to the office. One food service company, I:Cuisines, enables customers to order online. A company in North Carolina, Compass Group, brings the food right to people's desks.

Or, “think of the family dinner,” Aspell said. With both parents working, people tend to order a couple of pizzas and a couple of bottles of soda, and let everyone take their respective cups and slices to distant rooms in the house - your wife to her computer, your son to the TV, your daughter to a religious cult, where she hopes to fill a gaping hole inside herself. How on earth did that get there?

Precisely because we work so much, becoming so busy making so much money, our dining experience here is worse than in much of the Third World. We live on garbage, and we eat in cramped, ridiculous places - even in our cars, a uniquely American spot, Aspell added. It took Mercedes Benz until the 1990s to install cup-holders because Europeans just couldn't understand what we were thinking. “They thought it was bizarre,” Aspell said. “Who would eat in their car?”

Who, indeed, would live like this? Food is supposed to be one of life's central pleasures - involving all five senses: the multi-chromatic fusion-jazz of tossed salad, the pillowy aroma of a grilled cheese sandwich, the marshmallow texture of filet mignon, the wide-open sizzle of hamburger. And of course, the sense of taste - Mexican chocolate-and-cinnamon, as you let it rest on your tongue.

When you kiss somebody, do you rush through it while making phone calls or negotiating the Turnpike? Do you do it over the sink, or in the parking lot of Micky Dee's, or in your den while playing Minesweeper?

If you do ..., well, forget I said anything.

If your boyfriend has started doing it, I get off work at 6.