The pleasure is in the details.

You have to stir a Campari in the glass for exactly 15 seconds, otherwise, it won't taste right. This is how the Campari was first ordered from me by one of the cooks in the restaurant where I worked. It had been a long day. A warm and windy terrace full of almost 150 people. For a bartender that is a recipe for a heavy, hot workday. The kind of workday where you have to make so many drinks that you dry out until you get sunstroke. It's hard work. It's rowing with the oars you have and hoping you hit the shore before the ship sinks. Perhaps you understand, dear reader, that at such a moment a tiny point of criticism from a colleague can feel like a betrayal. I wanted to get furious but calmed myself. Of course, it had been a long day for my colleagues as well. Probably even more so in a kitchen than behind the bar. Suddenly the request was not an attack but what it really was: just a request. I did what my colleague asked and he continued to enjoy himself. The little effort I had made for my colleague, my fellow sailor on the sinking ship, lightened his load, and helped him rest. On such a hard day, every request feels like an attack. You stop being rational and instead you get emotional. And you get pissed off at everything and everyone. You stop talking, punch a wall, and kick something over in the warehouse. You fight your way through the day. Your shift ends. You wonder if this reaction was really necessary. You promise yourself to stay calm next time. You break this promise and the whole cycle goes on again. You go through that cycle a few times. You promise yourself over and over again that you will stay calm. Eventually, you succeed. You are a little older and a little wiser. Now you are sitting here writing this piece: you remember one thing most of all. The cook raising his glass, smiling at you and saying "Na zdrowie" to you. One person made a little happier, and it's worth it. Work remains work and is always a pity, so I prefer to use my work to give another person that little bit of extra happiness. In English, hospitality is not called 'hospitality' for nothing. Many people start their careers with a part-time job in the hospitality industry. Most of them make sure to be able to choose something else before they turn 30. A small part is less fortunate, they want something else but are given little opportunities and reluctantly stay in the industry. The remaining ones have a passion. They are specialists and they know what hospitality is. They live for it. They give it to others and what do they do when they clock out? They look it up again, but now from the other side, they try every tent and learn while enjoying themselves. A bartender who only sees his own business lacks perspective. He only sees his own familiar corner of hospitality and that's where people quickly slip into decline. This is true for a bartender but also on any other social level. More and more we are making our own little worlds and looking for others who fit exactly into those worlds. We don't look at the real world, which can hurt. In this own little world, you are safe from the real world and therefore you are not corrected when you start walking a wrong path. This is where it goes wrong. Bartenders become less friendly, we can live with that. But other people hook into their views. Increasing the problems of our current society. Wealth inequality and global warming to name two things. And I think that's a lot more terrible. So talk to your boss, talk to your annoying colleague and you'll probably find out that you're more like them than different from them. With everything you do (wrong), there is a lesson to be learned. So don't lose perspective. In this way, you become, and feel, a little bit better every day. Twenty baby steps together make up a big leap.