Run the bar, don’t let it run you.

I started as a dishwasher, then a cook, then a busboy, although it had been renamed the more dignified title of Service Assistant. Either way, I got really fast at clearing a table. I moved on to hosting, then waiting tables, and eventually became a bartender. Long after I started working in tech, I bartended a few nights a week at night.

The service industry never stops; you merely get on and off the train. When customers stop getting seated at the restaurant’s closing time, they head to the bar. After that, the next bar. When I was a waiter, we would close up and go to all-night bars to blow our tip money until the next morning. When I was a bartender, and we cashed out, we went to strange places where we were let in through the back door and served beers in paper bags, and almost all the other customers were industry people.

These places keep going until the morning when the prep cooks and morning servers arrive to start chopping onions and making tea, and it starts all over.

There were several benefits of working in the service industry. Much like the French Foreign Legion, people who would not normally associate with each other learn to depend on each other, or at least, they learn to work together in close quarters. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, straight, gay, artist, bodybuilder, redneck, yankee, frat guy, punk guitarist, little old lady, and just-out-of-the-Army; that’s on the lineup any single night. Most restaurants could teach the rest of the business world a thing or two about diversity.

I worked for great managers. People who taught me how to be an adult. They told me when I was doing well and held me accountable when I fell short. They didn’t mince words. They were the conductors on the train that never stopped; they couldn’t waste time. Without them, the train derails. But with them in charge, you hardly noticed they were there.

One of the phrases often told to new bartenders is, “Run the bar; don’t let it run you.”

This advice took on more nuance over the years, and when I became a manager of customer-facing teams, it became one of the many hackneyed phrases I give as advice.

I watched experts behind the bar and picked up some concepts of how to do this, but I mostly learned how during those sink-or-swim moments of table waiting and bartending. It’s still one of the most important keys to remember when trying to build and maintain customer relationships at scale.