Another one not about a song, but instead about the idea of giving yourself grace, and how I don’t know how.

I worked service bar tonight, this week total I worked 58 hours. 18 of those hours were spent on service bar, over the course of the 3 days I worked service bar I probably made about 600 cocktails, which isn’t unusual, but today, despite having so many things go right, all I can think about are the two things that went wrong. The two things that’ll be the reason I don’t sleep tonight.

1. I let a service ticket take 5 minutes to make
2. I made one drink wrong

When you are making drinks for 160 people over the course of 5 hours, the idea that it took you 5 minutes to get a ticket out, is not insane. For me, it bothers me, for most of the night my tickets were 3 or 4 minutes, and I had one ticket take 5 minutes. For me personally 5 minutes is the cut off, to work service bar behind my bar you need to be able to get every ticket made within 5 minutes, 7 if it’s super busy, but what I give as a standard to my staff is not the standard I hold myself to. 5 minutes is too long. it’s 2 minutes too long in my mind. So of the 200 or so drinks I made tonight, 4 of them took too long. 2% of tonights drinks took too long, and for me that’s a failure.

The other one? I made a drink wrong, I topped it with Prosecco instead of champagne. Most can’t taste the difference and honestly, most don’t even know the difference. The difference is champagne is made in France. Our champagne is made from 100% chardonnay, it’s a blanc de blanc Grand cru. Douchebag for white made from white. Grand cru means it’s the first pick, the best of the grapes that growing season.

To most waiting 5 minutes for a drink probably doesn’t seem all that bad when a restaurant is serving 160 people in the dining room, plus another 50 or so on the bar. For me it means I did 98% of my job right today, and 98% isn’t good enough.

As a leader I’d never give my team a hard time about these things, but as a person who is just a cocky bartender, I’m mad at myself, and I’m disappointed in myself.

I believe in giving everyone grace, and I think I do a good job of giving people grace, whether it be friends, family, staff, etc. I just don’t know how to give it to myself. I don’t think I deserve it. I think I should be able to do my job 100% correct 100% of the time.

My favorite person in the world is going to read this and shred me to pieces for thinking like this, because she sees things so different, it’s why I love her. She sees all the good and none of the bad, She sees that people make mistakes and it’s okay. And selfishly, she knows how to tell me when I’m being irrational in a way that only one other person has ever been able to do. She’s able to talk me off the ledge, and without her I’d probably be in a much worse place right now. I don’t smile often, just because I think it’s my natural state of being, but she even catches me when I smirk about being happy I did something I wouldn’t normally do. She gives me the grace I don’t believe I deserve, and without her I don’t think I could carry on. A terrifying thing to admit. She has me wrapped around her finger.

Give yourself a little grace, even if I cant give myself some.

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.