Everything Falls Apart. Then It Doesn’t.

There’s a moment in any night—usually when the bar is at full tilt, the toilets are backing up like a Victorian sewer, the head chef is outside chain-smoking like a condemned man, and someone’s just sloshed three shots of Jäger into the DJ decks—where you think, yep, that’s it. We’re done. Close it all down. Sell the wood for scrap. Hand the lease back to Satan and ask him to kindly fuck off.

But then, something weird happens.

You breathe.

Someone cracks a joke. The glasswasher miraculously starts working again. The same staff member you were mentally firing twenty minutes ago dives into the chaos like a war medic and drags the night back from the brink. You mop up the sick, bin the chaos, pour another round, and somehow—somehow—you make it through. Nobody died. At least, not tonight.

This is the thing they don’t teach you in management school. Because they don’t teach you anything in management school. The real truth is: shit happens. And—if you let it—it passes.

Not because you solved it with your magical MBA. But because people are scrappy, resilient little goblins. Because the ship wants to sail. Because the business, the building, the night itself… wants to survive.

And if you can keep your head through all that, if you can hold the line long enough to see the other side, there’s something deeply human, deeply honest, about surviving the fire. That’s hospitality. That’s life.

THE BINS WILL ALWAYS OVERFLOW

Let’s get one thing straight—chaos is not an exception in this business. Chaos is the default. If you’re looking for a controlled environment, go work in a morgue. Hospitality is barely-contained entropy dressed in a branded t-shirt. You’re a lion tamer with a hangover and a limp whip. The bins will overflow, the stock will be late, the manager will be on a comedown, and the beer line will snap just as 40 thirsty punters roll in from a stag do dressed like fucking Teletubbies.

So why do we panic?

Because we’re told we should. That everything needs a system. A checklist. A five-year plan. You ever try to five-year-plan your way out of a fryer fire? Good luck.

The reality is: systems are lovely, until people get involved. And people are messy, brilliant, hungover, grieving, horny, distracted animals who forget to order soda water or accidentally double-book the Colosseum for a death metal gig and a 90s drag brunch on the same Saturday.

And you know what?

It’ll still work. Maybe not well. Maybe not legally. But it’ll work. Somehow. Someone will run across town with a gas bottle or jump behind the bar even though they’re off, and the night will stumble into something resembling success.

Why? Because bars run on faith. Not religious faith. Human faith. The belief that even when it all looks like it’s circling the drain, people will step up. They will. I’ve seen it too many times not to believe it.

Even when the bins are on fire.

DON’T CHASE THE DRAGON

There’s a myth in hospitality that if you just get everything right—if the rotas are perfect, if the drinks are balanced, if the menus rotate quarterly and the POS system works like a dream—then you’ll be in a kind of smooth, stress-free paradise. A kind of bar-life nirvana where nothing breaks and all the customers say please and thank you like they’re in a fucking Pixar film.

You know who chases that dragon?

New owners. Fresh-faced operators in shiny aprons who think they’re going to reinvent the wheel. You can spot them a mile off—whiteboard in one hand, inspirational quote in the other, trying to spreadsheet their way to immortality.

But old heads know. The ones who’ve been through the wars. The ones with cigarette burns on their souls and the thousand-yard stare of someone who’s seen a karaoke machine weaponised in a domestic argument.

They know: You can’t eliminate chaos. You just build better muscle memory for surviving it.

You learn when to intervene and when to let the problem solve itself. You learn when the delivery being late is a crisis, and when it’s just Tuesday. You develop a kind of emotional triage. And more importantly, you stop being surprised. That’s the trick. You stop being surprised when it all goes tits up. Because that’s just the game.

And in not being surprised, you stay chill. You stay useful.

And that’s what keeps you alive.

THE UNIVERSE DOESN’T CARE

Let me tell you something bleak: the universe doesn’t give a fuck about your business. It doesn’t care that you’re four months behind on rent or that you’ve got a wedding party of 50 vegetarians arriving in an hour and the fridge just ate the falafel. The universe is not watching. It is not judging. It’s not even listening.

And that, paradoxically, is freedom.

Because once you stop thinking the world is out to get you—or worse, that it owes you something—you can just… get on with it. You stop screaming into the abyss expecting an answer. You start problem-solving, not panic-screaming.

Because shit happens. But it’s not personal.

The wrong beer gets delivered. You get a one-star review because someone didn’t like the shade of green in the bathroom tiles. Your favourite bartender ghost-texts you ten minutes before their shift because they’ve fallen in love with someone they met in a park at 3am. It’s all maddening. But it’s not targeted.

So stop taking it personally.

Take a breath. Mop the floor. Move forward.

And when the day ends, pour yourself something cold, and laugh. Because the bar didn’t explode. The world didn’t end. You’re still here.

And that’s something.

LET IT BURN (A LITTLE)

Here’s a dirty little secret: sometimes, you should just let the fire burn.

Not literally—unless you’ve got great insurance—but metaphorically. Some problems solve themselves if you stop poking them. That customer screaming about the ice cubes? Let them tire themselves out. That keg that won’t pour? Stop kicking it and swap the fucking coupler. That promotion that flopped? Kill it, bury it, and try again.

Don’t cling to the wreckage.

Too many operators sink with the ship because they’re too proud to change tack. They keep flogging the dead horse, praying it’ll twitch.

But if you can chill—if you can step back, take the hit, and adjust—you stay agile. You stay alive. You stay in the fight.

Bars aren’t temples. They’re pirate ships. And pirates don’t panic.

SOMEONE ALWAYS HELPS

Here’s the beautiful, unexpected part.

In the middle of the madness, the flood, the fire, the existential threat from the council or the supplier or the guy who wants to turn your smoking area into a block of flats—someone always helps.

Some kid on their first shift will pull a pint like they were born doing it. A regular will hold the door shut during a windstorm like a human sandbag. Your cook will turn a dwindling fridge of random veg into something better than the planned menu. A neighbour will lend you their extension cord at 11pm on New Year’s Eve because they “figured you’d need it.”

It happens. I swear to God, it happens.

People step up.

Maybe not the ones you expected. Maybe not the ones you pay the most. But someone, somewhere, will be the reason the night survives.

And you’ll look at them, and think—“Okay. We’re going to be alright.”

And you are.

Because you stayed chill. You didn’t lose your mind. You let the world be messy, and weird, and unsolvable, and you moved through it anyway.

And that’s how you keep going.

STAY CHILL OR DIE

So here it is. The only advice I have. The only line worth carving above the bar.

Stay chill. Or die.

Not literally. But spiritually. Emotionally. Professionally.

If you let this business shake you every time the wind changes, you’ll burn out like a £6 candle in a student house. You’ll become brittle. You’ll snap. You’ll start yelling at staff for bringing the wrong limes.

But if you learn to ride the wave—if you learn that every disaster passes, that no crisis is final, that people (when allowed) will do amazing things—you’ll outlast them all.

You’ll become the calm at the centre of the storm. You’ll be the one others look to when the fryer explodes or the council comes sniffing or the festival turns into a piss-stained riot. You’ll be the captain. The bouncer of fate.

Because shit happens.

But it also works itself out.

And all you have to do is hold the line, stay chill, and pour another round