I did a short stint in NYC in my late 20s. I followed a girl there, it didn’t work out, happens to the best of us. But I moved there without a job, so I took the first one I found. I found a gig working at a high end wine shop on Wall Street. Literally the wine shop was on Wall Street, so yeah, I worked on Wall Street. We would open at like 8am and there would be a line at the door of coked up Wall Street dudes waiting to buy pints of kettel one. Number one selling item. High end wine shop but mainly just supplying the coked up, stressed out “brokers” trying to fulfill their Hollywood dreams of being a coked up stressed out, usually bald and chubby Wall Street man. The movies lied to you, for every Leo or Charlie Sheen, there were twenty John Candy and Chris Farleys chain smoking cigarettes. I prefer the latter anyways.

There was also this day trader dude who lived above the shop. He was always on so much blow and was not shy about it. Wouldn’t even clean the powder off his nose. Would order a bottle of Clase Azul tequila up to his apartment a few times a day and answer the door, robe open, tighty whiteys underneath and coke on the table. Always tipped well.

Anyway, my boss was a foreign guy named Bob, clearly not his real name. For months I thought he was a Mexican guy. No idea why but his accent was confusing. Turns out he was an Arab dude who disappointed his family and disgraced his religion because he just loved wine that much. I don’t mean that in a bad way, like the dude fucking LOVED wine, he KNEW wine, and could talk about it like no one I’ve ever met. He lived the life. Left his family to move to NYC, washed dishes, waited tables, lived the NYC restaurant life through the 80s and had some ridiculous stories. At one point he was managing a high end hotel in manhattan and a “can’t mention the name” Indian elite got in a fight with him because his “hooker department” was low class. So he had been through the wringer and in his older age decided to sell overpriced wine to dorks that didn’t know what to do with their money.

Dude loved life, loved wine, and always made work fun. He reminded me of a middle eastern version of old fezziwig from Scrooge. Just knew how to make work a good time and make his employees WANT to work hard for him. One of his biggest ways of making the days go by a bit faster and seem a bit less shitty, was to randomly open bottles of wine. Sometimes $15 whatever, sometimes rarities from the cellar. The whole staff would get a taste. From the guys in shirt and tie “salesmen” to the “basement guys” hanging out with the rats stocking the wine cases, to the delivery guys riding their shitty ass bikes through the streets of manhattan delivering booze to the thousands of New York hermits/boozebags who don’t leave their million dollar apartments. AKA everyone got a taste. And as he poured your glass, he would always say, in his nondescript but smooth as hell foreign accent, ENJOY yourself. Yes, sometimes you were drinking wine at noon. Sometimes it was a bottle of Chataneuf du pape or Penfolds Grange. Some of the people knew what they were drinking was special, some others were just tired and working their ass off and appreciated the pick me up. All equal, all wanting to work their ass off for the appreciation. SO, next time you pour a glass of wine, on a Tuesday at noon or a Saturday at midnight, ENJOY YOURSELF. Try to enjoy your job, tip your delivery driver, waiter, uber driver, etc. Toast to them. Toast to yourselves. We’re all working, but it doesn’t mean we can’t ENJOY OURSELVES.