I was walking toward my assigned bar at a festival in Iowa when I saw who was running it.
“No fucking way.”
My bar manager was dating the woman I loved.
We were about to spend three days working together.
The strange part was that he wasn’t a stranger. He’d been my bar manager at a beach festival about three years earlier. We’d crossed paths again at another event, where I congratulated him on a promotion. Until then, he was simply REDACTED, just another person I'd occasionally encounter in the small world of live events.
By Iowa, things were drastically different.
Knowing someone professionally is one thing. Working beside him for more than twelve hours a day while he’s dating the woman you love is another.
I didn’t know exactly what he’d been told, but he knew some version of the history between me and his girlfriend.
I felt the pull to explain. To make sure he understood my place in the story. A comment here, a little context there. It didn’t have to look like a confrontation to become one.
But he was there to manage a bar, and I was there to work it.
By Saturday, I decided the awkwardness was obvious enough to acknowledge.
“This is objectively awkward, but I don’t have any problems with you.”
That was enough.
Professionally, he treated me fine. I treated him the same way.
That didn’t make my feelings disappear. Working beside him for three straight days gave me plenty of opportunities to notice my reactions and decide which ones actually needed to leave my head.
Very few did.
Whatever satisfaction I might have gotten from a clever remark would have lasted thirty seconds. I’d still have the rest of the shift to work.
And another shift after that.
Live events have a strange way of bringing the same people back into your life. Someone you meet at one festival might be managing your bar three years later, under circumstances neither of you could have imagined.
I care about being someone people want to work with again. That means paying attention to how I behave when I’m uncomfortable, too.
For more than thirty-six hours, I had opportunities to make an awkward situation worse.
I let them pass.
That isn’t the same as avoiding difficult conversations. Some things deserve to be said.
Restraint is recognizing that not every true thing needs to be said immediately.
Timing matters. Setting matters. Purpose matters.
And a shared bar in the middle of a festival wasn’t where I needed to sort out my personal life.
When I think about Iowa, I remember walking toward that bar, seeing him, and realizing what the next three days were going to involve.
“No fucking way.”
Then I went to work.
Sometimes a lesson comes down to an old phrase you finally understand well enough to follow:
Don’t shit where you eat.
Some identifying details have been omitted for privacy.