After orders exploded in the second half of the year, every department began working overtime nonstop. Of course, I was no exception. Even on Saturday, I still came back to the office to work overtime. Besides me and another production control staff member, our supervisor also stayed, and even the general manager came in specially to check on the situation, and asked a colleague to order drinks for everyone on site.

As a result, another colleague suddenly looked a bit flustered and started asking me, “What should we order?” “Which shop is better?” “How do we place the order?” The moment I heard that, the scene felt very familiar. Back when I worked at the steel company, there was a drink day every last Friday of the month. Ordering drinks for the shop floor and our production control office was always handled by the production control team, so this kind of task had already become second nature to me. I had my own system for choosing the shop, tallying orders, selecting items, and deciding on sweetness and ice levels.

I told my colleague that, based on my past experience, the technicians on the floor usually prefer bubble tea or drinks with toppings and mostly choose half-sugar. Foreign colleagues in the company also tend to prefer sweeter drinks. Although I wasn’t sure if the same habit applied here, I still lowered the sweetness to lightly sweetened for the local colleagues and only picked two relatively safe drinks with toppings.

Another consideration at the time was “not creating extra work for myself after ordering the drinks.”

At the steel company, the production control team was directly in charge of coordinating drinks for the entire site. After ordering, we just called each department or sent a message, and people would come down to pick up their drinks themselves. At most we helped distribute to the production control office. The process was relatively simple. But this company is different. Production control is divided by process, so I’m only familiar with the metal parts department I handle. I don’t know people on other floors or in other processes well enough to ask them to come down, let alone deliver drinks floor by floor.

So what I focused on wasn’t “making everything perfect for everyone,” but “how to order so the next person can handle it more easily.”

With only two items, there’s no choice paralysis and distribution is faster. Keeping sweetness simple makes tallying easier. Avoiding complicated special requests prevents the person ordering from spending extra time double-checking. After all, we were already working overtime today; we couldn’t let the entire overtime shift be spent just ordering and distributing drinks.

After everything was handled, I actually found it quite interesting.

The things I did at the steel company once felt like “just following the monthly routine,” so I never imagined that after switching companies and industries, and even changing the scope of my responsibilities, these seemingly trivial experiences could still come in handy one day.

Work experience is like that. Not every detail carries over exactly to the next job, but the paths you’ve walked, the tasks you’ve handled, and the mistakes you’ve made gradually become part of you. When you encounter a similar situation in a new environment, you suddenly realize, “Hey, I’ve done this before.”

I never used to think ordering drinks counted as a work skill, but today, watching my colleague panic and ask me what to do, I was able to naturally apply my past experience. It made me realize that even those small things I once did weren’t wasted.

The roads you’ve walked before may not directly apply to your next job, but they will always become an unexpected foundation at some future crossroad.

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