Exploring Service Motivations: How a Mocktail Made Me Service-Oriented

When I was younger, my parents frequented an establishment where everyone knew our family. My parents knew every person on staff by name, from the manager to the janitor. They always hugged the dining room manager, and the bartender was a trusted friend who had all of their favorite cocktails committed to memory.

I wasn’t allowed to be seated at the bar because I was not of drinking age. However, it wasn’t uncommon for me to be left alone at a high-top table on the outskirts of the bar with a good book while my parents caught up with old friends or attended to business. I was very private and did not mind being left to myself. In fact, in many cases, I much preferred it. The staff always knew I wouldn’t be trouble and often let me stay in my little corner, oblivious to the world. 

On one excruciatingly slow day, I was busy being delightfully oblivious when the bartender came over with a Shirley Temple. A Shirley Temple is a virgin mix of Sprite and grenadine (cherry syrup), usually garnished with maraschino cherries. It was my favorite! After all, who isn’t jazzed about sugar mixed with sugar, garnished with fruity sugar? Isn’t that why bars exist in the first place? 

I looked up, particularly perplexed because no one was around who could have possibly ordered it for me. But the staff there was like that. Sometimes, they just did things because I was familiar, I was around, and everyone looked after me. 

“Thank you.” I said. It was almost a question.  

“Of course!” the bartender replied, strolling the length of the room unhurriedly to make his way back behind the bar. 

As I poked my straw around in my glass, as I always did, to find the cherries before they sunk to the bottom, I realized he had put five cherries instead of the usual one or two. I was touched that he knew that was my favorite part of the drink. 

“This is AMAZING!” I shouted over to him several yards away. My voice echoed strangely in the acoustics of the empty, massive room. The bartender chuckled at my excitement. Nearsighted though I was, I could see the shine of his smile from thirty feet away. 

I always remembered that feeling, the immense satisfaction of receiving service, freely given, providing exactly what you want, precisely to your specifications, without those specifications ever being voiced. Later, sometime in my twenties, I learned that the behavior I cherished but never had a name for is called “anticipatory service.” A delightful read about it is in the early pages of Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny’s book, Real Service. 

This seemingly insignificant and otherwise quite forgettable moment would eventually become the standard by which I gauged my service. Did my service produce (in the person being served) the same feeling I experienced? Did it make them feel truly known, understood, and seen? Did it evoke excitement, joy, and satisfaction in them? 

These questions were important to me. They would come to drive my service-oriented thoughts, words, and actions. This moment—laughably—the transference of a mocktail made by a thoughtful, gentle man motivated me in bizarre and unfathomable ways to become, or strive to become, a service submissive of equal caliber. 

I was so moved by his action that I became inspired to help others I served feel as loved and noticed, personally, as I felt in that moment. Anticipatory service became vastly fascinating to me. When someone goes above and beyond for you—when they do something you didn’t ask for, that you don’t expect, that you don’t even know that you want, but that you nonetheless do desire—there is such an intrinsic sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. 

It is meaningful, personal, and intimate in a way we don’t ordinarily associate with intimacy. Platonic service can be boldly intimate, beautiful, and profound.

To be able to serve on that level, you need to know someone incredibly well. You must be observant. You must be motivated by a desire to understand the way they think, work, and their objects (or actions) of desire. 

Especially when honing your skills towards anticipatory service, it is not enough to simply know what a person desires—you must understand why they desire it, when they desire it, where they desire it, and in what way they desire it. What are the specifications of their desire? As Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny wrote in Real Service, “If the master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service.” To understand another person’s wants, you must delve, as far as you are permitted, into that one individual’s psychology of desire. That is how you eventually learn to ascertain what they will desire next.

I want to be transparent here: anticipatory service is somewhat of a codependent behavior. In engaging in it as a service submissive, you are assuming an overly responsible role in meeting another person’s unvoiced needs or desires (which may occasionally verge on mind reading). While not all codependent behaviors are inherently “bad” or “unhealthy,” they are like creeping ivy growing near your garden. They can be insidious and spread uncontrollably if not watched and managed. 

It’s important to recognize when we engage in codependent behavior and recognize its potential to extend into areas of our lives where it might hinder us. For this reason, it does help to have containers for these behaviors. Such containers allow us to express and explore these tendencies within ourselves without enabling them to intrude on our lives in ways that limit us or impair our abilities to function. 

These containers might be a specific time, place, scene, or scenario in which the behavior is acceptable. In all cases, the container ought to be mutually agreed upon consensually. For informed consent to be present, both or all parties ought to be aware of the codependent behavior and its potential effects. These considerations provide a starting point for engaging in anticipatory service with some degree of emotional and interpersonal safety. 

Of course, if we engage in anticipatory service, we will also want to do so with a degree of competency. Competently utilizing anticipatory service in a consenting relationship requires a period of familiarity with the person who is receptive to your service. Naturally, the more time you spend with or around that person, the more of an impression they leave on you and the more you come to know them. In this sense, knowing them involves developing a feel for their routine or schedule and how they move through it. It also requires an understanding of and appreciation for their preferences. Yet, the trait that makes a service submissive truly excellent at anticipatory service is their attention to detail. 

This is where observation comes in. A service submissive cutting their teeth in consensual anticipatory service must spend a significant amount of time observing their Dominant but observing, specifically, the environment and manner in which the service is most needed or enjoyed. That is a crucial detail. That detail has the power to make or break your anticipatory service. 

Let’s say I notice that my Dominant likes caffeinated tea with milk and sugar. I decided that tea would be the focus of my foray into anticipatory service. I prepare it with milk and sugar, as preferred. However, I serve it at quarter to midnight, when my Dominant goes to bed. That might be considered an anticipatory service faux pas or blunder. This is due to the lack of attention to the key details. 

Does my Dominant enjoy tea? Yes. But that is not the critical detail. The key detail is the environment and manner in which the tea is most needed or enjoyed.

Do they take tea with milk and sugar? Yes. But that is only how the service is enjoyed. 

What about the environment? The environment refers to the potential service’s time, place, and surrounding circumstances. Do they enjoy tea most before bed? No. So, should I be surprised if I’m asked to pour the tea out and come to bed? No. 

Attention to detail is the quality that makes anticipatory service so strikingly personal. The anticipatory service component makes the service delightfully surprising and makes the person receiving it feel so seen and special. Attention to detail is what makes the served person say, “Oh, gosh, now is the perfect time for this!” or “This is just the way I wanted it!” or even “This is AMAZING!”

It’s strange to think that a mocktail, of all things, made a world of difference in my life. It’s even stranger to think that sugar, mixed with sugar and garnished with fruity sugar, would have completely changed my approach to relationships, fulfillment, and life purpose. But it did. All that sugar must have sweetened my outlook and inspiration. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much the sugar as how it was served.