The liquidation of my wine shops in 2002 was a massively stressful experience that affected me on a deeply emotional level for years to come. When I eventually was able to step back to look at the destruction, I could make a list of several basic business principles that I had ignored.

However, I’ve come to realise that what I learned from working in retail was much greater than the obvious ones.

I started in retail by selling a cancelled export order out of my garage. This bootleg operation eventually needed to become legitimate, in the form of a license to sell alcohol. This required premises, and if you’re paying rent, you may as well have a full-service drinks offering.

There were many things that I didn’t know that I needed to know, but I had worked out that I needed to learn more about wine. So was set in process an ongoing process of properly understanding wine, especially in a way that could enable me to take others on the journey.

Discover. Experience. Learn. Understand. Share.

This has been a pattern I’ve repeated many times in my life. I should mention that this process is front-loaded with a high level of curiosity as well as a willingness to embrace the unknown (not always with happy outcomes, as I discovered in 2002).

But, while wine has been a lifelong pleasure, this still wasn’t the most important lesson from being a wine merchant.

The thing about retail, especially when it comes to a product as subjective as wine, and when the product range is purposely comprising a large number of unfamiliar labels, is that the person on the floor – the sales assistant – has a very important job to do.

My most rewarding times in the shops were assisting customers in assembling mixed cases of wines for them to try. Armed with just a few minutes of chat, I had to intuit what their tastes and preferences were, as well as how to accommodate that as best possible within their budget. The exchanges may not have qualified as intimate, but they were certainly personal.

All my interactions with clients/customers since then have benefited from my retail experience of best matching their expectations. I am socially awkward in some settings, but the purpose or structure of the shop floor interaction helped to overcome the worst of it.

Having customers come back for cases of recommendations (rather than individual bottles) was hugely rewarding.

In terms of ‘rewarding’, nothing comes close to the upsell. This is the crack cocaine of being a sales assistant. Possibly my most successful upsell was converting someone from the purchase of a bottle of Pongracz (local méthode champenoise with a current retail value of about R200) to Salon, a Champagne that was then selling at a multiple of over ten times the price. Its current price is eyewatering; the multiple remains around ten, but in Sterling (taking it to a more than 200-fold multiple of the local fizz).

There was also the customer who wanted a chardonnay recommendation. At this time, I was doing direct imports and the price of Burgundy hadn’t yet exploded. Even so, there would have been a multiple of between five and ten times the price for the bottle of Premier Cru he took to a special dinner over the weekend. When he returned the following week we shared commiserations that very nearly were teary, because the bottle had slipped out of his hand and smashed as he walked into the restaurant.

Of course, not every customer who walks in the door is open to spending a few pleasant minutes putting together a selection of bottles to try. Some are just plain rude or are having a bad day. It’s not the sales assistant’s fault, but one must learn to charm or dance around the prickliness as best possible.

There are also the occasional times when one has cocked up. Service recovery is another valuable skill to learn.

A lot of time, though, shops can be depressingly quiet, when an hour can pass without any customers. If it’s a slow time of year, this effect is even worse.

Rather than standing around, getting more and more depressed, we’d move things around or build a new display. You might say that it’s no different to moving the metaphorical deck chairs, but it’s amazing what a little bit of proactivity can do to how one feels. It also ensures a more interesting store for the customers who do walk in.

Without diminishing the different forms of mental health issues, I’ve often applied a different version of starting a proactive or creative activity when I’m feeling down (for the record, the impetus for writing this piece wasn’t one of those; this is an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for a while).

Online retail has its own requirements for specialised knowledge – traffic, click-through rates, fulfillment and more – but none of them bring us face to face with human beings.

The internet is full of laments about people being unable to conduct basic social interactions because of all the time they spend online (or because of the ways in which they spend their online time). Of course, the more online shopping we do, the less retail employment is on offer, and therefore fewer opportunities like the one I had.

Even for people who have no intention of working in retail all their lives – or especially for them – it’s a great place to start.