Intro
There is no decision more important than the choice of whom to marry, except if you want to be a monk or stay single. And this is usually a hard one, because is is marred with emotional traps.
Be it good priming by my parents or luck or a mix of both and even more factors, I feel like saying that my choice was an excellent one. My wife Maria is not only my life partner under our home’s roof, but also my greatest confessor and best psychotherapist.
She can be very brutal with me, but she is always honest and that is what I value the most.
This aims at being an article about the concept of excellence, a word which gets quoted too often through one’s hat. I shall make my attempt to qualify the idea of excellence by way of a metaphor, which my wife inspired a few days ago.
I should start by saying that excellence is, to me, not an easy thing to see objectively. And that is because, since I try to achieve it in life and in the company I run together with my family, it bears a sensible emotional charge.
The best way to see emotionally charged problems is to use an external person to help you seeing yourself more objectively. Other than that, if the light of the intuition need is too strong, you can catch a look at them out of the corner of your eye if you are struck by a metaphor.
A week ago, my wife unwillingly provided the metaphor which showed me excellence in a different light, after a cleaning session with two cleaning ladies recruited straight from the Dentoni crew to help her remove the dirt and clutter left by the workers who have renovated our house in the last two years.
Since, before bringing the two ladies along with her, she had already cleaned the grossest part of the dirt, the heavy lifting of cleaning had already been done.
When I asked her, after we had finished moving in, how the cleaning experience with the two women went, I expected a resounding “great”, since I know that these two ladies are held in quite a high esteem by my mother and aunt, when it comes to their seasonal job. And my mother’s standards are super high, when it comes to cleanliness.
Seasonal is the key word to understand the sequel of this tirade, since these ladies have, so far, only worked during the peak season.
My wife’s reply: “they may be good at cleaning dirty places, like your lab in the summer, but they have a long way to go before learning to clean neat surfaces.”
Work as an Inner Discipline
There’s an old Zen saying: “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” It’s another way of saying that true mastery doesn’t depend on circumstance.
When the job becomes a habit of attention — when doing it well becomes part of one’s identity — then even the smallest task turns sacred.
In hospitality, this principle matters deeply.
The person who takes a moment to align the chairs, to smooth the edges of the napkins, to check the reflection in the glass — that person is not wasting time. They are cultivating presence. Every gesture becomes a kind of mindfulness: a conversation between the worker and the work, between the hand and the material world.
Cleaning a clean surface is not about hygiene. It’s about dignity.
It says: I see you, this place, this counter, this moment — and it deserves care.
The Invisible Symphony
In a busy environment like ours, chaos has its own rhythm.
During peak season, the energy is electric — orders shouted, trays moving, machines humming, laughter echoing through the terrace. That energy hides imperfections; it forgives. A misplaced spoon disappears in the noise.
But when the noise fades, the details emerge.
It’s then that you notice the smudges on the window, the faint streaks on the steel, the corners where dust collects.
And it’s then that the true artisans of service reveal themselves.
They move quietly, restoring order to the aftermath of chaos — not because someone asked, but because they cannot stand disorder, however small.
They find satisfaction in micro-perfection, in the soft sound of a cloth gliding over marble, in the clarity of glass so transparent it disappears.
There’s beauty in that.
It’s the same beauty musicians find in tuning their instrument after a concert: the job is technically done, but the care continues.
When Work Becomes Art
Art begins where obligation ends.
Once you’ve done what’s required, anything beyond that is art — the surplus of attention, the extra moment of care, the refinement no one demanded.
People who can clean a clean surface understand that excellence is not an event but a habit.
They’re the ones who, when the day slows, rearrange the display, adjust the lighting, tidy the workspace until it feels in harmony again.
In a world obsessed with visibility, their kind of excellence is almost subversive. They don’t need praise. They don’t perform for approval. Their reward is internal — the quiet pleasure of a job done perfectly, even when it didn’t need doing.
It’s this kind of spirit that keeps a place alive — that invisible commitment that customers feel even if they can’t name it. Because a clean surface is not just clean; it’s peaceful. It radiates care. It tells a story of someone who didn’t cut corners when no one was looking.
…the best definition of excellence I have ever managed to come up with: relentless care independent of an external observer.
And this is, to me, the best definition of excellence I have ever managed to come up with: relentless care independent of an external observer.
The Paradox of Stillness
There’s an irony in the rhythm of seasonal work: we crave rest, yet we struggle to stay still.
After months of summer intensity, the slower months test not our stamina but our discipline.
And that’s when the “cleaners of clean surfaces” emerge — those who fill the silence not with boredom but with devotion. They find meaning in what others might call monotony. It’s easy to be efficient when time is scarce. It’s much harder to be excellent when time is abundant.
In those long, quiet hours between customers, something happens: the difference between habit and vocation becomes visible. The merely compliant grow restless; the truly dedicated grow attentive. For them, polishing glass or aligning trays is not busywork. It’s maintenance of identity — keeping alive that thin, invisible thread between care and pride.
Leaders often talk about motivation as something to be given: goals, incentives, deadlines.
But the best teams are those where motivation is not external but intrinsic. The “cleaners of clean surfaces” don’t wait to be told — they set their own standard, and that standard quietly raises everyone else’s.
There’s a story about a janitor at NASA in the 1960s. When asked what his job was, he replied:
“I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
That’s what ownership looks like: seeing the smallest task as part of a greater purpose.
Psychologists call it “intrinsic motivation” — the impulse to act because the act itself is satisfying.
But in truth, it’s more than psychology; it’s philosophy. It’s the belief that quality is not situational but constitutional.
People who live by this principle develop an almost artistic relationship with their work. They don’t measure success in applause but in alignment — between what they do and who they are.
There’s pride, and there’s vanity. Vanity seeks recognition. Pride seeks harmony. The ones who clean the clean surface are proud — but not in a noisy way. Their pride comes from seeing things shine, from knowing the place looks and feels right, from sensing that even if nobody else saw what they did, they saw it, and that’s enough.
The Grace of Small Gestures
We all meet moments when there’s “not much to do.” But those moments are where meaning lives — when time slows down enough to reveal who really cares, who keeps looking, who refuses to let the place fade into habit.
So here’s to them: the people who clean what’s already clean, who polish the air, who keep the standard shining when no one is counting.
They are the reason a place feels alive long after the music fades.
And they remind us — gently, wordlessly — that care is the most enduring form of beauty.
Mirko Serino and Franz Panarese
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