Learning by sharing: waiters' and bartenders' experiences of service encounters*

This paper aims at understanding what happens before, during and after critical service encounters, which gives an insight into which employee skills are central for coping with such encounters in hospitality. Furthermore, the study seeks to understand how education, vocational training and informal training affect front liners' experiences of critical service encounters. Findings show that there are three categories of skills that are central to employees when dealing with critical service encounters: technical (‘hard’), social (‘soft’) and aesthetic (appearance) skills. These skills are mainly learnt by formal education (technical), informal information sharing among employees (social) and interaction with guests (aesthetic).