“What are you guys doing here?” asked someone who appeared to be the bellhop.

And he didn’t say it in the way that one would expect from someone attempting to be hospitable.

But we were seven days on the road in a foreign country and obviously American tourists. The hotel lobby we had just entered was super posh, right off of the main tourist circuit, and we were wheeling our own dusty luggage around.

Maybe we looked like we didn’t belong there? I knew that because we already felt like we didn’t belong there — not in the country itself, but in that hotel’s lobby. I’m going to say it: It wasn’t our cup of tea. And mind you, this was in a country known for its coffee. Not everything is everything to everybody. Just look at any back bar shelf. Why do you think all of those products are there? It’s because people have different tastes and different preferences.

“We are checking in,” I said, stepping up to the counter in dusty athletic shoes, shorts and a T-shirt. It was the middle of the day, and it was hot.

The bellhop’s tone changed immediately.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me get your bags,” he said.

And from then on, everything was fine. But that first impression lasted the whole stay and beyond. I vowed then that I would try in my everyday job to never judge people based on first impressions.

But it wasn’t at my everyday job that I caught myself doing exactly that. We were in a small rural town, and my wife wanted to check out a little health food cafe that she found on the internet. The health food stores I remember from my youth were a lot like used record stores or even used bookstores. Often it seemed like the person helping you was judging your choices. And sometimes they really were.

“You really want their first album?” the clerk would ask unsolicited.

And unsolicited advice is rarely appreciated. I once worked with a health food store employee who moonlighted as a waiter. He asked a female guest if she had candida, a type of yeast overgrowth, because of her food choices. She was on a first date, and let’s just say that the conversation didn’t go well.

So maybe it was me being judgy when we walked in the door of the health food cafe, because the young man in high-top tennis shoes, skateboarding shorts and a fully extended hoodie over a stocking cap was certainly nice enough. But in all my years of service providing and service accepting, I have never seen a server dressed that way. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of hoodies, plenty of skateboard shorts and plenty of high-tops in my time. But I’ve never had a server wearing a beanie or one wearing a hoodie over the top of one. He was like a Banksy painting come to life.

And he was splendid.

“Which of these two specialty coffees would you pick?” I asked him because when one is unfamiliar with a menu, the best person to ask is the person standing right in front of you.

Not everyone knows this, and every bartender will tell you a story about a random customer taking another random customer’s advice over theirs. But such is the nature of service.

“This one’s my favorite,” he said.

And then he provided several concrete reasons why he thought that.

And he was right. It was delicious — so delicious, in fact, that I asked for the recipe, which he provided. When I didn’t recognize an ingredient, he brought the bag out to my table from the back. It’s not like he wasn’t busy, because he was. But still he found the time to answer questions and provide resources. And in a health food cafe, there are a lot of questions and a lot of resources. Later on, as the early afternoon sun warmed up the restaurant, and he switched from the hoodie to a backward-facing trucker cap — still with the beanie — the great service continued.

If he didn’t know the answer, he checked. He listened to requests and answered questions in a forthright and easily digestible manner, not only from me but from other tables, too. In the service business, especially in the bar service business, some people inundate you with information rather than simply answering a question.

When we paid the bill, he presented us with a portable electronic device that ran our credit card. At the end there was a screen for gratuity. It listed 18%, 20% and 22%.

The amount I left him was off of that chart and in cash.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Does a book cover ever wonder about its reader? I wonder what Friedrich Nietzsche would have said.

• People never want to feel like their service provider is judging them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a record store clerk, a bartender or even a bellhop at a swanky hotel.

• “I will no longer provide unsolicited medical advice,” said one waiter years ago after an hour-long sit-down with management.

• Judging a person — any person — never defines who they are. But it does define who you are.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com