How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

"How Starbucks Saved my Life" is a bit like the memoir "From Emperor to Citizen", where China's former King gains self-respect and becomes the worker he should've been. Micheal Gill was a top-paid guy in a top advertising firm all his adult life, then was let go and slid downward. It wasn't until he went to work at Starbucks that he found any purpose in life. Gill may have been "a son of privilege, but he really had no talent or skill. He was born to an upper-class family, and straight out of college he got a gravy job at a top ad firm. But after decades there, a new executive (haf his age) fires him. By age 60 he's had an affair, lost his wife, his home, his family, and his money. The truth is, this guy was reckless and never gave any thought to the future. Back in the early 1990's, high-salaried guys were getting laid in droves. I knew a guy who worked for Trump, then got laid off. His wife had to work long hours in order to keep their house and send the kids to private school. When I asked my Mom why the guy didn't just take any job he could, she told me "he's an educated man, and he doesn't want to be the deli counter man at a local restaurant." My Dad didn't have this problem. He kept his high-paid job through the recession. That's because my Dad kept the future in mind and had a backup plan. In today's shaky economy, this book can set a standard. Working in the service sector isnt downward mobility; it's opportunity! If Pu Yi could go from unskilled, untalented Emperor to being a gardener, why wouldn't Gill go from being an untalented, unskilled executive to qualified barista?

I got it yesterday and already almost finished with it. Good story with a great message about life priorities and how they can be misaligned, and how hardships can force us to see life with renewed clarity. Good writing style and easy reading.

This is a delightful book which celebrates "less is more". I really enjoyed reading Michael's journey, with all of its highs and lows. It's fascinating how he could create a positive experience out of a negative one, and he should be an inspiration to anyone who has been down on their luck. I think Michael's an interesting, good-natured person with a colorful history. The fact that he socialized with Jackie Kennedy, the queen, and famous authors only added to the story and contrasted his stations in life. Good for you Michael Gates Gill. You are worthy of being an author. This book is good for everyone, especially coffee drinkers.

At first I was skeptical about this book, having learned it was a story about a man's fall from grace as a "big shot" to a lowly Starbuck's Barista. Instead I became deeply attached to this man and his message - where he basically admits that perhaps his "previous life" of being so status driven and isolated from people who weren't like him was probably a big mistake and a wasted life - and that with his new perspective on people, work (the contrast in management style from his "old life" to the "respect-driven" ethos of Starbucks) he feels happy and more connected to his family for perhaps the first time in his life.

This is the story of a wealthy ad executive who is laid off (in a case of blatant ageism) and must then turn to finding an hourly job at Starbucks to make ends meet. He has the classic rich Manhattanite life trajectory: private school, Ivy League, corporate job with lots of income. He does spend a lot of time away from family though, which prefigures events to come later. He is, both through the reader's own instinct and his telling us so, one of those New Yorkers who has never really met middle class people. It's a sheltered life, but comfortable. Gill tells his story well and doesn't hold back on the self-deprecation, not at all. His divorce came about for the understandable reason that he met a single, 40ish woman into the arts who lived alone. Mysterious enough for you? So, intrigued and feeling emotionally unmoored with no job, he has an affair and fathers a child. His family is understandably devastated, and the scenes in this memoir of them are wrenching. Thrown out of the house, with no job, his money runs out and he must learn to be middle class from nearly scratch. He decides Starbucks would work when he reflects how he spends times there and when the local manager and him have one of those conversations blacks and whites have that sound mistrustful but are actually seeking closeness and racial harmony. From there, Gill confronts all the things that he'd never learned to do; like the simple self-satisfaction of work, independent living, how to handle solitude, and getting to know people unlike himself. Time and again, Gill points out how his pre-fall opinion of someone and how wrong he was, and his post-fall new, more mature appreciation of them. He does it in a way that is tender and loving, and he allows for the sizable resentment some readers may feel at hearing someone used to limos talk about not wanting to walk on 96th Street. 96th Street for god's sake! My first day living here I went to 96th Street to people-watch! I once had a girlfriend who got fired from a publishing job and worked at Barnes and Noble for three weeks, until she couldn't deal with being 22 and being so "common." I thought of her as I read this book. The PW editorial review is totally misleading, by the way. He talks about as much as you'd expect about the Starbucks job. For a book dealing with his new life, that is expected. Plus, for all the talk about how great Starbucks is, you never really hear about how the place works. One thing - I didn't realize that the baristas are supposed to talk to you and make conversation. My whole lifetime of going to Starbucks, it's happened once, I see in retrospect. Definitely get this book.