Product Description

In his fifties, Michael Gates Gill had it all: a big house in the suburbs, a loving family, and a top job at an ad agency with a six-figure salary. By the time he turned sixty, he had lost everything except his Ivy League education and his sense of entitlement. First, he was downsized at work. Next, an affair ended his twenty-year marriage. Then, he was diagnosed with a slow-growing brain tumor, prognosis undetermined. Around the same time, his girlfriend gave birth to a son. Gill had no money, no health insurance, and no prospects.

One day as Gill sat in a Manhattan Starbucks with his last affordable luxury—a latté—brooding about his misfortune and quickly dwindling list of options, a 28-year-old Starbucks manager named Crystal Thompson approached him, half joking, to offer him a job. With nothing to lose, he took it, and went from drinking coffee in a Brooks Brothers suit to serving it in a green uniform. For the first time in his life, Gill was a minority--the only older white guy working with a team of young African-Americans. He was forced to acknowledge his ingrained prejudices and admit to himself that, far from being beneath him, his new job was hard. And his younger coworkers, despite having half the education and twice the personal difficulties he’d ever faced, were running circles around him.

The other baristas treated Gill with respect and kindness despite his differences, and he began to feel a new emotion: gratitude. Crossing over the Starbucks bar was the beginning of a dramatic transformation that cracked his world wide open. When all of his defenses and the armor of entitlement had been stripped away, a humbler, happier and gentler man remained. One that everyone, especially Michael’s kids, liked a lot better.

The backdrop to Gill's story is a nearly universal cultural phenomenon: the Starbucks experience. In How Starbucks Saved My Life, we step behind the counter of one of the world's best-known companies and discover how it all really works, who the baristas are and what they love (and hate) about their jobs. Inside Starbucks, as Crystal and Mike’s friendship grows, we see what wonders can happen when we reach out across race, class, and age divisions to help a fellow human being.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17028 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill grew up meeting the likes of Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway. A Yale education led to a job at prestigious J. Walter Thompson Advertising. But at 63, the younger Gill's sweet life has gone sour. Long fired from JWT, his own business is collapsing and an ill-advised affair has resulted in a new son and a divorce. At this low point, and in need of health insurance for a just diagnosed brain tumor, Gill fills out an application for Starbucks and is assigned to the store on 93rd and Broadway in New York City, staffed primarily by African-Americans. Working as a barista, Gill, who is white, gets an education in race relations and the life of a working class Joe . Gill certainly has a story to tell, but his narrative is flooded with saccharine flashbacks, when it could have detailed how his very different, much younger colleagues, especially his endearing 28-year-old manager, Crystal Thompson, came to accept him. The book reads too much like an employee handbook, as Gill details his duties or explains how the company chooses its coffee. Gill's devotion to the superchain has obviously changed his life for the better, but that same devotion makes for a repetitive, unsatisfying read. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Yale graduate, prosperous ad exec: Gill has it all. Then he turns 60 and finds himself precipitously bounced from his job and saddled with the triple threats of a ruined marriage, an unexpected newborn, and a brain tumor. Despairing at the prospect of looming poverty, he stops at a Manhattan Starbucks to comfort himself with a latte. By chance he sits down next to Crystal, a young African American woman recruiting new workers for the coffee giant, and she offers him a job. Almost as an act of desperation, he accepts, and he dons the uniform of a barista-in-training at an Upper West Side Starbucks. This son of privilege who had hobnobbed with Queen Elizabeth, T. S. Eliot, and Jackie Onassis, now keeps daily company with a diverse crew of brash young New Yorkers for whom Starbucks' progressive employee benefits and demanding, inspiring standards of public service offer hope. Gill starts at the bottom, cleaning the bathroom, and he has trouble mastering the cash register. Over the months he learns to deeply respect Crystal, to appreciate the mutual support of his coworkers, and to genuinely cherish the passing parade of customers, each unique. To his own astonishment, he realizes that he actually looks forward joyfully to every hectic, exhausting workday. Other corporate giants can only envy the sheer goodwill that this memoir will inevitably generate for Starbucks. What a read. Knoblauch, Mark

Wayne Dyer
A great lesson in finding your highest self in the unlikeliest of places-- proof positive that there is no way to happiness-- rather, happiness is the way.

Customer Reviews

The Proof is in the Outcome
The only place to read HOW STARBUCKS SAVED MY LIFE is on location--INSIDE Starbucks--where you can sample a steady supply of coffee and pastries, and mingle with the partners. Regardless of why Michael Gates Gill wrote this book (and if he has a speck of sense and an ounce of American blood he wrote it not only to champion Starbucks and the new friends he made there, but also to pay a few bills) there's a worthwhile idea at the heart of it--dignity and respect for everyone--service providers and guests alike...and yes, even sons of privilege. We could all do with a few more books that celebrate a good 'ol American work ethic at ground level. Unfortunately, there are plenty of "self-help" books on how to claw your way to the top of the corporate ladder--not so many on how to retrace your steps gracefully on the descent (the only one that comes immediately to mind is the lovely little book HOPE FOR THE FLOWERS). After reading Gill's book I have a new interest in Starbucks, its workers, its coffee, its pastries--yes, even its benefits. I hope they call me. In the meantime, BRAVO for Michael! He did what many people wish they could do--he got out of the rat race and he wrote a best seller that will soon become a movie. How many of us can claim similar success in the stretch of a year?

Serving the coffee while drinking the Kool-Aid
This is the story of Mike, a sixty-something who lost his big corporate job and had to make ends meet at Starbucks. During which he discovered slinging caffeine behind a counter is really the best job he ever had, because the Partners, whom he treats with a reverence usually reserved for religious icons or at least basketball players, are really swell.

At times I thought of the Stockholm Syndrome as I read this: Gatsey was really identifying with, flattering and loving his captors as he contemplated his fate. While I think it's great that he didn't find it beneath him to get a minimum wage job when his network collapsed, I feel like there is a lot of untold story here, as well as story that's told over and over till it's threadbare. This guy had no social network to help him when he landed on his ear in his 50s? I know it's tough in advertising, a classic "young man's" profession, but he could have moved into related fields--PR perhaps. He could have become communications director for one of the many corporations he worked with. Did he even try consider these options? It's hard to believe a job at Starbucks was his best/only option. Maybe it was--but I was wondering throughout the first third of the book, did he piss some serious people off in his former life? He hints at being a tough boss and being resented by both employees and family members, without really going into what happened. In that way his look at himself is not "unsparing" but actually rather skin-deep. I feel like he left a lot of himself out of this memoir.

But even given that, he spends 200 pages trying to make major dramas out of things like a cash drawer that was short, or he was a couple minutes late. He also paints glorified pictures of perfect management and uber-happy employees that I just cannot imagine. He might have asked his coworkers how they felt about their job, or him--a square "white guy"--but instead he sugar-coats every moment where there could be a little introspection with "Starbucks people are the GREATEST people in the world, kissy-kissy." His boss Crystal in particular has great potential for drama. She had a tough early life, the opposite of his, and was raised by a guardian who hated white folks and thought they were "the enemy." But Crystal rose up to make good for herself. He mentions early and often how she was always wearing expensive jewelry and clothing, and disappearing into a different high-end sports car after closing every night, and I found myself wondering how a Starbucks employee could afford such niceties. I was expecting some surprise payoff for these questions raised, but never got one. Similarly I never learned how the other employees, many of whom were street toughs, ended up at Starbucks, or how they liked it there. Other story arcs, too, just stopped cold. Every time Gill could have offered some reflection he instead returned to, "Starbucks is such a great place to work, and everyone is so happy!" No matter what you think of the coffee chain, this was unenlightening reading. As someone below me notes, it reads like an employment training manual.

I understand this book was optioned for a movie (to star Tom Hanks) even before the book was put out. If so I pity whomever spent the money. When tension hinges around things like grinding beans properly and making sure your cash register drawer balances, you have a dull story. And so much of this is dull--and more sugary than one of the company's sweet summer drinks. There could have been a good story here, but Gill has to get more distance from the company.

I bought this book on a whim, only because I am a great admirer of Brendan Gill, the author's father, for many years a New Yorker columnist. Daddy was definitely a better writer than the son, at least judging by this book.

How Gates Gill Ruined His Own Life
I picked up this book because the premise was intriguing.

The actual writing itself is dull and business-like. The narration has no flow, and the settings are jarring--moving back and forth from nostalgic waspy childhood memories to a present day Starbucks store. I realize those two concepts are supposed to juxtapose his upbringing with his current situation in life, but it's not a smooth delivery.

What I liked least about the book was its author. Michael Gates Gill reminds me of what is wrong with America. He comes across as a completely pompous ignoramus. He spends at least one third of the book advertising himself and his accomplishments at J. Walter Thompson.

I have a hard time conjuring up any sort of pity or appreciation for his life and his story. He made millions during his years working in advertising at JWT. He is in his SIXTIES when he gets laid off, and acts like he is a major victim of corporate America. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

What did he do during his previous 30 years of prosperity? Did he save/invest his money like a wise person? No, he floundered it away. Did he work on his marriage? No, he had an affair instead. Did he spend time with his kids? No. He made a series of bad choices that brought him to where he ended up.

As for where he ended up, he does Starbucks no favors by romanticizing an unglamourous job. Most Starbucks stores do not have managers like Crystal. The employees are not always kind and courteous to one another, and the bathrooms are not always lovely and clean. I wonder how Crystal feels about the book. I would be offended to know that someone turned my career--my LIFE--into some sort of year-long anthropological study, and then published all the findings.

Overall, this book was a bum deal. I gave it two stars because I reserve one star ratings for the worst of the worst.