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

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else | Michael Gates Gill | Interesting read, makes you think, but has holes

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How Starbucks Save...

	How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else Michael Gates Gill Gotham, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 110 reviews view larger image
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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.

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I loved it!

I finished it in one day! I thought he sent a very clear message; it does not matter your age, or the background you come from, you can find happiness in your work, friends, and life. It is never too late to start over, and be who you might have been...happy and fulfilled. So what if he found it at Starbucks, and promoted them. It is a story about how Starbucks saved his life!!! Hello..Starbucks is going to be showcased! He still took the time to talk about all the wonderful people he has met, and even shared the life lessons he learned along the way to where he is now, and yes that means working at Starbucks. Think how you would feel if a company helped pull your life back together. I know I would not mind building them up as much as I could, and announcing to the world all the great things they have done for me and others. I will keep a copy of this book on my shelf! Loved it!!

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Interesting read, makes you think, but has holes

Interesting premise - spoiled man of privelege is forced to join the serving class and actually finds happiness. I like Gill's writing style and the book kept me interested. I did see some holes, such as details (or at least more info) on the 10 years between the ad agency and Starbucks. And how, exactly, did he embark on the path that caused his family to break up? How did his move at the book's end really come about? I felt much was glossed over or disregarded as irrelevant, when in fact it's relevant to grow this reader's empathy with Gill and his story. Perhaps he was worried about being seen as a bad guy (when in fact, he's just human), or perhaps there was heavy editing by Starbucks PR. Overall, a good, quick, interesting read. I just think substantial info was missing.

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Good read if you can get past the Starbucks marketing and are not judgemental

I finished this book in one sitting because I was just so eager to experience the author's journey of picking himself up from rock-bottom. I would have given it 5 stars if not for the overwhelming Starbucks mention but was able to get past it because I have heard that it is a really good company to work for, and from personal experience have really come to appreciate the value of being in a positive work environment where you are around people who genuinely care about you, and bring out the best in you rather than beat you down. I've recently come to the conclusion that you can get positive work experiences anywhere from being a waitress to a high-powered CEO depending on what you find fulfillment in (and everyone is different in what they find fulfilling) and am happy to hear that the author was able to find it in the most unexpected of places. I applaud the author's candid story; it's one thing to be 30 and down and out, but in his 60s and being what seemed like on top of the world and to have to enter into a brand new world of unknown mostly on his own is exceptionally challenging. If you're someone who thinks that extra-marital affairs are "wrong" and are going to judge him for it, don't bother reading because you probably won't be able to get past that fact to see his other accomplishments. If you can empathize with someone who's just doing what he can to pick himself up you'll probably find this to be a good read.

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Like Mad Magazine.......

Really.... Save the holier than thou literary garbage for some never got layed Ivory league professor who couldn't hold a normal job with normal people if his life was on the line. Fact is most...I mean most! normal folks would enjoy this type of reading while on vacation or waiting in a airport terminal. That is the market for this, if not most publishing. I am so tired of some unaccomplished idiot's remarks that really mean nothing to 95 percent of the population. Listen fools!!! I have never met a soul (outside of the few I mentioned before) who thought A Tale of Two Cities was ..well.....good! or half the writing of Harwthorn and lets not forget the garbage and crap in old waldens pond!!! Really, most folks would rather read Mad magazine..and the fact that they are still publishig Mad after 30 years...well there is my pudding and proof!! Get a life. Oh, now it your turn to live up to the starnards I mentiona nd say..oh look at Ace's grammer...oh, he misspelled this or that...have fun, but I have a good life with good friends and well........lots of real GOOD books that us nothings share..

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