How Starbucks Saved My Life

A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

By: Michael Gates Gill

Narrated by: Dylan Baker

In his 50s, 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 60, 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 20-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 latte, 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 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.

©2007 Michael Gates Gill (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

Critic reviews

"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." (Wayne Dyer)

"I like my Starbucks, but I loved this book. It hit me emotionally and intellectually, right in the gut. The message, what the world needs to embrace most, made my cup runneth over!" (Dr. Denis Waitley)

Great inspiring story

Would you listen to How Starbucks Saved My Life again? Why?

Yes because it was inspiring how someone who had "everything" found more happiness on having less with much more satisfaction.

What about Dylan Baker’s performance did you like?

It was easy to listen to. So many audio books get people to read them and they are HORRIBLE!! This was not the case with this book.

Any additional comments?

Really enjoyed listening to it and learned a lot about Starbucks too!

Compassion

As a 40 year old woman it gave me a great insight as to what my mother went through when my father walked out on us in the early 1980's. Being a college educated 55 year old housewife, she was left with no other choices but to work in the restaurant industry (after numerous rejections to rejoin the Airline industry she so proudly worked for before having a family.) I now know the pride my mom felt when she was promoted from dishwasher to kitchen help. And from kitchen help to head cook. It was hard for my WASP mother to understand her much younger Hispanic, Indian and Nigerian co-workers. And embarrassing to come home in a fast food uniform smelling like french fries in front of our upper middle class neighbors. I only wish there would have been a Starbucks for my mom back then, I think it would have really helped with her pride and self esteem.

Excellent book

I enjoyed this book very much. I enjoy stories of real people and this was a very good one.

Great story with deep message

A well written account of how scaling down doesn't necessarily mean regression. If it's meant to be marketing for Starbucks, good job. It's an engaging story and makes for easy listening.

How Starbucks save my life great book

I really enjoyed this book I thought it was great kept my interest I couldn’t wait to press play and find out what was happening next great story very inspirational. I highly recommend

Loved this so much!!

As someone who has to figure out what to do after a career that you had for most of your life sees you as weathered and old school…this warmed my heart and was inspiring at the same time. Must read.

A Really Good Listen

This book is great. I loved the story, the people in the story. The best part is seeing a guy get over numerous bad situations in his life. Kudos to Starbucks too!

Great book - timely reading

The days are long gone when a college grad goes to work for one company and retires 35 years later with a gold watch. Almost all of us have to reinvent ourselves at some point in our lives, move into different professions or adapt to a less-lavish lifestyle. Not all of us fall from the heights Michael Gates Gill did, but still, his story is both fascinating and worthwhile.

Other reviewers have panned the book as a 'company-line' promo for Starbucks – maybe it was. Maybe it did present Starbucks in the best possible light – so? It was still interesting to learn about a company that's doing it different. I'm not a Starbucks loyalist, having just once in my life paid $3.75 for a small cup of regular black coffee, no milk, no sugar, and decided I didn't need to do that again. But I am interested in how businesses work – and hearing the 'inside' story of the Starbucks operation was fascinating. Like Gill, I too spent years in a profession where we were counseled never to praise our employees, because later they could sue us, and use that as evidence. Where competition and nastiness was the order of the day. So hearing about a very successful company that does the exact opposite of that – encourages praise, affirmation and decency – was great. We should all be learning from companies like that.

I enjoyed the Starbucks tales just as much as I enjoyed the details of Gill's personal life. Besides that, it's nice to know that if I ever need a bathroom, somewhere, sometime, Starbucks will welcome me.

The New Yorker magazine trivia was interesting, too, the gossipy asides about Brendan Gill, Truman Capote, Jacqueline Onassis and James Thurber. So Thurber was a mean old guy? I didn't know that!

I loved this book, and I'm sure I'll listen to it again. Now I wish Don Snyder's "The Cliff Walk" – another guy who was forced to reinvent himself -- would appear as an audiobook.

Easy listening, just like a latte.

But like a latte the pleasure fades.

I agree with all that's been said, good and bad. Yes, the author is elitist, naive, and ignorant of the real world and is also a name dropper. But, on the other hand, this is the exact sort of person who can benefit from a learning experience. It's well-written, too. It should be, he's an ad man.

No one has mentioned the "day at the beach" attitude with which he dismisses his marriage and family, goes on to have an affair and then a MANopause baby! What a cliche. He then dismisses that child, too. If that's all true and not just spin for the book, I disagree with his failure to face intimacy and conflict in his marriage.

Like a skinny latte, it tastes good at the time, stimulating, but the pleasure is temporary.

This book has me concerned, though, because if I need to get a job at Starbucks, this book has just dialed up the competition.

Great story

The author talks about what truly is important in life. It is a story of the power of friends and how they can be there in a time of need. He gets real about his misfortune and how he learned from it.