How Starbucks Saved My Life Pdf Download

Michael Gates Gill, is a Yale grad and is the son of a New Yorker writer (Brendan Gill). After graduating from Yale, he stepped on to the fast track with the ad agency, J. Walter Thompson (now JWT). Once Gill began his career, work dominated his life. He accepted assignments all over the world and dealt with the corporate titans. (He recounts an interesting anecdote about Lee Iacocca).

An unexpected teacher opens his eyes to what living well really looks like. She is a young African American, the daughter of a drug addict; he is used to being the boss but reports to her now. For the first time in his life he experiences being a member of a minority trying hard to survive in a challenging new job. He learns the value of hard work and humility, as well as what it truly means to respect another person.

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The story begins with Michael already in a downward spiral. In an attempt to get a grip on his life, or a sense of his place in the universe, he retreats to the bygone familiarity and comfort of the past by visiting the neighborhood where he grew up. Standing in front of his old home, he reminisces about the day his father had a Steinway grand piano hoisted by crane into the second floor. Throughout the book, Michael goes back years in time and pulls stories seemingly out of thin air and pops them into the present. At first, I thought that most of these were interesting little titbits from the past that he was using to make his story more interesting or to simply fill the pages. But the more I read, I began to see that as he progressed to a new life, he still needed validation that his old life was not bereft of significance. In this way, I do not think that he is any different from anyone else. And it is these images from the past, now seen in a new light, that help Michael transition to his new self.

The story is also about taking risks. I do not mean skydiving or trying to summit Mount Everest. Rather, Mike comes to understand that his boss, Crystal, has taken a risk by hiring him. He thought he understood risk because he had gone out on a limb in many of his corporate presentations during his past life. But he had never taken a risk on people, especially if they were not like him, meaning white and male.

In 2010 I quit my job and moved to Borneo. In a couple of months, I went from being financially independent and career-focused to a stay-at-home mother. In Borneo. It was a fascinating transition (ahem) and I really would not have survived it without Starbucks. Yes, there was a Starbucks, and as the title of the post exclaims, it saved my life. The loneliness of early motherhood, the shock of chang and the monotony of those days were eased by this generic coffee chain, and for so many reasons. The staff remembered my order (I exist!); they cooed over my daughter (she IS adorable to outsiders!); they made me drinks that reminded me of a life outside of the three roads I now frequented and motherhood (I am Rachel again I am Rachel again!); and with the wifi, I was connected to friends and news and the world; a connection that was poor elsewhere in that town. These little connections, as small as they seem now, really meant a lot as I struggled with finding my place in this new expat world, as a new mum and without family, friends, or the structure of a job and a familiar social life. It gave me space to remember who I was and to decide who I was going to be, now my life had taken this unexpected turn.

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.

Michael Gill had it made. He was educated, wealthy and well-connected. He had a creative and lucrative advertising job, which he loved and which he was good at, and a model family and home life. Then he loses it all. He is fired by a young exec whom he had mentored. He has an extramarital affair that destroys his family and results in a newborn son. Then he is diagnosed with brain cancer. He has no insurance, no income.

Then he waited. But exactly how was I supposed to respond? Praise? I acknowledge that compared to killing yourself with drugs and alcohol, making a wallet is a good, maybe even life-affirming act. At the same time, my friend is well educated, engaging, insanely verbal and brilliant at what he does. For him to have spent time making a crappy wallet struck me as sad and pathetic.

I had the same uneasy mix of feelings when I read Michael Gates Gill's memoir, "How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else." The story of his life reads like the plot of Lifetime movie. He's the son of the famous man about town and New Yorker writer Brendan Gill. He rode the escalator of privilege right to the top, stepping easily from Yale to the upper echelons of advertising behemoth J. Walter Thompson, where he ruled, master-of-the-universe-style, for decades. Then, at 53, Gill got fired. Over the next 10 years his consulting business failed; he had an affair that ended his long marriage and got him kicked out of his luxurious suburban home; he went broke, alienated his children, and ended up living in a shabby one-bedroom rental; and, uninsured, he was diagnosed with a slow-growing brain tumor. Then, weeks before his 64th birthday, he got a job, almost accidentally, at Starbucks. There, learning to grind beans, pull cappuccinos and make change, he found structure, self-respect, and, yes, happiness and meaning.

Usually I'm a sucker for such stories. So why do I feel manipulated instead of inspired by this one? Gill (or maybe his editor at Gotham Books) seems fully aware that readers are fascinated by tales of the elite brought low. So there are plenty of details about him wiping the toilet seats at Starbucks while he reminiscences about his former life hobnobbing with the rich and famous. But oddly, for a memoir, there's an almost total information blackout on Gill's emotional trajectory. Yes, he feels pain when he recollects the careless way he was parented. He feels abashed at his former assumptions about class and intelligence. He feels pride and relief when he's able to reestablish contact with his now-adult children. But it's all as predicable and stale as bad advertising copy, and somehow just as flat. We learn nothing about this man in 265 pages that we couldn't have surmised from the first chapter.

In How Starbucks Saved My Life, Michael Gates Gill, son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, takes a long fall from grace into a green apron. Already in his 60s, Gill is diagnosed with a brain tumor, loses his job as an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson, and ruins his marriage with an affair, gaining a newborn son in the process. Destitute and depressed, Gill's luck changes when he accidentally walks into a Starbucks career fair and takes a job as a barista. When the manager assigns him to 93rd and Broadway, a store staffed mostly by African-Americans in their 20s, Gill must leave his privileged past behind and learn how to operate a cash register and call out drink orders, among other things he never really imagined himself having to do. In the process, he achieves a sense of contentedness that eluded him in his former life of high-status entitlement.

Now in paperback, the national bestselling riches-to-rags true story of an advertising executive who had it all, then lost it all—and was finally redeemed by his new job, and his twenty-eight-year-old boss, at Starbucks.

In his fifties, Michael Gates Gill had it all: a mansion in the suburbs, a wife and loving children, a six-figure salary, and an Ivy League education. But in a few short years, he lost his job, got divorced, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. With no money or health insurance, he was forced to get a job at Starbucks. Having gone from power lunches to scrubbing toilets, from being served to serving, Michael was a true fish out of water.

But fate brings an unexpected teacher into his life who opens his eyes to what living well really looks like. The two seem to have nothing in common: She is a young African American, the daughter of a drug addict; he is used to being the boss but reports to her now. For the first time in his life he experiences being a member of a minority trying hard to survive in a challenging new job. He learns the value of hard work and humility, as well as what it truly means to respect another person.

Behind the scenes at one of America’s most intriguing businesses, an inspiring friendship is born, a family begins to heal, and, thanks to his unlikely mentor, Michael Gill at last experiences a sense of self-worth and happiness he has never known before.

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At the lowest point in his life, Michael walked into a Starbucks store while it was holding a jobs fair. On a whim he applied for a position.

Starbucks may be $4 cup of coffee to you and me, but to Michael, it was a lifesaver:

He can joke about it now, but Gill says he was devastated by his firing. "I remember walking outside and bursting into tears," he says over a steaming cup of coffee at his current place of employment, a Starbucks in Bronxville, New York. "I was stunned. I knew that that part of my life was over."

A trip to Starbucks would irrevocably change his life, he says. Unbeknownst to him, the coffee shop was holding a hiring fair the morning he walked in for his daily dose of caffeine. A manager approached him and asked if he would like to apply for a job. Without thinking, he said yes. ff782bc1db