How Starbucks Saved My Life

A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

Gotham Books, 2007, 267 pages

Softcover, $14-, Kindle, Nook Version, $11.99

Reviewed by Chris Wendel

4 out of 5 stars

Life does not always allow us the time for all of the books we want to read. I remember hearing about “How Starbucks Saved My Life” when it was published in 2007, but had forgotten about it until I saw it recently at Horizon Books in Traverse City. I have grown somewhat weary of business books that reveal a magical concept and spend the remaining chapters reinforcing their supposed revelations. Something told me this book would be different.

Michael Gates Gill, author of “How Starbucks Saved My Life” was born into wealth. He graduated from Yale and immediately got a job through his network of college classmates for the major advertising firm J. Walter Thompson. Accomplished professionally with a large mansion and six figure salary, he seemed to have it all. Until his world comes crashing down and he finds himself in his 50’s, unemployed, divorced, and diagnosed with a brain tumor.

One day, lost in his post privileged life, “Mike” finds himself in a Starbucks coffee store, pretending to have an important meeting with someone who will never arrive. On a whim the store’s manager approaches and asks him if he is interested in working there. The manager is a young African American woman who Mike has little in common with. Desperate (and now broke), he takes the job, learning quickly how his pedigree doesn’t matter to his new boss or co-workers.  It is the jolting realization that making a living now puts him on equal footing with people he used to dismiss as uneducated or inferior. This moment forms the controlling  of the book.

“How Starbucks Saved My Life” is an entertaining first person narrative, going back and forth between Mike’s daily struggles to learn and keep his job as a coffee barista and flashbacks to the baggage of his upbringing, corporate life, and deep rooted biases. The book’s one drawback is the author’s habit of interrupting the flow of pivotal present tense situations with elongated and sometimes wordy flashbacks.

So how does Starbucks play into this? Like them or not, Starbucks provides the well-honed procedures and infrastructure that allow people to perform at a very high level, regardless of age or experience.  Mike’s well healed background matters little when it comes time to clean the restrooms, or deal with a long line of customers (or “Guests” in Starbuckese). However, within the Starbucks culture, Mike and each of his Partners are allowed to find some individual areas of expertise within the structure.

Over time the younger Partners and Mike become personally close. Mike finds that working at Starbucks is the great equalizer. Once that is understood, he truly appreciates the differences and strengths of each of his Partners.  Once this happens, Mike realizes something else.  That he is as happy as he has ever been, and that’s saying a lot.

Working as a team with defined daily tasks and goals, Mike and his team achieve a tremendous level of camaraderie and job satisfaction. In the end Mike is surprised when one day his grown children come to visit him at Starbucks are tremendously proud of his new line of work, his acceptance of others, and the way he’s changed him for the good.

“How Starbucks Saved My Life” is really about a courageous man who is forced to reinvent himself and be humbled in order to simply make a living. The real story here is Mike’s ability to excel as a Starbucks barista, while reaching a level of satisfaction in his work that he never had as a high-level advertising executive. In its small 260 page format, “How Starbucks Saved My Life” is a highly entertaining, weekend read that might just change your life… just like it changed Mike’s.