A double shot of optimism is wake-up

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

by Michael Gates Gill

Gotham, 283 pp., $23.95

Michael Gates Gill's fascinating memoir, "How Starbucks Saved My Life," has a simple plot line. A wealthy man loses his job, family and eventually hope. He takes a menial position and through it finds redemption.

It sounds like a television movie of the week, or at least an hour of Oprah. But Gill's book is about more. Much more.

Gill had it all: a wealthy pedigree, a Yale education and all the contacts that come with such an upbringing. Through connections, he landed a hard-to-get job at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, rising through the ranks to become executive vice president. He worked long hours and became a frequently absent parent in the process. "I convinced myself that the sacrifice was worth it, because JWT had supported me," he wrote.

At age 53, after 25 years with the company, Gill was fired. He claims it was age discrimination, though we have only one version of the story here. Why didn't he complain or sue? He says it was because the folks at JWT said they'd recommend him as a consultant to potential clients.

What seems to have happened to Gill is both typical and atypical of life for today's American worker. There is no such thing as corporate loyalty anymore — you can give your heart and soul to a company, and be let go on a whim. What made Gill's firing a little different is that it normally isn't the upper echelon that suffers.

For Gill, the consulting business worked out — at first. But over a matter of time, people changed jobs. Their replacements didn't return his calls. Ten years later, he was nearly destitute. An affair that led to the birth of a child resulted in divorce from his wife of 20 years. And if that wasn't enough, he was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer — only one in 10 million Americans gets it — and had no medical insurance.

He was at wit's end when, wearing a $2,000 suit, he walked into a Starbucks in Manhattan. There, Crystal Thompson, a young African-American store manager, perhaps on a dare, asked him if he was interested in a job. With nowhere else to turn, he said yes.

He stuck out on many levels. He was old — 63 — while everyone he worked with was young — 20 years old was the average age.

He was Ivy League educated, while many of his co-workers were still going to school. And he was white, where everyone else was of color.

But he loved it. He began to take pride in little things, like keeping the bathroom clean. Crystal told him: "Mike, I've got to say I've never seen anyone clean like you." He was soon promoted to cleaning supervisor (and later to coffee master).

There were a couple of bumps in the road. He stopped a homeless person from using his just-cleaned bathroom and earned a rebuke from Crystal: "He might not be a customer, but everyone who walks in that door is a Guest."

But overall he thrived in Starbucks' nurturing environment. As Gill tells it, associates — the corporate name for the coffee makers and order takers and bathroom cleaner-uppers — aren't told to do anything; they are asked. If they do something well, they are praised. All this was unlike his experiences at the ad agency. At JWT, he was told "not to send 'praise memos' because such positive missives could make them liable to a law suit if we had to fire a person."

He felt as though he'd fallen into a rabbit hole "where people could be nicer and the work environment better than I had ever believed possible."

But what moved me most was when one of his co-workers came in from a dental appointment — the first she'd ever had in her life — because of Starbucks' dental plan. Another got eyeglasses. And a third went to school under the company's tuition-reimbursement program.

So it can be done. Admittedly, Starbucks is an unusual case. Few companies mark up their products as much as the coffee retailer. But clearly, more can be done for the American worker. "How Starbucks Saved My Life" works as an interesting memoir of one man's transformation. But it can also work as a wake-up call to corporate America.