How Starbucks Saved My Life -Michael Gates Gill

Sometimes in the winter, I drive my kids through Starbucks for a hot chocolate. We always get a kick out of the friendliness of the baristas. They say things like, "Hey, how ya doin?" " I haven't seen you in awhile". It always seemed disingenuous to me, and a bit corporately contrived. The book was published in Sept. of 2007 and I remember at Christmas last year thinking it would make a good present, especially for my brother-in-law who works in marketing. Well I guess he got something else and I forgot about the book until spotting it at the library shelved under 647? I know it wasn't with the biographies, but I have no idea what dewey decimal 647 is unless I go look. I often find it interesting how "memoir" type books get shelved for sale and at libraries. It never seems obvious to me. My friend David wrote a memoir and they shelved it with the religious material? I read the book and did not find it to be partucularly religious oriented. If you know what you are looking for you can easily find it, but some days I like to browse and see what I find. I was glad to find this book again.

Michael Gill has been fired in his mid fifties from a well paying job and tries consulting on his own for ten years when due to a divorce and new young child he finds himself in need of any paying job. He is hired by Starbucks and begins to realize what work really looks like. I must say I found it a bit humourous to think of the "suit" cleaning a downtown NY Starbuck's toilet. It brought back fond memories of my own working days of cleaning the bathroom at Burger King. If everyone in society had to clean a public restroom once in awhile, the world would be a better place. I admired his desire to do any job given him and to be on time and try his best. I sometimes wish if our younger generation could learn anything from the older generation it would be this strong work ethic. There are also lessons of corporate culture and how that affects employee performance. I found this book to also contain inherent lessons of diversity due to age and color differences of the Starbucks Employees.

The book did not make me want to rush out and get a job at Starbucks or to shop there more often, but it was a lesson in the cliche that life is what you make it. It is important to keep moving with the times and you may have to reinvent yourself , but happiness is always available if you choose it.