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

The son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, Michael Gates Gill was a creative director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising, where he was employed for over twenty-five years. He lives in New York within walking distance of the Starbucks store where he works, and has no plans to retire from what he calls the best job he’s ever had.

Michael Gates Gills story of being pushed out of an alpha male job and forced to work in a service job is both entertaining and compelling. Gills insecurities, class consciousness, and poor relationship with his self-absorbed father compounded his fall from high-flying marketing executive to retail grunt who found himself serving coffee to the kind of person he used to be. Most poignantly, his Starbucks job led to important life lessons through his experiences with African-Americans and others whom he says he looked down on in his previous career. With his pleasing elocution, sensitivity to nuances in dialogue, and obvious appreciation for the authors experiences, Dylan Baker carries the weight of this story without being heavy-handed with its morality lesson. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine