Interesting Life Story for an Autobiography

Ultimately, How Starbucks Saved My Life is a deeply humbling book, one that I found deeply illuminating on a personal level because it makes you think long and hard about one man's road to personal fulfillment. This road was founded with privilege and a silver spoon upbringing, full of lucky who-you-know connections and familial neglect and surprising karma that one would never see coming. Such is the case of Michael Gates Gill, an unlikely literary character who is the real thing. Gill the autobiographical writer is a study in contrasts, a man who never had to truly fight for the fruits of his labor or truly understood just how hard it is for people to survive that didn't go to Yale or didn't have a wealthy upbringing. For Gill, this is the guy, the man who did go to Yale, who did have a wealthy upbringing and in some ways, never truly understood the dynamic of the social classes until he found himself in an entirely different one that he in a million years, never would've thought he would've ended up there.

How Starbucks Saved My Life is the lifestory of Michael Gates Gill, a man who had a famous poet father who married into money. Gill is essentially a guy who admitted he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was a guy that never understood how hard some people had it. Personally for me on a hateful level, I despise a character like Gill for a guy who is reasonably smug in coasting by on life without having to truly understand how hard it is for people to get by, but yet contains the power to make or break the spirit of these people like Gill did with one young woman at the powerful ad agency Gill worked for, by personally getting the woman removed from her position because of his pure upper class snobbery and lack of compassion. It's a thing like this, that inevitably lead to a kind of downfall for Gill, whom we later learn is reduced to working in a job that he never saw coming. As said, Gill had everything from the American Dream: high paying job, big family and lots of corporate perks that didn't really seem to come with his Ivy League degree, but the friendship he had with a fellow classmate that got him a job that enabled him to own two houses, send his many kids through college and never have to get on a train to ride to work.

Then something bad happened.

Michael Gates Gill got old and the powers that be at his agency, as a result of a hostile corporate takeover, decided Gill was no longer an asset and had him canned, even by a protege that Gill groomed personally for the job.

But the worst has yet to happen for Gill, and it's a man like this, that ended up finding himself no longer on the receiving end of a Starbucks coffee, but the very person who was serving it as a Starbucks barista. This is the story of Michael Gates Gill, a man who truly had to understand what it means to be a good human being.

I personally found How Starbucks Saved My Life to be a very entertaining read, one that alternates between Gill's surprisingly deep life story of his brushes with celebrities from an array of industries to his humbling time at Starbucks. In a way, this is Gill's redemption and while it doesn't afford him the luxuries that came with his previous life, the one reward he did get from it was how to be a genuinely good guy that could appreciate life as more than just high priced advertisements and neverending privileges. As we see Gill describe himself with his father, a larger than life character whom I figure, may have lead to Gill's misunderstanding of the social classes, we also see a portrait of a man who was no longer part of an elite class that he prided himself as part of. He, Gill the highly paid ad executive was the guy calling the shots in the corporate hierarchy, the one making orders and the one who disregarded people who didn't hold an Ivy League degree as nothing more than replaceable inventory that should relegate itself to a meaningless job. It's such personal beliefs on Gill's part, that you can appreciate where he ends up, and how he should remain compassionate about everyone, regardless of who they are, or where they were educated.

How Starbucks Saved My Life is a nice diversion from a lot of ego-inflated biographies I see out there. I personally have to say that I don't want to see more books about celebrities or famous history figures. There are far too many other books and resources out for that stuff, but I like seeing a personal story with a rather unique bent to it, such as Gill's life story. What I personally found so fulfilling is seeing a guy who ranked so high in the corporate chain, work the total opposite end as a member of the working class, who even provides such beverages to the elite that Gill once belonged to, to becoming a guy who had to find himself in the process. Gill is by no means a literary god or anything like that, but he provides an interesting look at how one has to readjust to life and become whole again. Gone are the opportunities to spend watching his kids grow up, and replaced by a new child of which the book will get into. We see a guy who became such a company man that he was personally crushed by the very company that he so vehemently served, even sacrificing holidays for his kids to be there.

How Starbucks Saved My Life is a great read, and it's one that you could easily find in a big book store like Barnes & Noble or Borders as distinguished by it's green and off-white coloring. This little hardcover book is just under 300 pages and makes for a very pleasant read. However, I will honestly say, that the relatively pricey $23.00 price tag is too expensive for what it is. You could read this book perhaps in one day, depending on what kind of reader you are and just assume put it back on the shelves (as I did). So the price tag really isn't worth the price (and I personally think new books cost too much to begin with), and I'd probably encourage you to just find it at your library or just sit down and read the book from start to finish. Gill's literary style is by no means the one of a literary giant, and his passages often alternate between personal recollections to becoming current narrative scenes. Gill's lifestory is interesting but one may find it tiresome occasionally, as Gill discusses his upbringing. I can understand their literary significance, but didn't find them super important to the book overall.

But either way, Michael Gates Gill's story is an interesting one, that makes you think and appreciate what one man did in order to become a good man instead of a coldhearted one.