Gill's straight-forward telling of how he began a new career at almost 70 would have been better if he hadn't done so much of the name-dropping thing. (I realize he was trying to tell us about his past life, but maybe one telling of being with someone famous would have been enough). Good information about working at Starbucks though and if it's really like that (hope so) and the employees are really treated with that much respect and dignity then I'd like to work there too! ( )

I had heard some good things about this book and took a trip to the local book store to pick it up. I was excited to start reading it because I do love Starbucks and I liked the idea of the story of how someone finds happiness in a more simple life. I have always secretly wanted to work in a coffee shop someday too so this book seemed like a story I would enjoy. Well, I was wrong and actually only read half of it before I decided that there are so many books out there that if I am not enjoying one then I need to set it down and move on. The writing is not that good and very simplistic and it just never really grabbed me. I also got tired of hearing about the high roller kind of life he lived before reality slapped him in the face as I tend to despise these type of people. I am glad that he found happiness in his new life but couldn't quite digest it past the halfway point. ( )

Michael had grown up in a wealthy family and was always able to go the best schools. His parents had good connections so he was always able to get a good job. He did not know or care that anyone else knew anything different. However, after he got older and was not cool anymore, he was fired from his marketing position, and he did not know what to do.
One day as he was sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop in New York City feeling depressed about his situation, a manager saw him and asked him if he wanted a job. He figured she was probably kidding, but he took her up on her offer, because he needed a job and this one had benefits.
He worked with people that he had never made any contact with before, learned new skills, and learned to appreciate life and friendship a lot more. Many of the people he worked with were much younger than he was, so teenagers would enjoy reading about other teenagers who had authority over an adult. This autobiography is an encouraging story that I would recommend to anyone! ( )

In taped interviews author Michael Gates Gil, the former ad agency executive who ended up serving coffee at Starbucks after being sacked by the JWT advertising agency, comes across as a nice guy. I didn't find myself caring much about him when reading his book, however. Perhaps it’s because Gil’s pre-Starbucks self (who we hear a lot about in the book) is the kind of silver-spoon-in-mouth, pompous ass I really can’t stand. Or perhaps it’s because the book reads more like an ad for Starbucks (and simultaneous dis of JWT), than a memoir. (Seriously, how can absolutely nothing ever suck about working at Starbucks? All jobs, even great ones, have their moments, I think.) But (true confessions!) I am a Starbucks coffee aficionado, so I bothered to finish reading the book even though it was kind of ho-hum.

Side note: I am contemplating quitting my job and going to work at Starbucks. ( )

I thought this book would be right up my alley. I love Starbucks, and for two reasons: their mugs (which I collect because I think they are pretty), and their Cinnamon Dolce syrup. But really, I just love coffee, and Chai lattes make my world go round. Whoever serves them has a loyal customer in the form of me.

Michael Gates Gill, a man born into wealth and privilege, is a Starbucks man through and through. He knows all the stores in New York City. Being over sixty years old, divorced, without a steady job but with a brain tumor, his one comfort in life is Starbucks. One day, he goes into one of NY's stores to have a latte, and walks out of the store with a job, offered to him by a young, female African-American store manager. Crystal is his polar opposite, but she gives Michael a chance, which Michael grabs eagerly - the health insurance will cover his brain surgery; Starbucks will literally save his life.

Finding a job below his usual standards humbles a 64-year old privileged man into appreciating what he has instead of what he has lost... That's a riches-to-rags formula with the potential for inspiration, while getting to know a favorite coffee place better. Yes, it could have been good.
It wasn't. So much is wrong with this book, I seriously couldn't keep this review shorter than it is now.

I'm just not buying it. Gill doesn't get the emotional impact behind his big life change across. In his book, the former advertising man is too busy namedropping and selling Starbucks to us, readers.

While sweeping floors and cleaning toilets of this GREAT (!) store, where dignity and respect come first and foremost and Guests are happy when Partners are happy (oh everyone just loves each other), he reminisces in length about Jackie Onassis and her adoring eyes and voice soft as a whisper (Jackie this, Jackie that, oh Jackie Jackie Jackie), or Muhammed Ali and how he made up a poem for Gill (how endearing) after Gill was not just at any of his matches, but the first professional match (and this is actually italicized in the book so as to make extra sure us readers understand that Gill is in fact bragging his ASS off).*

The namedropping is irritating right from the start, because these memories are irrelevant to the story or his 'change' and recalled at random times (he hears the word 'Master' being used. Enter his memory of Frank Lloyd Wright, dubbed 'Master' by his apprentices).

[sarcasm] Yes, all of this tells me you're definitely a changed man to whom his life of privilige is nothing compared to his life as a Starbucks barista. I'm wholly convinced, by your knowing 'Jackie' and 'Papa' and having been to Ali's first professional match, that you've moved on from your entitled past and your attitude of superiority. Comparing the opening of a store is so similar to running in front of the bulls in Pamplona to impress Ernest Hemingway. I can totally see the relevance and don't see this as another opportunity at all to impress me, the simpleton, with the people you know, the places you've been, the things you've accomplished. [/end sarcasm for now]

Why do this? What point is he making here? Does he want to show how important he is via all the people he's met? Wasn't he was supposed to be satisfied with his current life as a barista? Doesn't sound like it to me. (The man keeps contradicting himself.)

[sarcasm returns] Your skills as a Yale Art History major are just so helpful in placing the pastries in their trays correctly, what a challenge you are facing once again! We should be so, so proud of you for overcoming your next obstacle - for managing, all by yourself, with all your knowledge and connections, to open up the bagel packaging. I'm moved to tears by the inspiration. [/sarcasm overload - warning - evacuate!]

This book just seems so contrived in more ways than one. He conveniently knows juuuuuust how to read people, making instant successful conversation with his Guests. The dialogue made me cringe. Also, right after he's done sweeping that floor or cleaning that toilet (thinking back of the maid his parents used to have, or his African American nanny), he's overcome with a sudden life-changing epiphany, like how a young African American woman from a poor background (his boss Crystal) can actually REALLY be successful. Who would have thunk it? Because the idea of successful African Americans, or women, or other people from other minorities is so... outlandish!

I also resented that he considered himself part of a minority now that he is working at Starbucks. Oh so he "suddenly understands in this moment" what it's like to struggle because with this job he might as well also be from a different class or race... even though he's a white guy from a wealthy background who screwed up a huge chunk of his own privileged life.

Crystal, his 'mentor', sounds more like a human Starbucks ad than an actual warm human being. [Play tape] "Here at Starbucks, we have dignity and respect for our other partners!" [/stop tape] This was so disappointing! I thought Crystal would be tough, a no-nonsense woman with attitude - the highlight of the book! But she was just a robotic instruction manual on tape.

His petty stabs at his former employer JWT (advertising agency; he was sacked) while sharing his abiding affection for Starbucks (where nothing goes wrong EVER) are both endless. He's being repetitive here and with lots of other things too, sometimes literally, i.e. "Jay Laughlin, Pound's publisher, owned the camp next door" (p.48) followed by "...an invitation to Jay Laughlin, who owned the camp next door" (p66). There are countless examples, but if I mention them all here I will have half the book quoted in my already way too long review.

He could be a really nice guy and truly changed for all I know, but this book sure didn't convince me of it. Maybe it's the (bad) writing or... maybe he hasn't changed as much or as deeply as he'd like us to believe. No, truthfully, I hated this book. Riches-to-rags, my behind. Michael Gates Gill has just managed to adapt to a new situation (which he fell into in despair), making the most of it. Doesn't make him an inspiration to me.

If Michael Gates Gill were truly happy in his job as a barista, if he had learned his lesson, this book just wouldn't exist, or would be 50% thinner (leaving out flashbacks, namedropping and hating on his former employer). He still feels the need to be Somebody Important, instead of just being happy with being somebody.

This book has left me with a really bad taste in my mouth. I will need lots of coffee to wash it away... served in my Starbucks mugs. Because at the end of the day, I still love those mugs. And Starbucks, too.

*) An actual list I kept of celebs / influential people Gill is connected to directly or 'via via': Skull & Bones, poet Ezra Pound as well as Robert Frost, W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot - all of whom he'd met over drinks or something. There's E.B. White (author of Stuart Little), Andy Warhol, Jackie Onassis, Ernest Hemingway, Queen Elizabeth (!), Muhammed Ali, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Sinatra and... 50 Cent. I probably missed a few.

(Rated half a star because I managed to finish it. That's it.)
View an accompanying self-portrait at the Reading & Reviewing blog: http://ofbooks.blogspot.com/2009/11/r... ( )

At age sixty-three, Michael Gates Gill hadn’t quite hit bottom, but he could see it from where he sat sipping a latte one rainy March morning in a Starbucks at Seventy-Eighth Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Fired from his position as executive vice president and creative director of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency by a former protégé, he’d spent ten years scrabbling for work as a freelance advertising and marketing consultant, and now even those engagements had slowed to a trickle. To add to the burden of his career implosion, he’d been diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor at the base of the brain that impairs hearing. And now, he has to figure out how he’s going to support the son he fathered in a brief affair that wrecked his marriage and baffled his four adult children. If he hadn’t brought some of his troubles on himself, it would fair to say there’s a certain Job-like quality to his plight, but his own blunt assessment that he was “an insecure little boy not that good at dealing with reality” sounds close to the mark.

To his rescue comes Crystal, a 28-year-old Starbucks store manager who offers him a job. Improbably, Gill says yes and embarks on life as a barista. How Starbucks Saved My Life chronicles his year working in the Starbucks store at Ninety-Third Street and Broadway. It’s a realistic account of how he mastered the rudiments of a service business from the bottom up: cleaning the store’s restrooms, opening and closing, and tackling the most intimidating (to him) task of working the cash register (find yourself more than $5 off when you close out and it’s a big problem).

Gill, a graduate of Yale where he was a member of Skull and Bones, is the son of eminent New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, who no doubt would have been dismayed had he lived to see where life had deposited his offspring in late middle age. And it was a long fall for someone who had hobnobbed with Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis and Ernest Hemingway and counted Lee Iacocca and USAirways among his long roster of his advertising clients.

Still, there’s no condescension and only a touch of sentimentality in Gill’s account. What he offers is a plainspoken story of the dignity that inheres in putting forth a day’s hard work for modest hourly wage. In his previous life as a workaholic advertising executive, he writes, “I had been secure in my bubble of self-congratulation: convinced that my top job in advertising and my resulting affluence were my just reward for being a great talented guy…not simply status and success virtually given to me by birth and fortunate color.” Now, he observes, “at Starbucks it was not about me --- it was about serving others.”

Starbucks’ corporate culture comes off sounding benign, almost paternalistic, in these pages. It would be interesting to hear what Gill has to say about the mass store closings and layoffs the company announced in 2008. He portrays a high level of camaraderie in the store (with the notable exception of one employee who seems determined to get him fired), but the sketches of his mostly African-American co-workers are spare at best, and it seems Gill was more absorbed in learning the duties of his job than he was in plumbing the interior lives of his fellow employees. Still, when he moves at the end of the book to a store in Bronxville, saving him the expensive, 90 minute commute he’d made for more than a year, it seems he does so with a genuine sense of regret.

Despite his flaws, Michael Gates Gill is a sympathetic companion on his journey from riches to rags and partway back in this engaging memoir. “I had traded my pin-striped suit for a green apron,” he writes. “A Master of the Universe costume for something that said I was there to serve --- not to rule.” His is such a captivating story it’s the subject of a movie in development starring Tom Hanks, although the latest reports are that you may have to wait until 2012 to see it. In the meantime, read this book.

Copyright 2009 Harrisburg Magazine ( )

It's ironic that Gill says that he is good at writing. He isn't.

There were times when I absolutely hated this book for it's cloying predictability and poor sentence structure, but by then end of this book I just felt so sorry for the guy that it was hard to dislike him. Evident throughout the book were lifelong daddy issues, which I found annoying. It seemed like he had always had opportunity handed to him on a silver platter, and landed successfully most of the time. He often flashes back to incidents when he felt that status was everything. I couldn't help but feel that he must have been a big jerk.

By the end of the book, with his estranged family and new work attitude, I had to give Gill some credit. I have to think he could have been more enterprising if he wanted to, but I am glad he found happiness in working as a Partner at one of the biggest coffee companies on the planet. ( )

This was a nice little volume about a fellow who loses his job at the top of the advertising world and takes a job at Starbucks to make ends meet. He goes through quite a personal revolution through the course of the book and really takes you along with him. By the end, I felt like I knew Michael as well as any of his customers did. He teaches some invaluable lessons to his readers and makes you feel like you can handle anything because he can too. A great read. ( )

Great book read it in an afternoon. 07/09

This is a harmless, somewht inspirational, quick-read Starbucks infomercial. It's about a wealthy advertising executive who, after losing his job and some bad personal life choices, became a barista and found some level of serenity and happiness.

The writing style will never result in a Pulitzer, and the content is a bit redundant. The portrayal of all the "partners" and "guests" was almost always glowing. The book doesn't make you want to visit Starbucks, it makes you want to visit THAT particular Starbucks.

Again, 'a nice, short, easy read. ( )

Synopsis: Michael Gates Gill had it all - he grew up in a brownstone in New York, the son of New Yorker writer Brendon Gill. He graduated from Yale and was offered a job at an advertising firm, JWT. 25 years later, he is fired - devastated he makes some poor choices in his life and is divorced, with 5 children and in need of health insurance, after a brain tumor is discovered. By chance, sitting in a Starbucks, he is offered a job by 28 year old Crystal. He becomes a barista at the 93rd and Broadway store, in a predominately African American neighborhood. As he learns the Starbucks philosophy, Gill sheds his racial, socio-economical prejudices and embraces the new life he is given.

Pros & Cons: This was a surprisingly enjoyable book. The author is honest about his shortcomings and self dignity. You can feel his worry about running into old colleagues, and how his children will feel about their father working a "lower class job." On the other hand, I felt that Gill is holding something back. The story is like many other "riches to rags to enlightenment" stories. I do recommend this book -at least for the sentimental, fuzzy feeling it leaves you with. ( )

I wanted to like this book, I really did. The premise was great - a man who's had everything pretty much handed to him most of his life loses his job and has to learn the value of hard labor. Along the way he learns that he has been prejudiced and unfair in his perceptions of others.

As great as the premise was, the resulting book was just slightly short of terrible. Gill does not have a talent for writing (to say the least) and the whole memoir sounds like a long conversation. He dips into his past on almost every page and often for no reason, and has no connections that make the memoir an interconnected piece, instead of a jumbled collection of memories.

I appreciate his struggles and his attempts to make the best out of a bad situation, but the reality is, stories like his happen every day. There are plenty of displaced executives working as waiters, and doctors from other countries who are reduced to cashiering jobs at a local pharmacy (I've worked with many of them). While it's great that Gill wanted to bring light to his experience, he should have done justice to himself and others in his shoes and written a more coherent book. ( )

A good read for any coffee lover. While the book is not about coffee as much as it is about life, for those who are intrigued by the coffee culture in our country, this book provides plenty of insight. The dialogue is not especially well crafted and requires contemplation of the significance of exchange as interactions between characters read more like a parable. Nevertheless, Gill's story is a great reminder that love and relationship trump status, wealth, and success every time. ( )

An interesting and quick read about a man that spends his entire life working in a fast paced world that keeps him from being with his family and kids as they grew. By chance he finds a new life that is fulfilling and what he had really been searching for. His recollection of his previous life is interesting as he has met many famous people and lived quite a privileged life. ( )

An interesting read: Gates Gill's life changed substantially and eventually he chose to go with it rather than fight it. Interesting perspective from the author. Would love to visit his store. ( )

This book was okay, I guess. It was a little too schmaltzy and heavy what felt like Starbucks propaganda a lot of the time. The name-dropping from the author's pre-Starbucks life was annoying at times and some of the flashbacks seemed unnecessary. Also, there was a gross abuse of italics.

One thing that I did like though was how Gill portrayed the blue-collar job and the people he worked with. I picked up the book initially because I thought that the idea of a high-powered executive who found himself down on his luck and working at Starbucks was interesting. That aspect of the book was enough to keep me reading and enjoying the book, despite all of the other issues I had with it.

Overall: Not a book that's going to be added to my favorites list anytime soon, but it definitely wasn't as bad as it could have been. ( )

Disappointing Jumble: I'm not sure where to start with this review. I really, really wanted to like this book. I am a Creative Director (albeit not nearly as successful as the author was) and I recently spent 18 months out of work and had started to comtemplate a retail job when I was fortunate to find a job I wanted.

Having said that, this book was disappointing. I can't say exactly why, but as I read the book, I kept finding myself skeptical of the story. I don't doubt the truth of the story, more the how and why of it. I just keep finding myself suspecting that will Gill is telling this story of how he's come to love his new found humility, the Creative Director in him had planned all along to write a riches to rags story. He recalls minor details and what he was thinking at the time, which I seriously doubt he'd have recalled months later. He also has the annoying habit of shoehorning frequent name dropping into common stories. It seems every situation he would find himself in would cause him to think of the time he was hobnobbing with someone famous. From Ali to the Queen of England, Gill seems to have met them all.

Worst of all, it seems that even when he's telling us about his newfound humility, he's sounding awfully superior when he says it. He takes great pride in his embracing of the little people.

It was an OK book, and frankly I'm surprised at all the positive reviews. But, maybe I'm just a little too cynical. ( )

About: Biography of Gill, an ad exec who gets fired, has an affair, gets his mistress pregnant, gets divorced and gets offered and accepts a job as a barista at Starbucks.

Pros: Mostly enjoyable, positive, light and easy read.

Cons: Switches from the present to tales about the past often and it can get confusing. Name drops famous people he has met (although this may have been done to set up a contrast between "then" and "now" in his life). Chapters a bit long. Says coworker Anthony is 19 and notes that Frank Sinatra died before Anthony was even born. This isn't true, Sinatra died in 1998. Epilogue would have been nice. ( )

An over the top story of a man who describes himself as growing up 'privileged' and wanting for nothing. After twenty + years with the same company, he is fired and finds himself struggling with what to do with the rest of his life. He stumbles into a Starbucks during an open house, and the rest is history.

Customer Service at any company would be honored to be described as this engaged, respect-filled employee pens. Having lived a privileged life, there is more name-dropping during reminiscing segments than is necessary for the story, but it will make for a good movie. Congrats Michael on all of your achievements! Good luck with the movie! ( )

While this could have easly have been a sappy feel go story, nothing could be farther from it. After being in a powerful high level job and beeing raised as a son of priviliage, Michael Gates Gill is on a downward spiral when he is offered a job at Starbucks. This story takes him through the scariest parts of a new job that any one can identify with and has him finding that the very people whom he would have never given the time of day are the very ones who save his life both literally and metphoricaly. By the end of this book we are given the secret of true happiness. A wonderful quick read . ( )

Michael Gates Gill gave most of his life to the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson (They came up with the slogan about the Marines needing a few good men). Despite Gill's dedication to the agency, he was tossed out when a new manager who worshiped the bottom-line above quality and decency came on board. Gill hits a downward spiral when he loses his health insurance and his marriage after his mistress has a child; he also discovers he has a brain tumor that may destroy his hearing if he doesn't have surgery. A chance meeting with a manager in a Broadway Starbucks store changes Gill's life when she offers him a job. His tale is one of rebuilding his life, understanding folks who are different from him and learning that all work experiences are not soulless.

Although I found this book a bit depressing at first, knowing Gill learned new things at age 64 and enjoyed his new job encouraged me. I like Gill's message of self-respect and respect for others.

This book was just okay, but it would be hard for anything to compare to "Eat, Pray, Love" which I also read this summer. Michael Gates Gill loses his job, wife and life in his 50s, and takes a job at Starbucks on a whim. In this volume, he meanders from present to past in a way that I found incredibly irritating -- he'd begin to describe a conversation or confrontation at work, then flash back for pages and pages to talk about something somewhat related. These side stories were so lengthy and involved that I'd often forget what was going on when they began. I also didn't feel his emotions -- I mean it made sense that he would be sad, confused, angry, afraid based on the situation he was describing, but I didn't feel it, just understood it intellectually. I'd be interested to see how men react to the book -- maybe it's a guy thing. ( )

Excellent. ( )

Michael Gates Gill is a Yale graduate, a Bones & Skull member, an ad executive, and WASP in his fifties when he loses his job. Then he has an affair and loses his wife. As he is sipping a latte and reflecting on his sorrowful life, a Starbucks manager offers him an entry level job as a barista (server). To her surprise he takes the job and his life is turned around. ( )

It's really hard to feel sorry for this guy, and it's just as hard to admire his enlightenment. ( )