Michael Gill - How Starbucks Saved My Life

I also kicked myself for not listening to my daughter Laura over many years. Laura had a beautiful halo of brown hair that echoed the sparkle of her hazel eyes, and I had a picture of her now shaking her head in angry frustration as I refused to “get it.” She had devoted much time to trying to introduce me to a more realistic view of the world, and because I had been so insensitive, I had failed to listen to her. Laura had a dynamic, positive energy; she laughed easily but she also had a feeling for how unfair life could be and as she grew up had adopted African-American causes like affirmative action. She would sit across the table from me during dinner and toss her beautiful curls in frustration as we argued. I had dismissed Laura’s feelings and ideas of how to help others less fortunate as “hopelessly naïve.” 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 in a world ruled by “middle-aged white men of your generation,” as Laura had once phrased it. Laura and I had a kind of running argument when she was growing up. It seemed like from the time she was about ten years old, she took my whole affluent lifestyle as an affront when so many people had so much less.

Even though she was now at college, she had not lost any of her sympathy for people less fortunate. She had actually cried when I had dropped her off at the picture-perfect campus I had picked for her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. I had worked hard to get her into this particular college, even calling up a trustee I knew to put in a good word.

“This place has no diversity,” she had said, struggling to express her frustration with me and my attitude of entitlement as she gestured at the all-white group of freshmen streaming into a fancy, newly built dorm she was to inhabit. “You still don’t get it!”

Now I realized with a painful awareness how wrong I had been to try and stifle Laura’s view of the “real world” as unfair to those not born in the right class with the right skin color who could afford the right higher education. I felt an actual pain in my heart at that moment, realizing with regret my arrogant assumption that God had created me and those like me to rule because we were worthier than other races of people. Now, finally, I was “getting it” as I faced a new reality of what the world could be like without inherited advantages.

But was my hard-won knowledge too late to change my fate?

Maybe there was bad Karma, I thought to myself. I certainly deserved it. But I was not about to turn down Crystal’s offer—whatever her attitude.

I woke early the next day and realized with a shock that I was just weeks away from my sixty-fourth birthday. They say April is the cruelest month, and as I struggled into my black pants for my Starbucks job, I shook my head in disbelief that I was probably going to celebrate my birthday by working as a lowly coffee server.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at my feeling of trepidation as I hurried from my inexpensive apartment in suburbia and leapt on a train to Grand Central. Then I ran as fast as I could with the mass of people for the subway shuttle over to Times Square. Even though there would be another shuttle in a few minutes, we stampeded toward the one in front of us as though it were our last opportunity to go anywhere that day. I could not believe how fast the crowd moved—it seemed like we were in a hundred-yard dash for some Olympic event. Why rush? I hadn’t commuted to a job for years, and back then I had taken a taxi or a company car as I moved up in the privileged hierarchy of JWT. I had never been one of the people who took subways. Yet now I had no time to doubt the sanity of the forward motion—I rushed along with everyone else.

From Times Square, I transferred from one crowded train to another that was heading up to Ninety-sixth Street. Squeezing in just as the door was closing, I found myself pressed against people I would never want to know; forced into a kind of primal physical proximity. All faces were unfriendly. How did I get to this place in my life? I thought to myself. Soon the doors opened, and I was forced out onto the dirty platform. I climbed the steep stairs to Ninety-third Street with a pumping heart, beginning to sweat, although it was a cold day in the beginning of April.

Emerging from the subway, I struggled against the wind and then actually staggered as I approached the Starbucks store at the corner of Broadway. Icy rain made the pavement slippery. I paused. Now that I was there, I was in no hurry to open that door.

As I stared at the Starbucks sign, the reality of my situation hit me with a sickening impact. I felt numb, standing on the icy pavement in the wrong part of town. My dream of rejoining a big international company to become rich and in control and happy once again had turned into a humiliating nightmare. Yes, I was going to join a big international company, but in reality as nothing better than a waiter with a fancy name. I would have the very visible public embarrassment of being Michael Gates Gill dressed as a waiter serving drinks to people who could have been my friends or clients. It was like the old days when the Pilgrims put sinners in the stocks in the public square as a visible example to others to watch their ways.

The Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards had said: “We all hang by a thread from the hand of an angry God.” Maybe there was an angry Puritan God who had decided to punish me for all my sins. Over every minute of the past few years, I had felt the heavy weight of guilt for hurting so many I loved. My former wife, my children, and even those few friends I still had. My Puritan ancestors would be raging at me. Yes, I thought to myself, maybe there really was a vengeful God whom I had offended.

Yet I had to admit that my reality was more mundane, and sad. I could not pretend that I was living out some kind of mythical biblical journey. I was not a modern Job; I was looking for a job. And I had to face the brutal yet everyday fact that I was here because of my own financial mismanagement, my sexual needs that had led me to stray. I was not some special person singled out for justice by God. I was, and this really pained me to admit, not even that unique . It was hard, terribly hard, for me to give up my sense of a special place in the universe.

Now I was forced to see a new reality: What I was experiencing, as a guy too old to find work, was a reality for millions of aging Americans today who could not support themselves and were no longer wanted by the major corporations in our country. In this state of numbed anxiety, ambivalence, and forced humility, I opened the door to the Starbucks store.

Inside, all was heat, noise, and a kind of barely organized chaos. There was a line of customers almost reaching the door. Mothers with babies in arms and in prams. Businesspeople checking cell phones. Schoolkids lugging backpacks. College kids carrying computers. All impatient to be served their lattes.

As I looked behind the bar at the servers of the lattes, one of my worries was confirmed: Virtually all the Partners were African-American. There clearly was no diversity. This was not a complete surprise to me, because I had noticed in visiting various Starbucks locations since my interview with Crystal that very few white people worked at any of the New York stores.

For the first time in my life, I knew I would be a very visible member of a real minority. I would be working with people of a totally different background, education, age, and race.

And it was also clear from what was going on in the store that I would be working extremely hard. There were three Starbucks Partners strenuously punching at the cash registers taking the money and speedily, loudly calling out the drinks to other people at the espresso bar. The people at the bar called back the drink names, while quickly, expertly making the drinks, juggling jugs of hot milk while pulling shots of espresso. In rapid-fire order, they then served them up to the customers with an emphatic “Enjoy!” that was almost a kind of manic shout. The customers themselves would reach in for their drinks with a fierce desire.