How Starbucks Saved My Life
Nearing retirement, Michael Gates Gill lost it all. He was downsized from his job as a top Madison Avenue ad executive, saw his marriage disintegrate, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. At the age of 63, desperate for work and without health insurance, he found a renewed sense of purpose where he least expected - behind the counter of a Starbucks. His critically-acclaimed memoir, , was an instant bestseller and one of Hollywood's hottest properties: an upcoming movie, starring Tom Hanks.
Gill is featured speaker at the Lexington Forum's annual Forum At Noon luncheon at the Embassy Suites on February 19. To hear the interview, click on the related podcast below.
TM: Several themes weave through your story: humility, adaptation at a point in life when it may be difficult for many to adapt, and also quite an element of human dignity.
MG: I think those are three good points. I think the first one, humility, was the lesson I learned the hard way. But I'm so grateful that I finally learned it, because I thought of myself for many years as sort of the "Master of the Universe," you know? It's really a gift now to realize that, hey, I'm just a part of the universe.
TM: Let's put that into context beyond your upbringing on the Upper Eastside of New York and your family's connection with media (Gill's father is former New Yorker writer Brendan Gill.). Your relationship with the J. Walter Thompson (JWT) agency would have been back in the Nixon era. Is that correct?
MG: Yeah. During Nixon I was there, from 1967 until about '93, so it covered a lot of presidencies.
TM: So through (Nixon chief of staff and former JWT executive) H. R. Haldeman, there were certainly direct connections with what was happening in Washington?
MG: Yeah, absolutely, and we were always involved; it was the biggest advertising agency in the world.
TM: Long story short - you found yourself going from this stage of life to cleaning toilets at a Starbucks?
MG: Right, and I think that's the biggest surprise to me, is that I'm a lot happier in my current life than I was in my previous life. The shocking thing is that, for those years in advertising, I never realized what a strain it was to try to keep up all those high-status, big-job, big-title experiences. And also I didn't realize how sick the culture was. At least in my experience it was, because I didn't realize you could treat people so differently. For example, on my first day of work at Starbucks, when I was sort of frozen with fear at the door, I saw all these young people making all these drinks, and the manager, Crystal, came over and brought me to a table, gave me a cup of coffee and brownies. And in other words, she treated me with real consideration and respect. In my 26 years in advertising, I don't think I ever got a cup of coffee for anybody who worked for me.
TM: And the people that you suddenly found yourself working with were people that you probably had never dreamed that you would have such interactions with.
MG: I had been given a Yale education, because my father and grandfather had gone to Yale, so they automatically gave me the Yale education. So I was working with people that hadn't had all the advantages that I had had, and yet I discovered that, in many ways, they were my superiors in the way they related to me. They treated me with respect and dignity, and I found that I enjoyed working with them. They became my friends. And that was another happy surprise, that you could meet people from all different backgrounds, races, religions and everything and work together happily in a good experience.
TM: I think it's fair to say that you are going to find a lot of people in today's culture who can relate to being on the business end of downsizing and finding oneself on the street, while also at that age things begin to go wrong physically. And in your case, you had the double whammy of losing your coveted job and also being diagnosed with a brain tumor. How did that hit you?
MG: That was really a shock, because one piece of advice I think, Tom, would be, after 60, don't go for a physical.
TM: Is it better not to know?
MG: Well it was such a shock, because it was just going to be a routine physical. I was about 63, and then when I went back, the doctor said, well, just have an MRI. And then when I went back to his office, he was grinning with this big grin, and when he came forward, I thought, "Hey, this has got to be good news. The doctor is so happy." But he was happy because he said, "Gosh, you know, you've got this rare form of brain tumor, and I'm a brain surgeon; I can operate tomorrow." In other words, he was happy for himself, not for my condition. But fortunately I told him I didn't have any health insurance, so it slowed him down a little bit. I think one of the advantages of age is my tumor was growing slow enough. I knew I had to have it out at some point, but I was still resisting the surgeon's knife.
But yeah, as you get older in advertising, you definitely become endangered, and in my case, I was fired. And your health becomes questionable, and it seemed to me like my life was ending up in a bad ... Well, let me put it this way: it never seemed to me that Tom Hanks would want to play me in a movie.
TM: How has this publication of your story affected your life?
MG: I would say the great thing about it is that I've been traveling. But otherwise, my life is just like it was before the publication in the sense that I'm still working at Starbucks. I have what you would call a much smaller life than my old life. I mean, my old life was so full of running around to big parties and big meetings and all this other stuff and taking myself so seriously. Today I'm still a barista at Starbucks, and I'm still able to be in the moment of serving lattÈs as well as I can. By the way, Tom, to be completely frank, I am still struggling to make the right drinks; they are still complicated.
TM: New York Times critic Neal Genzslinger called the book "one of the most scathing indictments of the advertising business to appear in a long time" and suggested that "if the rest of Madison Avenue royalty is as clueless about the real world as Gill makes them seem in this book, off with their heads!" How do you respond to that?
MG: One of my lessons has been not to judge yourself by external stuff, you know? I think the discovery in my life was more than just switching from an advertising world to serving coffee. It's more like how you treat yourself. In my advertising life, I really thought for a long while that I could control my destiny. I could control not only mine, but manipulate people into doing things. And what I've learned the hard way was that we are really just all part of an unfolding mysterious and wonderful life, and the best way to enjoy it, I think, is to just try to ride the wave rather than control the wave. I think that's the big and profound difference.
TM: What is your status today? Are you still at the Westside Starbucks or in Bronxville?
MG: I'm in Bronxville. I barista in Bronxville because I can walk to work to my current store, which I've got to say is another great luxury, isn't it? ... It's early morning, and I sort of creep out of bed and I get over there, and also it's not bad being in the coffee business early in the morning, you know.
TM: It seems like the perfect mix.
MG: Yeah.
TM: Well, Mike Gill, we really appreciate you taking time for us and look forward to meeting you on February 19 and hearing your story in full.
MG: Thanks, Tom.