How Starbucks Saved My Life

Michael Gates Gill was born in 1940; He is the son of Brendan Gill (New Yorker magazine critic). Michael Gates' generation grew up in the midst of wealth and privilege. Notable literary figures such as John Updike occasionally visited the family home. After failing to graduate from Yale University and then wasting his entire inheritance, Jill landed a job in advertising, where he held a lucrative position for twenty-five years before being fired. Desperate, he had an affair that gave birth to a son; His wife subsequently divorced him. Over the next ten years, he tried to run his own consulting firm, but this business was unsuccessful. Down when he was in his 60s and unemployed, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Sitting in a Starbucks in Manhattan, where a job fair was taking place, he was noticed by a sympathetic African-American manager and offered him a job as a barista. The story of how he came to love his new job is told in his memoir (How Starbucks Saved My Life: The Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone else).