Coffee Weapon

Author of ‘How Starbucks Saved My Life’ Michael Gates Gill considered himself a failure. He had lost his advertising job to corporate downsizing, his wife to divorce and his health to a brain tumor. One day Gill walked into a Starbucks near his New York home.
Sitting there sipping his latte he almost didn’t hear a young black woman ask, “Would you like a job?”
He took the job and also began keeping a journal of his experiences as he learned to call out drinks, operate the cash register and interact with customers and employees,  people he might not have talked to before he fell out of the middle class.

Gill’s journal is now the best-seller How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. The book has been optioned by Tom Hanks for a movie.

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By Jim Jordan
HERALD-LEADER BUSINESS WRITER