I found this odd little book of a rich man who loses everything and ends up working at a Starbucks kind of fun. Who doesn’t like a My How The Mighty Have Fallen story? In this case it’s an evil Madison Avenue Ad Man who was handed a job by a friend of a friend after his graduation from an Ivy League College. After forty years of living the good life, driving fancy cars, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, wearing two thousand dollar suits-he is fired from his high roller job.
At first he isn’t too worried. But after a couple of years, he is out of work and out of money and he stops in a Starbucks for a coffee to help perk him up. While there, a woman leans over and asks him if he wants a job. He tells her yes, and so starts his career as a Starbucks Partner and his path down his own personal road of discovery.
Our hero finds it challenging being the only white guy in a Starbucks which employees all African Americans. Being an old white guy makes him the villain to just about everyone he meets, though there are a number of black people in the story who befriend the poor old former rich man. Along the way he can’t help but showoff his superior business knowledge and marketing skills. He loves dropping names of all the famous people he has meet, such as Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway-who he calls Papa, and the Queen of England. But he is always shamed by these displays of his abilities and he has to constantly remind us that he is no longer the Boss, but just a lowly barista.
This whole Saint Climbing up a Mountain on his Knees routine rings false at several points. I liked How Starbucks Saved My Life, but it didn’t seem all that much like a true story. Like a Million Little Pieces, I am left wondering how much of this fairy tale really happened and how much was manufactured for the feel good/self help market.
If he’s such a genius of marketing and master of the Powerpoint Presentation, why can’t he find a better job at Starbucks than some guy who keeps the toilet clean? If his daughter is a successful movie director, why can’t she help him out? If it costs a gazillion dollars to live in New York, why doesn’t he move somewhere else?
In the end, we find that money doesn’t matter. Happiness is found by being of Service to others. Maybe I would have liked the story better if our hero had become a Trappist Monk instead of a Starbucks barista. All the standard elements of a Monk’s story are here. Our hero turns away from the material world to study, not wine, but coffee. He emerges himself in his new family of strangers, who are all devoted to following the Golden Rules of Starbucks. He gives up his fine clothes and takes to wearing a black hat and a green apron. He takes a vow of poverty and is made rich by it.
This Hero’s Journey can’t be an accident, as he constantly reminds us of his college education and his near photographic memory. He knows what kind of story he is telling and what kind of elements he needed to put in and what kind he needed to leave out. I guess I can’t blame an Ad Man for being a little heavy handed in his narration.
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else
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