There’s a lot not to like about Michael Gates Gill, the subject of a Home & Garden profile and author of How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.
Let’s start with his childhood: The son of New Yorker critic Brendan Gill, Michael Gill blew his $100,000 inheritance on “champagne” in three years.
His personal life also offers a wealth of material: He left his wife and family for his mistress.
And his attitude when someone offered him a job at Starbucks: “Could she see that I was really one of life’s losers? Did I, a former creative director of J. Walter Thompson, want a job at Starbucks?”
Living “like everyone else,” Gill scored a contract worth around $50,000 and his story has already been optioned for a movie.
Fortunately, it was Tom Hanks who bought the rights, and if anyone can make someone who got a book deal from working at Starbucks likable, it’s him.
Editorial Director
Starbucks started out as a coffee speciality shop and then dabbled in recorded music, movies…adding eats, etc. Not knowing what they wanted to be when they grew up…..the stock shows they screwed up royally.