Another "why didn't he get a coach" story

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	• How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else Michael Gates Gill Gotham, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 105 reviews view larger image
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A Super Interesting Book

From the previous reviews I read, this book is controversial.I found it amazingly interesting and so did two friends for whom I bought copies.
I think of it every time I enter a STARBUCKS. At each one I often ask the baristas if they have read it. NONE have.

Another "why didn't he get a coach" story

I can see why this book generates a whole range of responses. As a career consultant, I would encourage Gill's book as a point of discussion.

As Gill tells his story: After being laid off from a top job at J Walter Thompson, he started his own advertising consultancy business. He also wrote a book about successful entrepreneurship, which he doesn't mention, and which seems particularly ironic here.

One afternoon, Gill was taking a break at a Starbucks when he inadvertently stumbled into a job fair: Starbucks was hiring. Managers from all over New York were looking for help. Gill was recruited by Crystal, a particularly strong and effective Starbucks store manager. Motivated by health benefits (he had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor) and frustrated by his lack of business success, he says yes.

The book skillfully navigates the reader between Gill's role (cleaning up at Starbucks and learning to use the register) with a former life that includes meetings with celebrities, topped by a Save Grand Central encounter with Jackie Onassis. He doesn't spare himself when he describes an affair with a young psychiatrist. Readers who rush to judgment should be aware that personal lives can be disrupted by job loss and many displaced executives have done worse.

If I were teaching a course "Careers and Books," I would contrast this book with Cliff Walk, by Don Snyder. Both these authors were caught by surprise when their careers vanished, although we readers can detect warning signs they missed. Both were professionals -- one with high degrees, the other with high position and salary - but they were clueless about starting over at mid-career. So Snyder, who was quite a bit younger than Gill, became a house painter; Gill became a Starbucks barista.

Unlike Snyder, Gill glosses over the difficulties of switching lifestyles. He writes glowingly of the Starbucks ethos, yet we've all been in stores where employees were rude, pastries were stale, and restrooms marked "customers only."

I wasn't bothered by the writing; the book held my interest. But as a career consultant, I had two concerns.

First, career clients often fantasize about leaving high-pressured professional jobs and working in bookstores or coffee shops. These transitions can work (as Gill shows) but sometimes they backfire. Working for a younger manager who's less charismatic than Crystal can create a whole new set of stresses. Cleaning floors may turn out to be satisfying or may bring a whole new round of frustrations.

Second, why didn't someone encourage Gill to call a career consultant? Didn't J Walter Thompson have an outplacement service? And once his business began to slow down, why didn't he hire his own consultant? Marketing consultants hire coaches all the time.

My hunch is that he eventually got tired of the marketing consulting work. He admits he got distracted by his new son. He needed a change. In fact, he could have become a business coach or started his own Internet business.

But he also seems to have run out of energy. He lost the fire. He needed to take a break and re-assess.

Maybe Starbucks was the best solution for Gill. But it's important to keep in mind that it's not the only solution...and for many downsized executives, it will not be a solution at all.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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