How Starbucks Saved My Life

2 Reality Shock

—a quote from Bill Brummel, documentary filmmaker, published on the side of a cup of Starbucks Decaf Grande Cappuccino

APRIL

Several agonizing weeks went by, and I heard nothing further from Crystal. Every moment I was consciously or unconsciously waiting anxiously for her to call. I continued going to the Starbucks store at Seventy-eighth and Lexington where we had met, hoping to catch sight of her, but she was never there.

I also kept calling potential clients for my marketing business, but my voice mail remained empty. More than ever I needed a job, any job. When I had first met Crystal, I was not terribly serious about the idea of working at Starbucks. But over these last weeks, waiting for her call, without any other options surfacing to give me hope, I had realized that Starbucks offered me a way—perhaps the only way—to handle the costs of my upcoming brain tumor operation and support my young son and my other children. To support myself. I was facing the reality, in my old age, of literally not being able to support myself. I had left my former wife with our large house, was down to the last of my savings, and now I was facing the prospect that I might not be able to meet next month’s rent. I was even more desperate than I had been just a couple of weeks ago. Whenever my phone rang, I found myself almost praying it was Crystal.

Had I done something wrong during the interview? I wondered. Said something wrong? Or was I just the wrong gender or race or age for Crystal to want to work with me?

As I sat willing the phone to ring, I thought back to casting sessions for the television commercials I had created over the last decades. I had not hesitated to eliminate people for any imperfection. If an actor’s smile was too bright, or not bright enough, if a young lady had the wrong accent, that person was dismissed. When hiring, I chose the people who were like me, with backgrounds like mine. Now, as the days went by and Crystal still did not call, I had a sinking feeling that maybe Crystal operated in the same way: Do the easy thing, stay clear of anybody different.

“Diversity” is a big word these days. But few that I knew ever really moved beyond their own class or background—especially in hiring people they might have to work with every day. In corporate America, diversity was an abstract goal that everyone knew how to articulate, but few I had known actually practiced it. Rather, it was simply a word we discussed in a vague way when the government might be listening.

My only hope was that Crystal needed new employees enough—or was courageous enough—to give me a chance. Wasn’t it ironic that I was hoping Crystal would be more merciful than I?

I forced myself to stop thinking about it. Then, one morning when I was in Grand Central Station, my cell phone rang.

“Mike?”

“Yes?” I answered with some suspicion. The person on the other end didn’t sound like anyone I would know.

“It’s Crystal.”

My guarded attitude changed instantly.

“Oh, hi!” I said enthusiastically. “So good to hear from you!”

“Do you still want a job …,” she paused, and continued coolly, “working for me?” It was as though she were eager to hear a negative response and get on with her day. I imagined she had a list of potential new hires she was working through. And most of those on the list were probably easier for her to imagine working with than me.

“Yes, I do want to work with you,” I almost yelled into my cell phone. “I am looking forward to working with you and your great team.”

Calm down, Mike, I told myself. Don’t be overenthusiastic. And why had I said “team”? Crystal had talked about “partners.” I knew that every company had a vernacular that was important to reflect if you wanted to be treated well. I was already going crazy trying to fit in. Take it easy, I said to myself, or you will blow this last chance.

It didn’t seem to matter—Crystal didn’t really seem to be listening. You know how you can be talking to someone on the phone and sense that they are pretending to listen to you while doing something they feel is more important? I felt that way that day with Crystal. For me, this phone call was of crucial importance. To her, it was just another chore in a hectic day.

The casual way in which she offered me the job was humiliating.

“Okay,” she said. “Show up at my store at Ninety-third and Broadway at three-thirty P.M. tomorrow.”

“Ninety-third and Broadway?” I echoed, surprised by the address.

“Yes.” She sounded like she was instructing a three-year-old. “Ninety-third … and … Broadway, and don’t be late.”

I was confused. “But we met at Seventy-eighth and Lex.”

“So?” She was almost threatening. “I met you there ’cause we had a hiring Open House going on. That’s the way we do things at Starbucks.”

Crystal had taken on a tone I knew well. I had used this corporate by-the-book attitude when dismissing people I did not want to deal with.

“At Starbucks,” she continued, “we pick a store, have an Open House, and the managers who need people interview. But that doesn’t mean that’s the store you will work in. I’m the manager of the store at Ninety-third and Broadway.” She paused, and added, “Do you have a problem with that?”

Once again, the threatening tone. Yes or no? She had other people to speak to and was eager to complete this call. I could sense she was not enjoying this job offer.

“No problem,” I hastened to assure her. “I’ll be there tomorrow, and on time.”

I sounded—even to myself—like an old guy speaking like a new kid at school. How embarrassing!

“If you want to work, wear black pants, black shoes, and a white shirt. Okay?”

“Okay,” I answered.

She hung up. She did not even say good-bye.

Shit! That little call made me feel really depressed. In the last few weeks, as the reality of my hard life grew clear to me, to keep depression from overwhelming me I grasped at straws—any signs that I might have a chance to maintain my position at the top of American society rather than drop so precipitously to the bottom rungs. Through these days of waiting for Crystal to call, the prospect of working at Starbucks humiliated me, but I told myself at least I’d be working in the neighborhood I had grown up in. A nice neighborhood. A location that would help me in my transition from a member of the Ruling Class to a member of the Serving Class. In the midst of my obvious, impossible-to-deny fall from financial and social heights, Seventy-eighth Street was a comforting place to be.

I had never even been to Ninety-third Street and Broadway—wherever the hell that was. My policy in New York City was never to go above East Ninetieth Street or below Grand Central. Now I was going to be working in what I envisioned could be a very dangerous neighborhood. It was certainly far from the Upper East Side, where I felt at home.

And I also didn’t like Crystal’s attitude toward me. She acted as though I were some dummy. I felt how unfair she was being. Then I remembered with remorse that I had treated a young African-American woman who had once worked for me at JWT with exactly the same kind of dismissive attitude. Jennifer Walsh was part of a big push we made in the 1970s to hire minorities. It was our token—and short-lived—effort at diversity.

Simply because she was part of this minority-hiring initiative, Jennifer was suspect to me. I was supposed to be her mentor. Yet, until that moment in Grand Central after talking to Crystal, I had never experienced what it was like to be so casually dissed because of my different background. I realized with a sinking heart how casually prejudiced of anyone different I had been in my reactions at JWT. At the agency, we liked the fact that most of us had gone to Ivy League schools. We thought we were the elite of the advertising business. We all approached the idea of hiring anyone who hadn’t gone to the crème de la crème of universities as lowering the status of our club—and that included many in the minority-hiring initiative.

Jennifer was nice, but she had graduated from some minor junior college with a two-year degree, and I never took her career at JWT seriously. I had told her to read ads for several weeks, not even to try to write one. Then I had given her a newspaper ad to write for Ford. Her very first ad.

Jennifer came into my office. It was clear that she was scared, even petrified, as she approached my big desk. Which made me feel that she was wrong for JWT; we had to project self-confidence to our clients. I blamed Jennifer for being insecure in this new circumstance. When I read her draft of an ad, I noticed that she had copied a whole paragraph from some other Ford ad I had given her to read. This was a form of plagiarism that we really hated at JWT. Perhaps because we were called copywriters, we could not stand anyone who was accused of actually copying someone else’s work. Jennifer had just committed an unpardonable corporate sin. At least as far as I saw it.

Thinking back, I realize that she might not have known that this was against policy, and I certainly didn’t point it out to her then. I literally did not give her error a second thought. Her stupid mistake gave me the excuse I needed. I went to management and told them that Jennifer might make a great secretary someday, but she did not “have what it takes” to master the higher art of advertising. I had no time for her, or the idea of diversity.

I realized with a kind of horror now, recovering from Crystal’s casual handling of a job opportunity that meant so much to me, how casually cruel I had been in “helping” Jennifer. I had been a classic hypocritical member of an old boys’ club, congratulating myself for my belief in minority advancement in the abstract, while doing everything possible in the practical world of the workplace—which I controlled—to make such opportunity impossible. I had consciously or unconsciously derailed Jennifer’s attempt to penetrate my little world just because she was an African-American without the education or experience that mattered to me.

Jennifer had been moved into some clerical job in Personnel, and had gone from my mind until this very moment. Now I felt terrible. I imagined Crystal thought I was some dumb old white guy whom she mistakenly offered a job. I wouldn’t fit into her world or be a good match for her needs—just as I had felt about a young black American woman several decades ago.

I also kicked myself for not listening to my daughter Laura over many years. Laura had a beautiful halo of brown hair that echoed the sparkle of her hazel eyes, and I had a picture of her now shaking her head in angry frustration as I refused to “get it.” She had devoted much time to trying to introduce me to a more realistic view of the world, and because I had been so insensitive, I had failed to listen to her. Laura had a dynamic, positive energy; she laughed easily but she also had a feeling for how unfair life could be and as she grew up had adopted African-American causes like affirmative action. She would sit across the table from me during dinner and toss her beautiful curls in frustration as we argued. I had dismissed Laura’s feelings and ideas of how to help others less fortunate as “hopelessly naïve.” I had been secure in my bubble of self-congratulation: convinced that my top job in advertising and my resulting affluence were my just reward for being a great, talented guy … not simply status and success virtually given to me by birth and fortunate color in a world ruled by “middle-aged white men of your generation,” as Laura had once phrased it. Laura and I had a kind of running argument when she was growing up. It seemed like from the time she was about ten years old, she took my whole affluent lifestyle as an affront when so many people had so much less.

Even though she was now at college, she had not lost any of her sympathy for people less fortunate. She had actually cried when I had dropped her off at the picture-perfect campus I had picked for her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. I had worked hard to get her into this particular college, even calling up a trustee I knew to put in a good word.

“This place has no diversity,” she had said, struggling to express her frustration with me and my attitude of entitlement as she gestured at the all-white group of freshmen streaming into a fancy, newly built dorm she was to inhabit. “You still don’t get it!”

Now I realized with a painful awareness how wrong I had been to try and stifle Laura’s view of the “real world” as unfair to those not born in the right class with the right skin color who could afford the right higher education. I felt an actual pain in my heart at that moment, realizing with regret my arrogant assumption that God had created me and those like me to rule because we were worthier than other races of people. Now, finally, I was “getting it” as I faced a new reality of what the world could be like without inherited advantages.

But was my hard-won knowledge too late to change my fate?

Maybe there was bad Karma, I thought to myself. I certainly deserved it. But I was not about to turn down Crystal’s offer—whatever her attitude.

I woke early the next day and realized with a shock that I was just weeks away from my sixty-fourth birthday. They say April is the cruelest month, and as I struggled into my black pants for my Starbucks job, I shook my head in disbelief that I was probably going to celebrate my birthday by working as a lowly coffee server.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at my feeling of trepidation as I hurried from my inexpensive apartment in suburbia and leapt on a train to Grand Central. Then I ran as fast as I could with the mass of people for the subway shuttle over to Times Square. Even though there would be another shuttle in a few minutes, we stampeded toward the one in front of us as though it were our last opportunity to go anywhere that day. I could not believe how fast the crowd moved—it seemed like we were in a hundred-yard dash for some Olympic event. Why rush? I hadn’t commuted to a job for years, and back then I had taken a taxi or a company car as I moved up in the privileged hierarchy of JWT. I had never been one of the people who took subways. Yet now I had no time to doubt the sanity of the forward motion—I rushed along with everyone else.

From Times Square, I transferred from one crowded train to another that was heading up to Ninety-sixth Street. Squeezing in just as the door was closing, I found myself pressed against people I would never want to know; forced into a kind of primal physical proximity. All faces were unfriendly. How did I get to this place in my life? I thought to myself. Soon the doors opened, and I was forced out onto the dirty platform. I climbed the steep stairs to Ninety-third Street with a pumping heart, beginning to sweat, although it was a cold day in the beginning of April.

Emerging from the subway, I struggled against the wind and then actually staggered as I approached the Starbucks store at the corner of Broadway. Icy rain made the pavement slippery. I paused. Now that I was there, I was in no hurry to open that door.

As I stared at the Starbucks sign, the reality of my situation hit me with a sickening impact. I felt numb, standing on the icy pavement in the wrong part of town. My dream of rejoining a big international company to become rich and in control and happy once again had turned into a humiliating nightmare. Yes, I was going to join a big international company, but in reality as nothing better than a waiter with a fancy name. I would have the very visible public embarrassment of being Michael Gates Gill dressed as a waiter serving drinks to people who could have been my friends or clients. It was like the old days when the Pilgrims put sinners in the stocks in the public square as a visible example to others to watch their ways.

The Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards had said: “We all hang by a thread from the hand of an angry God.” Maybe there was an angry Puritan God who had decided to punish me for all my sins. Over every minute of the past few years, I had felt the heavy weight of guilt for hurting so many I loved. My former wife, my children, and even those few friends I still had. My Puritan ancestors would be raging at me. Yes, I thought to myself, maybe there really was a vengeful God whom I had offended.

Yet I had to admit that my reality was more mundane, and sad. I could not pretend that I was living out some kind of mythical biblical journey. I was not a modern Job; I was looking for a job. And I had to face the brutal yet everyday fact that I was here because of my own financial mismanagement, my sexual needs that had led me to stray. I was not some special person singled out for justice by God. I was, and this really pained me to admit, not even that unique. It was hard, terribly hard, for me to give up my sense of a special place in the universe.

Now I was forced to see a new reality: What I was experiencing, as a guy too old to find work, was a reality for millions of aging Americans today who could not support themselves and were no longer wanted by the major corporations in our country. In this state of numbed anxiety, ambivalence, and forced humility, I opened the door to the Starbucks store.

Inside, all was heat, noise, and a kind of barely organized chaos. There was a line of customers almost reaching the door. Mothers with babies in arms and in prams. Businesspeople checking cell phones. Schoolkids lugging backpacks. College kids carrying computers. All impatient to be served their lattes.

As I looked behind the bar at the servers of the lattes, one of my worries was confirmed: Virtually all the Partners were African-American. There clearly was no diversity. This was not a complete surprise to me, because I had noticed in visiting various Starbucks locations since my interview with Crystal that very few white people worked at any of the New York stores.

For the first time in my life, I knew I would be a very visible member of a real minority. I would be working with people of a totally different background, education, age, and race.

And it was also clear from what was going on in the store that I would be working extremely hard. There were three Starbucks Partners strenuously punching at the cash registers taking the money and speedily, loudly calling out the drinks to other people at the espresso bar. The people at the bar called back the drink names, while quickly, expertly making the drinks, juggling jugs of hot milk while pulling shots of espresso. In rapid-fire order, they then served them up to the customers with an emphatic “Enjoy!” that was almost a kind of manic shout. The customers themselves would reach in for their drinks with a fierce desire.

This coffee business clearly was not a casual one to anybody—on either side of the bar. There was a frantic pace and much focused noise, like being part of a race against time. I had never been good at sports, and this store had that athletic atmosphere of people operating with peak adrenaline. With all the calling and re-calling of drinks, it seemed that I might be auditioning for a role in a kind of noisy Italian opera.

Suddenly I was very worried. Not just about race or class or age. Now I had an even more basic concern. I had originally thought that a job at Starbucks might be below my abilities. But now I realized it might be beyond them. This job could be a real challenge for me—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I had never been good at handling money—it was a major reason I needed a job so badly now. Math was a subject I had never mastered at school. I had vivid memories of many math teachers claiming, “But this is so easy,” as they scratched out some equation on the blackboard. I hated those teachers for their superiority. Even the simplest additions and subtractions were a challenge for me. Now the reality of all that money changing hands so rapidly at the Starbucks registers terrified me.

I had lost hearing in one ear due to my brain tumor. Hearing the complicated drink orders could be a serious problem for me. I was also scared by the idea that I had to understand tricky orders and call them out correctly in a matter of split seconds. Languages had never been my skill. My French professor at Yale had said, “I will pass you on one condition: You never inflict your accent on anyone else in this university.” Yet it was clear I was now expected to master the exotic language of Starbucks Speak.

In that first instant, I realized with humiliation that my new job might be a test I could easily fail. I had worn the black pants with a white shirt, no tie. I was feeling lonely and afraid. Then Crystal appeared in a swirl of positive energy.