A son of privilege learns to live like everyone else

  • March: From drinking lattes to serving them up
    • Yet at fifty-three I had just been given a professional death notice. I knew in my heart it was going to be a bad time to be old and on the street.
  • April: Reality shock
    • I shook my head in disbelief that I was probably going to celebrate my birthday by working as a lowly coffee server.
  • May: One word that changed my life
    • “It’s not what you do, it’s who you are. And you are great.”
    • Maybe I had better spend more time singing and laughing, and less time crying about the past.
  • June: On the front lines – ready or not
    • I was still going to be forced to do the money part of the business, at which I knew I would fail.
  • July – August: Open wide and smile – you’re on Broadway
    • What a relief to me to have customers eager to greet me rather than my calling for clients like I had done in my old business, and no one wanting to take my calls.
  • September – October: The million-dollar punch
    • You can’t serve if you try to control the people you serve.
    • “Try a little tenderness”
  • November – December: Turning losers into winners
    • I felt better and better about my role in the store: serving coffee I loved to people I really enjoyed talking with.
  • January: Fired – almost
    • Being “written up” was terrible at Starbucks. I had never known any Partner who was fired, but I had heard that the process by being “written up” for some infraction.
    • My father had watched his mother die an agonizing, yearlong death from cancer when he was just a seven-year-old child. One of his lifelong goals was not to inflict that kind of lengthy suffering on anyone.
  • February: Crystal takes me to the bar
    • i was finally getting into the flow of making drinks — into a kind of focused concentration where all that mattered was making them right at the right time.
  • March: Exit Broadway
    • My best friends in the Partners were coming in from where they lived to be with me at the end of my last shift. This was very rare. You didn’t visit the store if you weren’t going to work.
  • Afterword: How to save your own life
    • Leap… with faith: You can’t think your way out of a box. You have to leap, and leap with faith that if you do take a chance, there will be angels of grace who will catch you and help you on your way.
    • Look… with respect: By truly seeing each person I met as a unique individual, I discovered a world of amazing variety and surprising wonder, almost as if I had been reborn.
    • Listen… to your heart to find true happiness: Trusting your own heart is your greatest — and only — path to real happiness.

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