"The best experience for Partners and Guests"

I know I said that I would be studying, but someone left a book here, hopefully as a joke, called How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill- and it's hilarious.

It purports to be the story of an former ad executive who was let go for not being young and hip enough, and ends up working on the floor at a Starbucks, where he learns all sort of useful life lessons, such as "being black and working class is different than being white and rich" and "Starbucks can give you the authenticity you crave."

The reviews on Amazon.com seem to think that it's genuine, but whether or not it is, Gill's advertising experience shines through. Some choice quotes, pulled at random:

"Crystal's passion for Starbucks was an integral part of her life."

"Starbucks was not something people decided for or against in a casual way. It was obviously a key part of their lives, an important destination for them every single day."

"Crystal and Starbucks had freed me to be me."

"I could be sincere at Starbucks because I was finally in a work environment that valued those precious moments of truly human interaction."

The writing is so corporate it hurts. Customers are called "Guests" - yes, capitalized. Nearly every other page has dialogue that seems to be Starbucks copy, just slightly modified so that it could plausibly come out of a real person's mouth.

Who in the world left this book at a non-Starbucks shop, and why? I'm tempted to put it in the deposit bag and let whoever does the counting downtown get a laugh out of it too, but if it's something a customer left behind on accident,... I guess I could tell them that I burned it.