Onward?

Howard Schultz recently released a new book entitled Onward: How Starbucks Fought for its Life Without Losing its Soul. Gag me with a stick. Worse than that eye-rolling title was the decision to give every Starbucks employee a copy of the book-which is, essentially, 328 pages of pompous, self-congratulatory, hogwash. When I first learned of the magnanimous gift that was to be bestowed upon me by employer, I thought "what the hell am I going to do with this piece of crap?" My initial idea was to shoot the book into the exosphere, watch it burst into flames as it fell back to Earth, find the cinereous remains of Howard's affront to the English language, brew them at work, and serve it to the next jerk-off customer that gave me any lip. Even though some of my more shady associates could undoubtedly get their hands on the equipment necessary for such a space launch (you know who you are), my funds were unfortunately lacking. So I settled on selling the books (for some reason another co-worker didn't want her copy and released it to my care) at a used book store and spending what I was sure would be meager earnings at an independent coffee shop. Brilliant in theory, my plan was harder to implement than I thought. At the first used book store the clerk offered me $1.80 for one copy. When I thought I could get a better deal, he directed my to the next closest store. At that store, the clerk took one look at the books and responded with "yeah, I don't want these." Worse than his response was the way he delivered it with a total air of contempt. He looked at me like I was a crackhead trying to sell a stolen dvd copy of Gigli at a pawn shop. At that point, I recalculated the numbers for my exosphere plan thinking maybe it wasn't as far out of reach as I originally thought. As a last ditch effort before I simply chucked the books into the nearest dumpster, I went to one more used book store. As I browsed the dvd section of Ed Mckay and contemplated buying a copy of Bubba Ho-tep (starring Bruce Campbell as a mummy-fighting Elvis) I saw that the clerks had decided the fate of my book selling plan. At the register, the guy informed me that they would buy one copy for $1.95 worth of store credit. I was completely deflated. I told the guy he could just keep both copies and that I was "sick of hauling them around in my car." When he heard that, the clerk graciously offered my $4 in store credit and said he would take both copies. I jumped at the offer, and later used the store credit to buy a copy of The Life of a Useless Man by Maxim Gorki. About two weeks later I was back at Ed McKay and wandered over to the business section. I found my two copies of Onward...right next to a third copy. I guess I wasn't the only employee who couldn't afford the space launch.