Howard Behar of Starbucks: Life Lesson #shorts

It was a neighborhood grocery that had charge accounts. And so my dad trusted everybody. They weren't customers, they were his neighbors and his friends and customers too. But probably the single most important lesson that I learned from that experience, I didn't recognize until I was a lot older. But one day I was in the grocery store, I was probably about 8 years old. And my dad said to me, Howard, go get a couple baskets of strawberries. From the back of that store. And so I went and got the strawberries, and the customer was at the counter, and he took those baskets of strawberries and he put them in the customer's bag, and the customer walked out. And I was old enough to recognize my dad hadn't rung them up on his cash register. And so I said, Dad, you forgot to ring those up. And he just looked at me, he said, Howard, not everything we do in life do we get paid for. Should we get paid for it? These people I know love strawberries, and I also know that they can't afford to buy expensive fruit right now. So it's just my way of helping them out a little bit. And it was such a valuable lesson. You know, not everything you do in life you get to get paid for. And I took that lesson with me, you know, once I figured it out. I was probably about 15 or 16 when I remembered that story and figured it out. And it worked for me my whole life. You know, that's not what we're here— we're not here to get paid for everything we do. And I don't just mean monetarily, you know, but— and so a valuable lesson of helping others when they have a need.