One thing that struck me about Ehrenreich’s account is the mentality that a minimum wage worker has. The tasks they have and the hours they work lead their bodies to exhaustion. It gets to the point that when they finally take a seat, she describes “my flesh seems to bond to the seat” (32). The people who work these jobs have no choice but to continue. In order to get by, they need to take on as much work as humanly possible. Ehrenreich experiences this first hand and talks about the ways in which she stayed sane. She discusses the idea of taking each day as it comes, rather than thinking about the next day, or the day after that. She writes, “Treat each shift as a one-time-only emergency: you’ve got fifty starving people out there, lying scattered on the battlefield, so get out there and feed them!” (33). You have to literally give it your all each and every day because, like I said before, these people don’t have a choice. Ehrenreich also talks about how the customers are a source of motivation. At the Hearthside restaurant, she knew the people were hardworking locals, just like herself. She wanted to give them the best experience possible because they deserve “the closest to a ‘fine dining’ experience that the grubby circumstances will allow” (18). It takes a certain kind of mentality to survive this overwhelming lifestyle and we get a glimpse of this through Ehrenreich’s experience.