Liberal culturalist, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to examine the lives of women attempting to live in America on $6 or $7 an hour. She traveled from near her home in Florida through Maine to Minnesota, to see how the bottom third of wage earners live. At times funny and heartbreaking, her experiences as a waitress, cleaning woman, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart employee paralleled those encountered by adolescents at their first jobs. Even with Ehrenreich's advantages of education, health, a car, and money saved for emergencies, she still had to work two jobs, seven days a week, to make ends meet. More importantly, she saw how badly America treats it working poor, both personally and legally.