It seems Ehrenreich wants to show people just how rough it is for minimum wage workers to get by. The long hours, low pay, and questionable at best working conditions all paint a picture of people who teeter on the edge of poverty if not outright fall into it. It's something that I'm certain would shock many people... in the late 90's, when this was written.
Since this piece was published, it seems, at least from my perspective, that awareness of the very dire conditions of minimum wage workers has become more widespread, and might have even been widespread before this was published. However, that doesn't make it any less well-written or compelling. It's still a damn good non-fiction story. Easily as dramatic as anything P.T. Anderson could come up with. It also makes me wonder how much conditions in these sorts of jobs have improved, if at all, as nowadays, it seems that most people who don't work in them just assume they suck and don't pay much attention to them outside of that. I know that my mom had a lot of nasty things to say about Walgreens when she was working for them, but nothing this severe. I'll probably look into it at some point.
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