When I first read this book, I was actually working one of her average-Joe type jobs, for which I was overqualified. I was doing it mostly for similar reasons (I wanted to see what it was like to work the lower rungs of retail), so I was definitely intrigued when I heard of this book.

I didn’t like it when I first read it; I tried it again and I still didn’t like it.

She seems distant, pretentious and superior. Very much “oh look at these poor people, and I am such an interesting character that I spent my time among them, we should help them blah blah blah.” Now, yes, we should as a society do something to give minimum wage workers a better life, but she never seems to connect to them on a human level. The most emotion I see in the book is when she is freaking out and spending unreasonable sums of money on detox kits because she’s afraid they’ll find that she toked up.

If you are actually isolated from the lower classes, if you don’t see the cashiers and janitors and maids as people, sure, this will bring you a bit closer to earth, but the distance she maintains from the people she is claiming to be an advocate for leaves a bad taste in my mouth.