However, after ten months of effort (including hiring a career coach, attending careers fairs, networking with job seekers and signing up for an employment 'boot camp') Ehrenreich was unable to find a job, receiving only two offers of commission-based sales work in cosmetics and car insurance.

"[2] Ehrenreich's discussion, therefore, focuses on the instability of life at a middle or white-collar stratum of the employment world, particularly in the case of the long 'transition' periods when people lose one particular job and attempt to attain another.

The difficulty of finding a position was in part the product of the reality of the wider jobs market: at the time of writing, she argued that 44% of the long-term unemployed are people who can be categorized as white-collar professionals, showing the extent of the insecurity that is now endemic to much of the sector.

[3] Implicitly she is critical of much of the motivational industry that has flourished in the face of employment insecurity and instability; on one character assessment she is described, rather superficially and vacuously, as 'Original and Effective' and on another as 'the commandant'.

Her hope is that future solutions lie in updated forms of collective action that protect employees from the vicissitudes and volatility of the employment world.