If you're going for professional level work then you certainly should care whether they want you there, or more importantly, if you are providing any value to the company. Because if the answer to either of those is "no" then you probably won't go far in the company anyway and so you're wasting your own time.

If all you care about is eating then there's plenty of jobs where you can punch the clock, do your time and get the hell out of there.

Anyone can find a job to survive, even in the depths of a horrible recession.

I suspect the disconnect is a lot of people who say "eat food" really mean "drive a $60,000 car."

Anyone? I think you're deceiving yourself there. My point was really that the comment was clearly from a privileged perspective - not everyone out of work is just lazy.

Working in a job that's not a perfect fit is a small step down the scale of compromising one's career out of necessity. Next step would probably be working on a different industry. Then there is a lot further to go before your cleaning up other people's mess or faeces, scrubbing abattoir floors, or what-have-you.

Agreed on your second sentence, but that's a valid choice.