If it has been a while for you, then perhaps you were much younger and comfortable sharing a living space with relative strangers. Many people working these crappy jobs are not kids in their teens and twenties. They are middle-aged and these are their careers. Also, the workers we are talking about don't "want to save money", they are perpetually spending every cent they earn to cover costs and debt. It isn't some pit stop on the way to the upper-middle class (though upper-middle class people seem to like to pretend it is).