Analysis Of Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

The main message that this book offers is how difficult it is to get by for people who work for minimum wage.The difficulties these people face are made worse by the fact that they're bosses and managers are often strict and can be inadvertently cruel at times.The message was that for some people the situation got to the point where no matter how hard they would work it just wouldn't be enough,Ehrenreich was raised in a household where she was led to believe if you worked hard enough you could rise up but in this country for some people it just wasn't possible.

One was management: she was under the surveillance of men and women whose job was to monitor her behavior for sins of sloth, theft, drug abuse or worse. “Assistant managers” in low-wage areas like what she was dong became the class enemy. In the restaurant business, most assistant managers are former cooks and servers, and paid a salary of about four hundred a week. Managers can sit, but it’s their job to make sure no one else does, even when there is nothing to do. This is why for servers, slow time can be as exhausting. During Ehrenreich’s employment, a mandatory meeting came up, and a consultant sent out by corporate headquarters opened the meeting with a sneer, and said “break-room and whatever is in them can be searched at any time,” and all gossiping must stop.” After the corporate manager exhausted his agenda of rebukes, complaints followed concerning the work conditions. However, the consultant did not show any interest for improvement. Ehrenreich had never been treated this way, and when she asked why, it was muttered “management decisions.” Her second reason why she could not continue in the service position was that low-wage jobs showed no signs of being financially viable. People that live year in year out on six to ten dollars an hour must thrive to survive. For instance, her coworker Gail was sharing a room in a well-known downtown flop house which she shared with a male

In this book Ehrenreich changes the names of the people and places, so the “Hearthside” is not actually the name of her first low-wage job), working for two weeks from 2pm-10pm for a wage of $2.43/hour + tips. After the two weeks were up Ehrenreich learned a lot about the people she had been working with, most of them were living in such poor conditions and or were living from paycheck to paycheck with nothing left over. Examples: Gail: Shares a room with a male roommate; she would like to not live with him but the rent would be impossible alone, Andy the white cook lives in his boat that doesn’t run, and Joan is the hostess that lives in her van parked behind a shopping center. These living situations of some of the workers at the Hearthside is really common as we learn later in the book that no matter the area that you are living in low-wage jobs do not meet the requirements needed in order to live financially stable.

All the minimum-wage occupations that Ehrenreich engages in requires her to work hard everyday. Despite all of Ehrenreich’s diligent work at the end of every month, she barely manages to make ends meet. The people that she interviewed from the Woodcrest Residential Facility were also in the same situation as Ehrenreich. Her twenty four-year old co-worker Lori has, “a serious disk problem and an $8,000 credit card debt,” (Ehrenreich, 118). Therefore it shows that American Dream cannot be attained from hard work. In this case, Lori was injured from her hard work thus leaving her crippled and

Barbara Ehrenreich 's showed that she didn't have the mind set or worries of a working class person by reminding us as readers the fine line between the kind of performance she is doing and the kind her fellow coworkers do every day on the job. Time and again she lets us sink into her new world of a low-wage worker, only to pull us back with a reminder of the act. 1 She does this experiment to determine whether or not she could both live off the money earned and have enough money at the end of the month to pay the next month's rent. Working class people depend on the money they make on these jobs to survive and provide for their families. She could drop all these jobs she experimented with and go back to her real life without a worry in the

Before moving any further with potential weaknesses, the major and possibly only strength was Ehrenreich’s issue with rent, but this later hits a dead-end. Rent being a significant problem for a society that expects and claims that people are able to afford to live off of minimum wage should highlight a flaw in that assumption. Throughout this book, rent becomes a major issue for her but her continuous complaining with no action becomes ineffective. When placed with desperate measures, strategies are quickly summoned. If one has some family and/or friends, there will be an attempt to ask them to loan money. If the individual has formed relationships and associations with people who are also hanging on the poverty line, the idea of taking in a roommate or moving in with a roommate to split the rent will definitely be a consideration as well as considering any government assistance programs. Ehrenreich’s fictional character did not include any family nor friends and associations that she could split the rent with nor did she seek out any other ways to make ends meet. These subtleties can make it easier for readers to disregard the stress of paying ones rent, because Ehrenreich’s experience is simply not an accurate depiction; failing to demonstrate logical behavior of someone who is sincerely

A riveting tale about the world of low class workers, Ehrenreich puts into words what most are don’t acknowledge or are afraid to acknowledge. Through first-hand experience, Ehrenreich successfully navigates her way through the low wage work by working such common low wage jobs as waitressing, housecleaning, and sales. While along the way discovering that each job encompasses their own organizational structure, culture, and identity that she is focused to discover and conform with while being paid no more than $7.00 an hour and even at some points as little as $2.43 (plus tips). Ehrenreich persuasively forces us to realize that the American dream is slowly

Ehrenreich, found out that Portland is another $5 an hour type of town, and that jobs are heavy labor and at risk for injuries (37). Afterwards, she worked for a hotel as a maid, where there was a lot of indifference like how the hotel charges $25 an hour to a client for their room clean but the worker is only getting $6.65 out of that pay (44). Interesting fact was that the hotel said “Cleaning fluids are less expensive than your time”, which shows that the hote value workers above cleaning products (45). Chapter 3, talked about her last destination, which was Minnesota, but originally wanted to go to Central Valley in California but changed her mind because people said the jobs and low-income housing are filled up by Latinos (69).Barbara Ehrenreich got a job at a retail store called “Wal-Mart,” where she talked about in detail about the interview and how she needed to pee in front of a health professional for a mandatory drug testing to get employed (72-73). Ehrenreich mentions how a housecleaner, who helping a man with cancer clean his sores and cook him food in exchange gave her $325 for her rent, which shows that there was a people that will help low-income workers (75).

While at Hearthside Ehrenreich learns about how some of her coworkers get by on such a measly check. Some of her coworkers share apartments with family, friends,

The topic of Nickel and Dimed is to determine whether, a person living a low waged job can survive on what they get. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of the book, attempts to live the same way the unskilled live. Throughout the book she experiences many of the hardships and obstacles that those unskilled workers go through. In the book, Ehrenreich works in three different locations as a dining room server, a maid, and a Walmart employees. The author explains the difficulties they had while trying to find a place to live with such a low paying job. The main characters of the book are Barbara Ehrenreich on her journey as a journalist to experience the lifestyle of the low skilled. She is encouraged to take up the challenge after she comments, “Someone ought to.. Go out there and try it for themselves.” (Ehrenreich, 1) She comments that after engaging in a conversation about poverty. She was encouraged by her friends to take on the task, and she does it, to an extent. She does explain that she never had the intention to go hungry, so she would cheat and use money when she truly needed it.

She starts to become impatient about her itchiness on her hands and arms from the chemicals exposed to her skin, so she fell “back on the support networks of my real-life social class, call the dermatologist I know in Key West, and bludgeon him into prescribing something sight unseen” (Ehrenreich 88). Here, Ehrenreich shows to have ‘cheated’ on one of her rules which was to use cheap accommodations. Although not mentioned, the price of a dermatologist can be quite expensive, so rarely anyone who falls in the category of the lower class will do anything like this. Later, Ehrenreich continues to work at The Maids and tries to get through this experience. In one instance, she explains the dirtiness of the places where they do the services at. She was very grossed out at one place where the bathroom has full of pubic hair. Here, she complained that she did not “know what it is about the American upper class, but they seem to be shedding their pubic hair at an alarming rate” (Ehrenreich 92) which again targets her other respective audience, the American upper class. As the second part of the project came to an end, Ehrenreich finally decided to resign at The Maids. However, before she left, she made it very clear how the people working in low-wage salaries “are the untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society” (Ehrenreich 117) which explains that the lives of these individuals are anything

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s bestseller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, the author provides a peek into the daily lives of the unskilled workers forced into the labor market by welfare reforms. She shares her experience, capturing her use of the“undercover” method of journalism to better understand the world of the minimum wage working class. Her memoir details the endeavors she took to maintain a lifestyle under circumstances just as millions of Americans would soon experience it. Parting with her desk job as a writer and essayist, she uncovers what life under the poverty line is like first hand as she enters the world of service, attempting to work some of America’s least attractive jobs. With every account, Ehrenreich concisely

Does the United States really support its citizens and allow them to prosper? In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich investigates this question by living as a low-wage worker for three months in cities around the United States. Her experiences teach her that as her jobs change, so does her place in society. Nickel and Dimed effectively proves American society does not support the poor; instead, it decreases low-wage workers’ mobilities and forces them to live lives that are focused only on their jobs. Through her journey, Ehrenreich learns that because she works “unskilled” labor, her place in society changes.

The authors state that, “the current American system in which health care is linked to employment is creating a caste of the chronically ill, infirm, and marginally employed.” (Sered and Fernandopulle, 2005, p. 15) They refer to the working poor as part of this caste because of the long-lasting immobility from the death spiral as well as recognizable physical features usually due to occupational conditions. People of this caste take on jobs that are part-time. Part-time work is both low paying and does not offer health insurance. There are many portals that pull individuals and their families into the

If a business wants to maximize their profit, one might up the cost of products and cut employee salary. If a business wants to keep the price of products low and steady, one may earn a lower profit, but keep a higher employee salary. If a business wants to raise the wages of employees, one might lose profit by keeping a high price on products. Is it possible to have all three perks? Yes, you bet. Companies that simultaneously maximize profit, keep products at a low price, and pay fair employee wages do exist, are growing, and should be models for the future business.