Complete Assessment Of Barbara Ehrenreich Journey

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 Barbara Ehrenreich's bold and honest book she tackles the issue of poverty in America head on, by becoming a low wage worker herself. Ehrenreich delves into the often unheard of issues relating to poverty and low wage work, providing her readers with a new perspective on America's working poor and manages to give her audience a stark emotional, yet logical and factual, look into the working class' poverty epidemic. She uses her own anecdotal evidence and supports it with statistics and facts, appeals to ethos by challenging the ethics of corporate America and it costs, finally she hits an emotional chord with readers by reminding them of what low wage workers must endure so that we can live in our America.

Barbara Ehrenreich uses very specific techniques (“moves”) to convey her message to her readers: for instance, the approach she uses in the first part of her essay is an ‘objective approach’ which relied upon citations from published works. She drew upon statistical data and information and used extensive quotations extracted from experts who have written on the subject. The other important device used in her essay (the other side of the same coin, so to speak) is the ‘subjective approach’ that she undertook to convey her message of “white-collar downward mobility.” Examples of the objective approach is found in this passage taken from the published work of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “In Late 2003, when I started this project, unemployment

While out dining with a friend Barbara Ehrenreich, a bestselling author of many books had came up with a question which would mark the start of a whole new life experience. Her question was, “how does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” The topic of poverty had greatly fascinated Ehrenreich but not to the point that she would actually want to experience poverty herself. However, this changed when the friend she was dining with suggested she should be the one to go out and experience the unpleasant lifestyle that is poverty. Upon starting this experiment she knew she had to construct a plan so she sat and began to plan out how she would be living throughout the experiment When concluding her experiment Ehrenreich argues

18) Barbara Ehrenriech worked low wage jobs to understand the outcomes of low-wage work. This is

Ehrenreich is part of the upper-middle class; she is "privileged" to have a job in which she makes money by sitting at her desk and writing (E 2). She has never considered herself one of the working poor before this experiment, even though she explains, "the low-wage way of life had never been many degrees of separation away" (E

Barbara Ehrenreich began her research to explore how people attempting to move from welfare to work are managing—if at all. This exploration also extended to those who are apart of the working class and having not been on welfare. Attempting to place herself in the position of her subjects, Ehrenreich strived to see if she were able to survive on the minimal income provided by a series of low level and low paying jobs. In was her foreknowledge of laws and the inclusion of these laws in Nickel and Dimed that brought about exposing historical and present-day 21st century contradictory practices, laws, and regulations that exploit the poor working class (if not through her experiment but by the subjects’ honest experience). In

Barbara Ehrenreich is a successful American author that conducted an experiment of living in a life of low wages. She documented her experiences and thus made the book Nickel and Dimed. This story involves a woman named Barbara Ehrenreich who goes undercover to experiment living in a life of low wages and sees if she can survive from it. Ehrenreich effectively captures her argument of showing that it is almost impossible to provide the basic needs for one’s self by working a minimum wage job. The part of the title of the book that states On (Not) Getting By In America; the word Not goes with her argument being that it is very hard to provide for oneself under the employment of a minimum wage job.

She tells about her experience as a waitress, and flashes back to her teenage years "…I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen, and I'm decades of varicosities and back pain beyond that now."(Ehrenreich, 13) This is an example of ethos. She tells about the side work involved, and gives credit to the real people who do these kinds of jobs everyday. It is defiantly a strain on her, and her co-workers have a lot more on their plates than she does.

Ehrenreich reminds her readers that the minimum paying job isn’t enough to provide a decent house for herself, instead she has been living in a trailer. She reiterates that not only working conditions of the lower class are a factor to their poverty, but living conditions for the poor aren't as pleasant as they are for the upper middle class. She follows with another restriction that rises after a coworker of hers spends too much time at a bar. The employee turns out to be another woman who is, "another trailer home dweller and a mother of three". She provides these details because the environment that lower class employees live in tends to drive them to getting drunk, or even into harmful habits for themselves and the people they surround themselves with.

Continuously, Ehrenreich concludes with disdain that living off of a minimum wage job without being homeless is difficult or impossible. At each of the states she travels to, she finds she must work two jobs in order to afford even the most basic rooms. She notes that her troubles are not unique. Persistently, she writes about her coworkers being homeless or in one instance, not even being able to afford proper food and instead eating only a bad of

Ehrenreich is a guinea pig in her own experiment of establishing a stable income with the help of a tight budget to get her to her goal, which is to build a financially stable life, as well as the help a minimum wage job. She performs this in three different locations; each having a lasting impact on her as she learns the difficulty of assimilating in a city with economic setbacks. Ehrenreich has her ups and downs in her experience, especially with money. After the ordeal, the author of the book learns about how much money is depended on and how it can change a person because she experienced it on a first-hand account. Documenting on her journey, Ehrenreich encountered people who were at their lowest and were still attempting to make the best out of it. She met immigrants and coworkers who shared stories of their low salaries and were still grateful for what they receive. This shows that it makes people more appreciated and humble for what they have because it could have been worse. Barbara Ehrenreich gained the talent of adapting to new locations, attempting to establish a secure economic foundation while having financial

In the novel Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehnreich, there are many hurtles she must overcome to experience the life of a low income worker. She sets some ground rules for herself, such as always having a car, and starting out with a certain amount of money for her down payment on an apartment. Although the rules are doable, she admits that she broke all of the rules at least once. Even though Barbara didn 't hold to her original plan, she was still able to reveal her appeals clearly.

Struggling as a lower class worker, Barbara Ehrenreich found a new meaning to serving people as she writes about her experience working as a waitress in her piece, "Nickel and Dimed". Starting a new life in an unfamiliar setting was the least of her worries as she endeavors to find a way to support her newly independent life.

In 2001, author Barbra Ehrenreich embarked on a mission to explore the lives of low income workers by becoming one herself, a project that would eventually become Serving in Florida. Ehrenreich began her quest by procuring housing that she could afford with the minimum wage, an arduous task that required a compromise between between long commutes and manageable cost. Her search for employment was no less troublesome. Despite an abundance of help wanted ads, after three days and two dozen applications, she had not been granted one interview.