Nickel And Dimed Reflection

Ehrenreich’s housing situation also makes her stand out from the real poor working class. Ehrenreich (2002) states "As it turns out, the mere fact of having a unit to myself makes me an aristocrat..." (p. 70). Almost every other person she has met has to live with another person. A hefty security deposit is required to get an apartment which many people are unable to pay so they are forced to live with family, friends, or pay for a hotel room. Cohabiting is another system the working poor faces. Ehrenreich does not have to endure the hardship of living with another person.

The situation Ehrenreich is describing is the reality of millions of Americans; they work multiple minimum wage jobs, and are paid “so meagerly that workers can’t save enough to move on.” In addition, Ehrenreich recalls the actions of the U.S. government in regards to assisting these Americans. The article opens with the contribution of President Lyndon B. Johnson on the “War on Poverty”, then the “attack on welfare” in the 90s, concluding with The Great Recession. While writing Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich abandoned her comfortable life to live the life of a low-income American; she worked multiple entry level jobs including Wal-Mart, a maid service, and as a nursing home aide. Through these actions, Ehrenreich establishes her ethos. Because she’s lived the lifestyle she’s describing, she has the authority to speak on the topic. Ehrenreich concludes with her proposal to help the

Every establishment that she applies would rather hire her as a waitress because she is white and speaks English. When applying to Hearthside, Ehrenreich even downgrades herself in order to attain a job as a housekeeper. “I mutter about being woefully out of practice as a waitress, but he’s already on to the uniform” (Ehrenreich, 16). However, even though the author attempts to prove she would not make a good waitress, her employer is already stubborn and thinks that she is more worthy as a server as opposed to a housekeeper. So why did her boss make her a waitress when she clearly wanted to be a housekeeper? Her boss made her a waitress simply, because he used stereotypes to judge the author. Therefore, her boss only saw a white woman who was better equipped with serving skills even though Ehrenreich believed she had better housekeeping skills. Now, sadly if a fluent English speaking Hispanic applied to the same job, she would only be hired as a housekeeper. In fact, she would be rejected as a waitress for the same reason that the author couldn’t become a housekeeper; the of color her skin. In today’s society, when someone thinks of a hotel maid, they think of a Latin woman who isn’t fluent in English. It is this very stereotype that affects the type of job a low-wage job a person receives simply because of the color of their skin and not their personal abilities.

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.

Often throughout the book she mentions that it is said that "you're paid what you're worth", saying that little pay results in you not being to good of a person. With that label they were looked down on and viewed kind of as untouchables. They had low pay, long hours, no overtime pay, and no benefits which leads to low socio-economic-status a job that no one wants to pursue. She stressed that poverty wasn’t a sustainable condition, it's a state of emergency. Citizens in the lower classes are left to fend for themselves and the ten, eight, or six dollar jobs are all that's there for them. What she would encourage them to do is to demand to be paid what they're worth because in the end they will be better off.

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

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America was the first book of its type that I’ve ever read, a real life analysis of what its like to “live in poverty,” working minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet day in and day out. It was an intriguing story of how a woman with plenty went on to document how she lived without and I found that Ehrenreich’s commentary throughout the book offered a refreshing perspective to the usual conversation that surrounds poverty; she never thought that she was better or better off than those she met working low-paying jobs, and she was always conscious of how race intersected with class throughout her so-called field experiment.

While conducting her experiment, Barbara Ehrenreich is also learning about the coworkers’ background and their living conditions. She provides the reader information on the way that specific person is living (with who and where) and the amount of money they’re spending on rent. She then begins to talk about how working a minimum wage can be difficult to everyone. By giving this connection, Ehrenreich is connecting to the public through an emotional standpoint. The audience might also be able to relate to one of Ehrenreich’s coworkers, which increases her credibility. Her point of wanting to prove to the public to increase the minimum wage is backed up through this connection because Ehrenreich is demonstrating to them that despite employee's background, rent is going to be an expense that everyone is going to have to encounter some time in their life. Ehrenreich also discusses about some sacrifices that coworkers had to make due to their lack of funds. She talks about how a coworker’s boyfriend lost his job because he missed so much time from work because he couldn’t afford the prescribed antibiotic he needed due to an injury. If employees doesn’t have the sufficient funds from their employers, they’re going to have to make a sufficient amount of sacrifices in other areas just so they’re able to have enough money to afford paying rent.

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

Ehrenreich goes into this experience knowing that she is above everyone and knowing she has money in her back pocket for any scenario where she is in need. Not even realizing that she was talking down on the working class, Ehrenreich refers to the working poor people's lives as ¨this parallel universe¨. As Ehrenreich gets into her first job working for minimum wage, she says ¨At least Gail puts to rest any fears I had of appearing overqualified.¨ Ruling out things was something that Ehrenreich did from the beginning. Choosing to rule out homelessness, she would never be without a car, and no shelters or sleeping in cars for her. Attitude played a big role in how she began her experience right from the start. The people who are actually living in poverty do not have any options to fall back on. Ehrenreich’s attitude is not of one who actually goes through the daily struggles to get by in this world. Being above everyone was something she made clear to all readers right in the beginning. On the other hand, Turkel’s attitude is very uplifting and appreciative of the working poor and how they have so much pride and passion in the work they do. While interviewing the working class, Turkel gets invited to eat dinner at some man's house, and without even realizing it, Turkel is leaving the dinner on short notice not fully appreciating that this stranger invited him into his home and used money he probably did not have to buy him Italian. Turkel says ¨I found myself neglecting the amenities and graces that offer mutual pleasure and host.¨ Realizing these people take huge pride in what they are doing, and love doing what they do, Turkel started to see how working like they do is actually

Ehrenreich developed the objectives of this book in a very interesting way. Ironically she developed the idea for this project over a very elegant expensive lunch at a French country-style restaurant. Ehrenreich and her editor Lewis Laphan from Harpers had gone out to lunch to discuss future articles. Throughout lunch the topic of poverty came up. Questions like, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” (Ehrenreich, 2001 pg. 1) and how do unskilled workers survive on such low incomes, started to surface. She then thought “Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism – you know, go out there and try

Ehrenreich also appeals to is pathos through descriptive word choices. Pathos is defined as the use of emotionally loaded language, emotional events, and figurative language in order to inflict sympathy on the reader. In this case, Ehrenreich is attempting to create sympathy for people who work minimum wage jobs by describing her own experiences in detail. For instance, when Ehrenreich is at Old Orchard Beach in Maine, she sees a street performer and decides to give him money for his beautiful playing. She says, “When the song ends, I give him a dollar, the equivalent of about ten minutes of sweat” (Ehrenreich 86). Ehrenreich wants to remind people that the money she made is a result of hard, physical labor she endured. She sweat for ten minutes to earn that dollar, and so she reminds readers that any money she has is a result of hard work she put forth. Usually people do not think of dollar amounts as time spent working, so by doing this and including the word “sweat” (which indicates tireless labor), she creates an emotional appeal towards herself and others who have minimum wage jobs. Also, Ehrenreich describes in detail the unpleasant tasks she needs to perform with her job as a maid. Obviously not every minimum wage worker is a maid, however a lot of minimum wage jobs have similar tasks like maids’. For example, Ehrenreich goes into

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, the author Barbara Ehrenreich took on an experiment for better understanding of the working class. She left her comfortable life and took on lower paying jobs herself.

Throughout the book Ehrenreich’s co-workers all seem to struggle, such as the trouble with housing in Key West and healthcare in Maine. Having a place to live, eating properly, and healthcare seem to be the biggest cause of concern within the working class. Most of the jobs that she worked, the workers did not have healthcare packages or benefits. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to have trouble trying to manage their health and struggle to pay for medication, let alone a visit to the doctor. Without healthcare and a lack of proper diet (in Maine she had a ‘thirty minute’ lunch break but most of her co-workers barely ate anything close to a meal) it is not hard to see how the working class can easily be shot into poverty; seeing as most of the working class that she had encountered were just living above the poverty line. Reading about what she noticed and noted about her co-workers it isn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be to fall below the poverty

Ehrenreich applies for many different jobs and ends up choosing between Wal-Mart and Menards. She picks Wal-Mart and find herself working in the women 's department organizing and hanging up clothes. She realizes that she must became friendly with the dressing room attendants in order to make her job easier. Again her supervisors constantly get on her about wasting time. She uses her break times to talk to her fellow workers about a union but quits before really getting anything started.