Prejudice In Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Ehrenreich

To begin with, Ehrenreich’s method of research does take a lot of commitment and it is a difficult simulation to have to experience, however, there is an entire section of research she can not obtain from this method of research. Ehrenreich can not get an accurate representation of her co-worker’s past struggles and their current situations away from work. In her novel, Ehrenreich quotes, “...but it would take a long time, probably months before I could hope to be accepted into this sorority,” (Ehrenreich 395). The poor working class, at Jerry’s at least, is a closed off society. The workers only trust people that are in similar situations as them and do not openly share their

Her language become more and more crude, especially when she mentions how her “flesh seems to bond to the seat” (181). The reader can easily detect her ever-mounting anger with the situation she has put herself in and what at first seemed like a heroic act ends up being one leading to pure defeat. As an extension to this idea, Ehrenreich shows the reader how certain hardships can make it difficult to try new things. In multiple instances throughout the essay she uses crude language to display her disgusted thoughts and sense of hopelessness, but it can be seen specifically in the introduction. The introduction is based off of her entire experience; after her jobs at Hearthside and Jerry’s. She compares the environment at Jerry’s to a human body, and not in a very pleasant way: “The kitchen is cavern, a stomach leading to the lower intestine that is the garbage and dishwashing area…” She also uses descriptive items of food to depict its scent, combining strange and appalling odors such as “decomposing lemon wedges [and] water-logged toast crusts” (179). These phrases themselves create a negative image of the restaurant, commanding the readers to question how she could have possibly been forced to work in such horrible conditions. Ehrenreich’s rough language effectively shows certain emotions brought out by the transition from writer to waitress, a white collar to a blue collar job, and the hardships that it brought.

This story suggests that total equality amongst one another is not something worth striving for, suggesting that it implantation is dangerous and will have unintentional outcomes. This is true because in the story in order to achieve equality physically and mentally the citizens were treated inhumanly by the government. The beautiful were forced to hide their beauty under masks, the strong forced to wear hundred pound weights around their necks, and the intellectual suffered unbearable noises making it impossible for them to concentrate. Citizens dumb themselves down and hide their talents fearing government punishment. Equality is achieved in a sense but at the expense of freedom and personal achievement.

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 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

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

Discrimination is another key concern for the author as he is struggling to overcome poverty, racism and intolerance. Discrimination comes in many different forms and is defined by the textbook as being any behavior directed against persons because of their membership in a particular group. As a young man Williams experienced many acts of discrimination directed towards both himself and his family. For example, after fishing one evening Carl wanted a soda but couldn?t get one from the drive-in they were passing because ?blacks were barred from the drive-in like every down-town restaurant? (Williams, 225). Another example of discrimination appears in the text when Black students were unable to obtain teaching positions once they graduated from Ball State University because of the color of their skin.

To emphasize the hard work and busy working schedules of poor workers, Ehrenreich builds up his urgent tone in the sixth paragraph. When describing the attitude of workers towards their work, Ehrenreich states that “the only thing to do is to treat each shift as a one-time-only emergency: you’ve got fifty starving people out there, lying scattered on the battlefield, so get out there and feed them” (396). She uses the words “one-time-only emergency” to give readers a sense of emergency by highlighting the unavoidability and time limited of their works and uses words “starving and lying” to point out the impatience of customers, building up a tense atmosphere. Then Ehrenreich uses the second person pronoun “you” when she refers to workers to add pressure on readers by bringing readers to their circumstances. Furthermore, when Ehrenreich writes about the working state, she uses the word “burn” for three times repetitively, which vividly compares the busy status to the raging fire, highlighting the energy drain of hardworking workers and building up a sense of excitement to the readers (396). Therefore, Ehrenreich builds up the urgent tone step by step to expose the hard work of employees in the restaurant.

Ehrenreich also found the experience of the working poor abound with indignities, from monitored urination for drug testing to subjection to search. Ehrenreich notes the indignity, “I still flinch to think that I spent all those weeks under the surveillance of men (and later women) whose job it was to monitor my behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse or worse” (2001, p. 22). “According to Marx, the exploitation of workers by capitalists and the resulting alienation from work result in the denial of workers’ humanity” (Hodson & Sullivan, 2008, p. 8); once again, a description strikingly similar to Ehrenreich’s experiences and observations.

When one of her coworkers ecstatically announces to Ehrenreich that the Hearthside hotel allows her to use the parking lot to sleep, Ehrenreich sarcastically remarks that “With the Hearthside offering benefits like that, how could anyone think of leaving?” (181). When asking this question, Ehrenreich mocks her coworker’s joy. This satirical rendition, of what was a happy moment for her coworker, further highlights the sad life of a blue collar worker. Besides rhetorical questions, Ehrenreich also alludes to television commercials. In her explanation of why blue collar workers cannot take leave, Ehrenreich refers to an Aleve commercial. She describes the commercial as one “in which the cute blue-collar guy asks: If you quit after working four hours, what would your boss say? And the not-so-cute blue-collar guy . . . answers: He'd fire me” (181). By referring to this commercial, she adds a sense of humor to her writing. As a result of this humor, Ehrenreich’s message sits closer to the heart of the reader because the reader can now associate the worker’s lives with a humorous commercial they may even have

In the book Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, who is a famous journalist and writer, she explores how low-wage workers survive in America by going undercover to learn for herself. Her project begins in Florida where she worked as a waitress. Her goal throughout the entire project was to manage enough money to pay a second month of rent. Ehrenreich fails at her first job . Ehrenreich then explores Maine where she begins living in a motel. Ehrenreich gets hired as a housekeeper at a nursing home and a maid . By the end of her time in Maine, Ehrenreich exposes who she really is. Ehrenreich then explores her last state, Minnesota. Ehrenreich finds a job as a retail worker and begins doing fine but later begins hating her job. It is to complicated looking at Ehrenreich's success or failure of the whole project because one can not say what one feels about the whole book because it is to long especially because ones paper to write is to short. Criteria is important because it brings satisfaction and it helps create a final decision. Did Ehrenreich show great effort during her project and were her experiences realistic? Although Ehrenreich slightly failed at experiencing

Mrs. Harrison believes that black people have to earn the white people’s respect, trust, freedoms and equality. Mrs. Harrison says to Bob, “You mustn’t think in terms of trying to get even with them, you must accept whatever they do for you and try to prove yourself worthy to be entrusted with more” (52). She states that if black people work hard enough, the white people will reward them. She also wants the black community to wait for the white people to “give” them something better, to accept what the white people “do for them.” She compares the idea of black and white people equality to communism. She tells Bob that he needs to make himself worthy of respect. “You know yourself, Bob, a lot of our people are just not worthy, they just don’t deserve anymore than they’re getting” (52). These comments illustrate how class has a great influence on Mrs. Harrison’s point of view on race. Without having to work and being rich, she is ignorant of the racial discrimination that a day to day skilled worker of Bob’s color has to go through. Like her daughter Alice, Mrs. Harrison has been given special treatment by the white people for her lighter skin, and her social and economic class.

Throughout Ehrenreich’s writing, she developed her essay around the story of her going undercover as a minimum wage worker to understand what the lifestyle of a low wage income is like for people that live in poverty. Some details she included were her work environments, the judgemental customers, her relationships with the other employees, and her overall experience as a server. Ehrenreich included how gross her work environment at Jerry’s

Ehrenreich use of descriptions allows people of upper and middle class able to understand that earning a minimum wage is not living wage to survive in life leaving them without having any doubt that every person in the U.S should have equal opportunity when it comes to job wages. Ehrenreich put away her old life to test an experiment showing the personal struggles that she went through while trying to live on a minimum wage salary. She uses descriptions and examples of all the bad experiences that she encountered as having two jobs in order to live a stable life. This is shown in her words “For six to eight hours in a row, you never sit except to pee” (Ehrenreich 1). She describes how she worked six to eight hours without stopping for break

She doesn’t mind speaking her thoughts this is the case when she approaches the owner of her local grocery store for being racist by not allowing her husband to purchase items which she buys all the time. She