Summary Of Ehrenreich's Workout

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.

For this project, Ehrenreich had a car and use of emergency cash through her ATM card, but neither undermined her ability to take a critical look at poverty and the people who worked at minimum waged positions in this country. There were devised special rules for the experiment so that she could approach it as an unskilled worker, although she had a college degree and was a successful writer. None of Ehrenreich?s acquired skills could be used for job hunting. The majority of the time she adhered to the rules she set, and only deviated three times from the rules. The goal was to spend at least thirty days in each location to see if she could earn enough wages to pay the next month?s rent.

High turnover is something that goes hand in hand with low wage jobs, so companies are always looking for a workers replacement. Finally Ehrenreich is able to secure employment at a place she give the pseudonym, Hearthside. To help protect identies of companies and people she actually worked for and with, Ehrenreich decides to use fake names to achieve anonymity. Ehrenreich starts out at 2.43 an hour plus tips. One of the first things Ehrenreich notices is that the people around her are only working hard enough to get by. Because the managers will yell at anybody who is done with their work, and not doing something new, the workers seem to be happy with just working at a slow pace, doing just one job. Because the only reward for finishing early is being yelled at by a manager, that apparently spends his day doing nothing, there is no real bonus to go the extra mile. Due to this negative reinforcement, Ehrenreich notes that the restaurant is almost moving in counterproductive mode. With less being worked on, less is being accomplished, attributing to the overall sad appearance and low morale of the restaurant and its employees. The next problem Ehrenreich encounters is the constant berating handed out by her supervisor "Stu". Ehrenreich observes that due to this constant barrage of insults and degradations, workers are forced to feel like they are subhuman. Weekly the managers announce

An individual’s career does not define them as a person. The social worker (Welfare) makes Hester rub her tired shoulders from her everyday struggle from carrying the problems of society. However, she uses her unemployed social case for her husband 's and her sexual pleasure. The town’s Doctor engages sex with his most “neediest of cases” even though he knows most of Hester’s problems is because of sex and tells her he will soon have to remove her female parts. She is offered ineffectual help by her closest friend, Amiga Gringa, who only helps her to gain money for herself. Hesters past lover, Chili, who has gained wealth for himself and is believed to have become a new man. Again, abandons

She surprisingly turns down the higher paying job at Menard's and takes the job at Wal-Mart.

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 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 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.

Through the struggles of stabilizing two jobs at once while searching for a temporary home, Ehrenreich displayed the frustration of sticking to her three guidelines in her experiment: she cannot go hungry, be homeless, or ignore the skills she learned through her education and past work experiences. She struggled to find jobs that provided more than minimum-wage incomes in

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 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

Most of Ehrenreich’s co-workers did not have a means of transportation other then public transportation, or their transportation was their place of residency. Most lived in flophouses, shared rooms, trailers, or hotel rooms. She also gave herself the luxury of being able to dip into her own money that was saved up from her “real” job. She makes a friend with one of her co-workers, Gail from the Hearthside, and at the end of chapter one, after she leaves her job, she gives Gail her keys to her apartment so she could move out of her flophouse that she pays $250 a week that she has been sharing with someone. Like she said she was not trying to recreate poverty, but just experience it. She would not let herself suffer by any means. She even went home to pick up cd’s and drink a bottle of wine after work.

Urban, working class U.S. citizens are similar to the lions by the fact that they work in order to support themselves and their families. However, the work that they do does not always pay enough to live comfortably. Ehrenreich, a journalist, set out to discover if it was possible to survive economically with a low paying job. Ehrenreich quickly found out that it was extremely difficult because she was not making enough money, management treated their workers poorly, and it was psychologically demanding. The Lions, however, seemed to have a better experience with their jobs. The Lions management respected and cared for them to the point where they would pay for their time off and give them large amounts of tip money. Their pay was not enough

In her article, “I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave,” reporter Mac McClelland illustrates the dark underbelly of the online retail industry that goes unnoticed. While working undercover at a shipping warehouse, operated by what she refers to with the anonymous name “Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc.” (394) for the sake of legal liability, McClelland discovers the disturbing reality of a warehouse employee. After repeatedly telling the temporary staffing agency that she has never been to prison and confirming her literacy by recognizing popular album covers, she enters her new realm of employment. McClelland has to “Leave [her] pride and [her] personal life at the door” (397) of the warehouse if she wants to have any hope for success.