Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Ge...
Barbara Ehrenreich is a successful author of several books who lives in an upscale area near Key West, Florida. She has a Ph.D. in Biology and makes a living from writing books and attending speaking engagements.
In 1998, Ehrenreich decided that she wanted to see what life was like on the other side. She was accustomed to living a life of luxury, with no worries about food, housing, shelter, or medical care. But she was curious about the plight of the less fortunate. She could have just conducted a study on the issue, but that wouldn’t give her the “feel” that she was looking for. She decided that the only way to really know what the working poor have to deal with, in their day- to- day fight for survival, was to become one of them. And that’s the premise for this book, Nickel and Dimed. It follows Barbara Ehrenreich’s journey from Key West, to Portland Maine, to Minneapolis, as she works menial jobs and fights with every ounce of energy to squeeze out a decent living.
Waiting Tables in South Florida:
To begin her adventure into the world of low- paying employment, Ehrenreich accepts a position close to home, working as a waitress. When she applied for this job (and others) she excluded her Ph.D. and her professional job experience from her resume, because potential employers would likely think she was washed up and hopeless, having a doctorate and applying for such low- wage jobs. She accepted the job, and began her new career waiting tables for a low base- wage, plus tips. During the peak tourist season, wages were pretty good, but they dropped off when the tourists started to leave town.
Waitressing proved to be a tiring, thankless job. To hear Ehrenreich describe her experience in this book, you would think that she was working in a mental ward. She doesn’t have many nice things to say about her co- workers, and even worse things to say about the management. She felt that her fellow workers were all dysfunctional and in need of counseling and other professional mental health services. She doesn’t name any exceptions to this. In her opinion, everyone working in this restaurant had something wrong with him/her.
Scrubbing Floors:
After the restaurant experience, Ehrenreich headed north to Portland, Maine to begin stage II of her experiment. She takes a brief stint, working at a nursing home, and then plunges full- time into the world of maid services. The pay isn’t that great- only about $7.00 and hour- but at least it’s a job that involves getting up and moving around.
Working in maid service really takes its toll on the body, both mentally and physically. Ehrenreich spends her day bending, squatting, reaching, sitting, and standing as she strives to get to the hard to reach places where dirt and grime like to hide. She can feel the aches and pains each day, and she keeps a supply of aspirin handy to help cope with the fatigue. She feels ok about her co- workers, but isn’t too fond of the boss or the clientele whose houses she cleans. The boss seems too abrasive and lacking in warmth, and the owners of the homes seem very condescending toward the maids, treating them like lower life- forms.
Barely able to scrape by, Ehrenreich is forced to seek out some help from a charity. She is given a box of food, and sent on her way. Food, though, doesn’t seem to be the main problem. The biggest drain on finances (here, and everyplace she goes) is the high cost of paying rent. With rents ranging from $500 to $650 per month, it takes more than two weeks pay to keep the landlord from issuing an eviction notice.
Twin City Retailing:
On the next stop along her journey, Ehrenreich winds up in Minneapolis- St. Paul, Minnesota. She begins her usual task of finding a place to live, and hunting for a job. She has an opportunity to work for a home supply store (similar to Home Depot), but turns it down in favor of working at Wal- Mart, the prototype of the modern- day retail establishment. Wal- Mart pays less than the home supply store (and Barbara later admits that she should have taken the higher- paying job), but it has more appeal because of its familiarity with the general public.
The Wal- Mart experience proves to be so- so. At the beginning, Ehrenreich is offended that she must take a drug test as a condition of employment. This is an invasion of privacy, and a humiliation, to be forced to give a urine sample, just to work at Wal- Mart. But there’s not really any way around this, so she grudgingly gives in and fills her cup with pee.
Working at a store proves to be too controlling to Ehrenreich. She doesn’t like the constant reminders to keep busy; the strictness on taking breaks; and the silly rules against cussing and gossip. She starts to wonder how people are able to tolerate this, day after day, year after year. She also doesn’t like the mundane, routine work, either. There’s really nothing interesting or spontaneous about retailing. Every day, it’s the same thing: place clothing back on the rack, sweep floors, arrange things on the rack to look nice, etc. At least with restaurant and maid service work, there was an element of uncertainty. You never knew what interesting people you might run into, when you serve food or walk into a mansion to clean. But in retailing, there isn’t much in the way of social interaction or spontaneity. It was just the same old thing, day after day.
How was the Experience?:
The author spends the final part of the book summarizing her two- year experimental journey into the life of the working poor. She shows the actual wages that she made, at each job, along with the living expenses. The margin of comfort was quite lean, indeed. With each job, her take- home pay, minus expenses, left her with fewer than 10 dollars per week for saving. This shows why many people who work in these types of jobs are forced to get a second job, part- time, if they have any hope of climbing up the social ladder.
Ehrenreich spends some time talking about statistics relating to the plight of the poor, and how these conditions have not changed much over the past two decades. She notes how physically demanding the jobs were, and how they all demanded a certain amount of skill, even though these jobs are commonly referred to as “unskilled labor”. She feels that her performance was pretty good overall, and she does admit to making a few mistakes (like turning down the higher- paying job, in favor of Wal- Mart). She gives herself and overall grade of “B” to “B+” for her own job performance.
Final Thoughts:
This book caught my attention when I was looking at the Amazon.com best seller list. I read the premise of the book, and it sounded like it would be a very interesting read. I wasn’t familiar with the author, but that didn’t matter. The book sounded like it would be a great true- life adventure, the kind of undertaking that I wouldn’t mind doing myself.
After reading just a few pages, though, I quickly discovered that Ehrenreich intended this book as more than just an adventure. It was obvious that she had a political agenda to share. Ordinarily, I like to read political books, but when I decided to read this text, I thought it was going to be non- political in nature. My mind was set on reading a genuine attempt by an upper- class mogul to adapt and survive after being thrust into the ranks of the working poor. So, when it turned out to be politically biased, I was a little disappointed.
To give you an idea of the author’s political motives, consider some of things she says, when she’s working as a maid. At one assignment, she starts looking over some book titles that the client has on open display, and she says “at the low end of the literacy spectrum, which is where most of our clients dwell, I find Grisham and Limbaugh”. Then, on another occasion, the other maids are going over the next client’s “hot buttons” (things they expect to be very clean) and studying ways to make sure that these sensitive areas are kept spic and span. Ehrenreich points out that the typical hot buttons are “baseboards, windowsills, and ceiling fans- never, of course, poverty, racism, or global warming”.
Ehrenreich makes some valid points, but much of what she says tends to be exaggerated. I don’t know if her exaggerations are motivated by politics, or if her judgment is possibly a little clouded because she has never experienced anything like this before, which makes everything seem far worse than it really is. Take, for instance, her tenure as a waitress. According to her, everyone working in this restaurant had something wrong with them, either socially, financially, mentally, or all three. Is this an accurate reflection of restaurant employees as a whole? No, it isn’t. I worked in a Chinese restaurant for about six months once, as a bartender. There were about 15 waiters and waitresses, cooks, greeting person, etc. Everyone seemed pretty content with the job, mainly because of the tips. I made between $10 and $20 an hour, mixing drinks, and the waiters earned a similar wage. The only people who seemed to have problems were the greeter (probably because he didn’t make tips) and a certain waiter who was Chinese and was struggling to learn English. Other than those two, everyone seemed to be content with what they were doing. Not blissfully happy, but content nonetheless. They were not a bunch of "dysfunctional freaks with crooked, yellowing teeth", like Ehrenreich observed. This makes me question the authors motives. Did she misperceive that everyone was unhappy because she compared her fellow workers to her more affluent associates that she normally works with? Or, did she intentionally exaggerate her claims, to further her political agenda? She made similar negative comments about the other jobs that she held, too. I can’t really comment on those other experiences, because I have never worked in a store, maid service, or nursing home. But I can speak for employees in a sit- down restaurant, and I can tell you that her depiction of these people is not the norm.
Mandatory drug testing is wrong, and Ehrenreich is correct when she points out that it’s embarrassing and a violation of the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches. But her explanation as to why employers have drug tests is false. She tries to say that employers like Wal- Mart implement these tests as a way to humiliate and control low- wage employees. The fact is that drug testing is commonplace in all types of employment including high- wage occupations as well as low- wage. Also, these drug tests are kept in place, in part, because of government subsidies, in the form of tax- incentives that encourage employers to keep administering them. Drug tests accomplish next to nothing, because most "hard" drugs leave the system in a few days anyway. So, once an addict passes the test, he/she can safely resume using drugs because companies usually don't test again (they tell you that they might test you again at any time, to try to keep people in line, but I can't think of a single instance where a co- worker has been randomly tested). Marijuana stays in the system the longest, and that's usually the drug that is found, when a person is busted. In Ehrenreich's opinion, this is another bias against the poor.
Another thing that Ehrenreich conveniently overlooks is the problem of paying certain taxes, and its impact on the poor. Low wage- earners don’t pay much in Federal tax, but they do pay a significant amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes. Using her own example, when she was working in Key West, she earned $1,039 in after- tax pay. Out of this money, she had to pay $500 for rent and $517 for basic living expenses like food, gas, laundry, and utilities. This left her only $22 per month, for saving or for unexpected expenses. Considering that she made $1,300 in gross pay, if Social Security and Medicare taxes were eliminated, her tax savings would be $198.90 (adding together the employee and employer shares of these taxes) per month, which would increase her safety margin from $22 to $220.90. With a margin at this level, her existence would have been much more comfortable. She fails to point this out, either because she is unaware, or (more than likely) because it would work against her political agenda of government intervention, if she admitted this.
Aside from the obvious political leanings, I liked this book. It’s 221 pages long, but it’s a very quick read. The cover price is listed at $23.00, but you can get a copy for much less than this, through most any on- line bookstore.
Barbara Ehrenreich is a brave and adventurous soul to partake in this type of experiment. Her investigation into the real world of the working poor is interesting and it provides some powerful insight into the unique problems that these people face every day as they serve food, scrub floors, and fold clothing in their efforts to survive the rat race.
Subscribe to More Reviews on Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America Get the RSS Feed: - Add to My Yahoo!: - Add to Google Homepage:
Subscribe to Bryan_Carey's Reviews: Get the RSS Feed: - Add to My Yahoo!: - Add to Google Homepage:
Muze: Copyright 1995 - 2008 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2008 Shopping.com, Inc.