About book Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2002)
DISCLAIMER: This is my rant on the “classic Marxist rant” by Barbara Ehrenreich in the form of Nickel and Dimed. REALLY. I am not saying that we should not help poor people. I am mostly just annoyed by the author. If my political ranting will bother you, please don't read this. AND if you do, you are not allowed to think less of me. You may disagree, but know that I actually am a nice, caring, empathetic person. :) Unfortunately, Ehrenreich did not present much shocking or new information in her book. Even if she had, her Marxist cynicism and naive hypocrisy overshadowed her message. Of course, if anyone had been placed in such a situation, she would have been appalled by the tremendous difficulty of the way the poor are forced to live. But Ehrenreich’s obnoxious inclination to think anyone in a managerial position is malicious and purposefully cruel was overbearing. The managers were not in a much better position than those under them, and they have to do a “meaningless” job as well. She even began realizing that she was becoming uncontrollably irate at any moment’s notice. How can she criticize others for acting the exact way she felt because of the degrading circumstances they share? Not to mention, she pretty much had been acting this prejudiced way before this epiphany, but earlier she directed it at those in higher positions instead of her equals. Also, let’s go into her Communist ideals (even though she sort of denied being a Marxist, she quoted him a few times and paraphrased Mao’s words). She is advocating (by implication) a system way worse than the Goliath that is Wal-Mart. She finds it utterly appalling that people have some of their basic rights taken away by agreeing to work for certain companies. (By the way, have you ever worked for a corporation? That's what they do.) However, you have absolutely no rights in a Communist society. Remember Animal Farm? After a while, the pigs look exactly like the human men they had replaced in their rebellion. Plus, she’s complaining about the rich 20% at the top and wanting to help the poor 20% on the bottom, completely ignoring the 60% in between. She just wants to replace the top with the bottom, and then where would we be? Bingo! The same place. Ehrenreich means basically an “inherited kingdom.” Ironic that she feels that the poor should just naturally inherit the country. She wants her kingdom to be like the socialist/communist world because she feels that the United States will not take care of the proletariat. But I don’t know if 80% should give up their rights so that the 20% can rule (oh, and kill everyone else in the process--that's what Communists do).As far as her complaints about “rights” are concerned, let’s look at her previous life. She is UPPER middle class, which is not nearly the same as the average American. Her job is as a journalist, free-lance, I believe. So, she does not have the average structured job, and her job is to speak her mind and say whatever she wants however she wants. Of course she’s going to be upset that she can’t curse in front of customers. Some customers may be offended by such language, but she can’t see that; she only knows that she wants to say the f-word on the job and she can’t. Heaven forbid. She seemed to be shocked by the fact that her employers didn’t want her standing around talking on the job either. I understand that we should allow people to be human and enjoy working with each other. I like to see employees joke with each other and get along, but I don’t like to need help and can’t get any because some “associates” are standing around talking and ignoring their customers. I don't agree with the Wal-Mart "time theft" idea, but she does need to realize she's at work.I feel that the story would have been much more compelling and upsetting if she had just followed a few of the women with whom she worked. Her story just wasn’t interesting. I certainly don’t mean to make light of or ignore such a serious subject, but it could have been done so much better.(Have you seen Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days where he and his girlfriend REALLY live below the poverty line? Now, that's worth seeing.) Also, I would have been interested (and I think it would really have been fair) to give statistics on those living below the poverty line who are on welfare, are illegal immigrants (if they were included), have mental illnesses, etc. Or, I would like to know if that 20% of working poor is all exactly similar to the people has associated with. I just want a complete and honest picture either way so that I’m not wondering what it is. We need to take care of all the people, but we need to know the circumstances. Also, I know that most of the working poor are good, honest, hard-working people, but we know that there are still many who abuse the system, and the way Ehrenreich talks, you’d think that the only ones abusing the system were the managers (“classic Marxist” attitude). Instead of reading her book, maybe some of the people (managers) should read The Female Advantage and learn some managing skills. :)I also would like to know how raising the minimum wage affects the economy. If it helps fix this problem, great. But it would seem that if we raise the minimum wage, then prices will start going up. I’m no economist, so I wouldn’t know, but I would have liked more information about how to help the problem instead of her ideas about getting thrown in prison for protesting. I will admit that I probably have some prejudice attitudes that she addresses in her book, but I don’t feel that she really proved her point. Eating in a healthier manner and not smoking or drinking are not going to solve the poor’s problems, but when people are counting pennies, every one counts. Ehrenreich said that she never got to the point of eating lentil soup, but if she had, she would have saved money (and it would have been healthier). It seems that, just like everyone else, convenience takes precedence over everything else. In the end, the condition of the working poor is an important issue that we all need to work on and try to find more solutions for. I just don’t agree with the way she thinks and her attitudes about some of the things that she found. This book does have some redeeming qualities, but as I said, she got in the way.
Ehrenreich, a woman who has a Ph.D., goes "undercover" working low-paying jobs to see if one can earn a living with such work in America.One can't.She tries to make ends meet on the following jobs: waitressing, hotel housekeeping, Maid Service, nursing-home attendant, and Wal-Mart employee, often working two jobs at a time.This shocking exposé reveals the horrific conditions that the "working poor" toil under. Well, at least they're shocking to someone who's never had to struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table.There's always this niggling knowledge that Ehrenreich can pick up and leave at any time - that this is still an experiment to her. Of course, people who work two minimum-wage jobs and live out of their car do not have this luxury. However, I feel like Ehrenreich realizes this and is respectful of it, not that she's looking down on the poor or "slumming it." There's no way, for example, to pretend to be a waitress: the food either gets to the table or not. People know me as a waitress, a cleaning person, a nursing home aide, or a retail clerk not because I acted like one but because that's what I was, at least for the time I was with them.This book could be brutal and very depressing. Luckily for the reader, Ehrenreich has a wonderful sense of humor that she employs to great effect - and this takes some of the edge off of the horrible things she is relating.There were some folks - mainly managers and bosses - who I wanted to punch in the face after reading this. It's obscene what some corporations get away with and how greatly they take advantage of and exploit their workers.Of course, people in third-world countries probably think the life Ehrenreich is describing is 'easy living.' So it's all relative, I guess.Ehrenreich frequently employed fantasies and daydreams to get her through the hell of her daily life during this time period. For example, when she was a waitress: Sometimes I play with the fantasy that I am a princess who, in penance for some tiny transgression, has undertaken to feed each of her subjects by hand. Or when she is a maid, she thinks about some rich people who pay to go to monasteries and do labor to 'cleanse their soul.'But she almost breaks when she sees people in real, human suffering around her, and realizes she is helpless to do anything to ease their suffering. One of the most crushing scenes in the book is when a teammate maid that she works with breaks her ankle on the job and just keeps cleaning, hobbling around the house and refusing to go to the hospital because she can't afford not to work. It's heart-rending, and Ehrenreich goes through so many emotions, unsure of what to do - or even what she CAN do.There's a lot of this, but that section was the hardest to read about.Ehrenreich is stunned when she realizes that people who work two jobs and have zero luxuries are still in poverty and can't even afford food and shelter. I thought the book was amazing, and highly recommend it for everybody who is an American or lives in America. Or is interested in America. Whether you are nodding your head because you know what it's like to live in this kind of hell, or whether you - like Ehrenreich - are shocked and appalled by what is really going on with the poor in America - this book is a great read.This is definitely a book I will buy - I had post-it notes on almost every single page, and it was brimming with truth, humor, and emotion.P.S. She only touches briefly on sexual harassment, but let me add as a personal aside that there are thousands of women who just 'grin and bear it' and have no recourse but to tolerate this kind of crap on the job because they feel that they have no other choice. Despite what the media would have you believe, not many people care and certainly no one is going to rescue you or take you out of that situation. It is SO damaging and humiliating and degrading and tons of women are just stuck with these kind of working conditions.P.P.S. Again, Ehrenreich only briefly touches on this - but the food provided to the poor by food pantries is NOT fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy stuff. It really grates my cheese when people start hating on fat people of any class, but ESPECIALLY when they are poor people. When my friend (who is morbidly obese) was raising her five kids as a single mom and living on welfare, working two jobs and struggling every day to make ends meet went to the food pantry she was invariably presented with doughnuts, bread, cookies, refried beans, etc. etc. etc. That's just what was available/what was donated - and, like Ehrenreich mentions - many poor people do NOT have refrigerators or freezers to keep more perishable food fresh.The idea that my friend was a.) raising her 5 children, as a single mother b.) working, and c.) trying to educate herself in order to get a better job WHILE facing hatred, prejudice, and judgment for being obese just makes me BEYOND FURIOUS. Really so, so angry.Ehrenreich herself, being a thin woman, exhibits signs of fat-hatred in this book, ranting internally against "corpulent Minnesotans" and bemoaning fat people for being a burden on her and society. I didn't like this.Ehrenreich's thinness and how it helps her in this world is never mentioned, but let me tell you - I think it helped her A LOT and that things would have been vastly different if she were obese and looking for work/performing the same jobs. It would have been eviscerating.P.P.P.S. This is mentioned in passing a few times, but it is SUPER-IMPORTANT to remember that Ehrenreich is white and a native English speaker. She would be living on a lower level of service hell if these things were not true....Of course, if she HAD gone into all this stuff, the book would be about 500 pages and not a quick, fun read. And it's important that this read comes off as "quick and fun" because this is an important message that needs to be received by as many Americans as possible.
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I wanted to hate this book. I bought it with the intention of hating it. Overeducated liberal writer slumming it on minimum wage, to prove what? That minimum wage is not livable? Well who ever said it was? And looking at the reviews it’s clear this book is a Rorschach test for poverty, anyone poor enough to relate to the indignities she describes will invariable feel some resentment at the minimum wage martyr act, flagellating herself with your everyday life. And how easy it was for me especially to seethe with anger when the author repeatedly names my job alone as the one position she would simply not consider, no reason ever given, simply that working at the front desk of a hotel was out of the question, and what a shame as I guarantee that it would have provided innumerable opportunities for the sort of dead-end job self-abasement for which she was searching. Ironically I read this entire book at work over the past two days, on U of M graduation weekend, where more than any other time we are just overflowing with demanding self-satisfied yuppies, so needless to say I kept the cover faced down to avoid ironic pity smirks from smug assholes, in retrospect I should have flaunted the cover openly, hoping liberal guilt might bring in some tips. That the people who actually work these jobs will find Ehrenreich insulting, naïve, and condescending is a given. In the beginning I certainly did, but in the author’s defense at no time did she ever claim this was anything but an experiment, she never pretends to be anything she is not, not to the readers at least. So what’s the alternative then? Actual housekeepers and salesclerks rarely being offered book deals while lunching at French restaurants with editors, the alternative is this book doesn’t get written and this conversation doesn’t happen. Her goal of illustrating the vast income inequality and the nearly inescapable cycle of poverty is laudable and something I agree wholeheartedly with. In the end her failure is her reluctance to follow much of her thoughts to their logical conclusions; she constantly touches on these very powerful moments that ultimately are wasted because she fails to recognize them when they come. In the end I think the scathing reviewer comments at the author’s expense are misplaced. An enjoyable read but sadly it misses its mark quite often. What she does get right is how the criminalization of marijuana is a means of controlling the population. With the ubiquitous drug test favored by low wage employers geared solely towards marijuana, making one feel like a criminal over a little bit of herb, the result is dehumanizing applicants even before their first day. She routinely acknowledges that the only way she was able to fulfill the demands of these jobs is relying on the store good health built up over a lifetime of upper middle class living, not to mention starting out with a car and sum of money not available to her coworkers. She points out how any health or financial setbacks would ruin her completely. I would have liked to see more of a connection made between our demands for cheaper and cheaper goods and the cost paid by the working poor in America and beyond. And that the failure of public services in America to provide even the most basic standard of living are always paid for in the end by the cost of incarcerating more of our citizens than any western nation. A number of times she touches on the deep ontological angst that come from living in such insecurity, but as an outsider looking in fails to really capture its essence. And her assumptions that because she doesn’t see visible anger that people aren’t angry? They are. But simultaneously there is a real disconnect among the working poor who have been sold on the ‘American Dream’ fantasy and reality. The ugly result of people taking this myth too seriously are quite apparent in the most hideous aspects of the Republican Party for sure, but less obviously so in how the author had so thoroughly disassociated herself the working poor she is only one generation removed from. At the heart of this book is the impossibility of existing in such manner, but yet people do. People live their whole lives that way. I read a Chekov short story at the same time, of exiles coping with life in Siberia. One man is unable to deal with his losses and yet still makes one attempt after another to carve out a life for himself continually repeated his personal motto “Even in Siberia people live.” Another man gives up, asking for nothing and so wanting for nothing. At the end a judgment is made by a third character against the man who wants nothing, as it’s better to be miserable than to feel nothing. The story ends with everyone crying themselves to sleep. Ehrenreich should have read that story; it speaks more to the condition of the working poor than her book does. Even in America people live.
—Kristen
Once upon a time, I was a low-wage worker. I worked long hours in retail for too little pay. Even as a store manager, I made about $10,000 per year in the late Eighties. If I hadn't been able to live with my parents, I don't know how I could have been able to afford rent and childcare, much less food on what I made. Because I was working, I didn't qualify for anything like subsidized childcare or food stamps. The waiting list for subsidized housing was endless. Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America explores the world of low-wage workers in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. Surprisingly enough, Minnesota was the toughest place to get by. It sounded almost as bad as California. While I did find this book to be very readable and was compelled to keep turning the pages, I often found the author's attitude smug and condescending. Her introduction and conclusion were fairly inane and didn't offer any real insight or solutions other than the usual provided by those who neither struggle to keep businesses running with a modest profit nor are caught in the struggle of trying to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. She also didn't look at the feminist aspect of this. Now, I'm no big feminist, but even I can see that the big problem is that the low-paying jobs the author explored were ones traditionally held by women: waitressing, nursing home aide, maid, and retail worker. These jobs are not only low paying, they don't offer much room for advancement or leave them with much time or energy to pursue other options. I don't think she even noticed that she was surrounded with a lot of women and not very many men who weren't making it in America.
—Sandi
I think the entire point of this book was to 'prove' that minimum wage jobs by their very nature and pay scale CANNOT support people, even people with all the advantages she had (and none of the additional disadvantages the poor often have.)I don't see this book as even trying to be any kind of an exhaustive look at all the difficulties facing those truly living in poverty and attempting to get by.What I do see it as is an attempt to prove to middle-income Americans that even with all the benefits she has, even she cannot make it work under the current system, and thus neither would they.I studied poverty and social/welfare systems in university, although I found this book much later, and I have heard people actually using the following arguments to support their views of the Bootstrap theory:"Well, she would be able to make it work if she didn't have out of wedlock children / wasn't a teen mom" (-a child or children, -childcare costs) "Oh, well, he would be able to make it work if he controlled his addiction" (-an alcohol or drug addiction )"Well, she would be able to make it work if she took charge of her life and got out of that relationship" (-an abusive partner)"Oh, well, he would be able to make it work if he just took public transportation." (-lack of transportation)"Well, she would be able to make it work if she just learned English" (-English as a second language)"Well, it wouldn't be a problem, if he hadn't screwed up in the first place..." (-bad credit, -felony convictions, -homelessness etc.)"Oh, well, she would be able to make it work if she just got her GED / took classes." (-no high school diploma or GED, -lack of basic computer skills)and so on, ad nauseum.I think her book is very cogent if you read it for what it is - a lesson to all those smug folks out there who think that it is somehow the fault of the person living in poverty because they are not doing/whatever ENOUGH. Those attitudes are out there, all around us, and this book is a tiny way of showing them that those in this situation can never manage to do enough to 'bootstrap' their way out of it under the current system.
—Carolyn
