Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

I realize I'm nearly a decade late to the "party". The party being this book. Sonofa... However, the theme is still relevant, especially with the recent downturn in the economy and the high unemployment rate.

The author decides to go "undercover" to get the scoop on getting an entry level/minimum wage job and try to set up a household on the wages from those jobs alone. She tried this in different regions of the country (Key West, FLA., Maine, Minnesota). She tried different work; a maid, a waitress, a WALMART employee. (That takes balls.)

She finds the work often physically draining, sometimes demeaning, and the pay... not worth a damn. She discovers that a trip to the doctor will break your budget. She also found trying to set up a "home" was a challenge, especially finding a home that she felt safe in.

All of this makes me understand, rather sadly, why people decide to become strippers and pimps. I know I'd rather make my money by gyrating in some perverts face a few hours a night rather than work for Walmart. (Who wouldn't?!?!)

As for pimpin'? Well, it ain't easy, but it has to pay better than $7 an hour.

This was not an eye opener for me, having worked minimum wage jobs in the past and knowing people who are still doing that.

Her core message was a good one, but I got irritated with her sometimes smug attitude about this was not her real life and also how highly educated she was.

Mam z tą książką problem, a właściwie mam problem z autorką. To reportaż wcieleniowy, czyli sytuacja kiedy reporterka by zdobyć informacje na jakiś temat zmienia swoją tożsamość by wejść w sam środek jakiejs społeczności, grupy, etc. Spotykam się z takim rodzajem dziennikarstwa po raz drugi (a moze trzeci?), pierwszym bardzo udanym był „Przyszło nam tu żyć. Reportaże z Rosji” Jeleny Kostiuczenko, przy którym ani przez chwilę nie czułam zażenowania czy niestosowności. A u Ehrenreich było mi niewygodnie i niezręcznie co chwile.
Jest pierwsza dekada lat dwutysięcznych, autorka zatrudnia się jako kelnerka, sprzątaczka, a potem sprzedawczyni w różnych miejscach w Stanach, by dowiedzieć się jak sie żyje za najniższe stawki, i czy w ogóle da się za nie godnie przeżyć. Oczywiście ukrywa swoją tożsamość przed pracodawcami czy współpracownikami (no chyba, że już po zwolnieniu postanawia odkryć karty przed kolegą/koleżanką i wyjawić, że wcale nie jest biedna i to tylko eksperyment). Można się zastawiać nad etyką takiego działania czy rzetelnością doświadczeń, bo autorka wie, że cokolwiek się stanie zawsze może wrócić do dawnego życia. I ok, taki jest zamysł książki i przyjęty rodzaj antropologii - sięgając po nią wiedziałam za co sie zabieram. Ale niestety za dużo tu autorki a za mało merytorycznej wiedzy o gospodarce, prawie pracy, programach pomocowych, etc. I dla mnie zdecydowanie za dużo poczucia humoru (!), klasizmu i wzgardy, i tego wiecznego zdziwienia w stylu „i wy tu tak żyjecie?”.
„Jak ubogie są moje współpracownice? Sam fakt, że ktoś pracuje w charakterze sprzątaczki, można prima facie uznać za dowód desperacji, a przynajmniej skutek błędów i rozczarowań”.
I oczywiście ukazanie perspektywy osób, którym nie starcza na godne życie, nie dlatego, że są leniami, ale dlatego, że system jest jaki jest, jest niezwykle cenne. Niemniej mnie podczas czytania coś uwierało, nieodpowiały mi niektóre reakcje autorki czy wypowiedzi. I na koniec sama nie wiem co mam o niej myśleć

In this book, the author moves to three different cities, pretends to be a homemaker re-entering the work force, and tries to survive on minimum wage jobs. It's not easy. She works as a waitress, at a nursing home, as a cleaning lady, and at Walmart. She lives in motel rooms and eats fast food when she has no where to cook.

I really enjoyed this book, partially because it was like a serious flashback to my own life. I went with Dale to South Carolina for 4 months in the fall of, I don't know, probably 2005, when he had a military school to attend. We lived in a hotel room the entire time. I had my college degree, but due to the brevity of our residency, I applied for low end jobs (including Walmart, a process she describes) and worked a couple - one as a cleaning lady, just like in this book - and got to know a cleaning woman at our hotel very well. (She helped me hide my cat in my room from management. :-))

That fall, I was working for pennies, cleaning people's pee off of the walls, and sweeping up dead cockroaches from behind their toilets. The managers at the apartment complexes where I cleaned treated me a certain way. They seemed to look down on me, the lowly cleaning lady. It didn't really bother me. I was pretty sure I was way better than them in my head.

A mere six months later I was back in Utah, working a high end sales job that I kind of accidentally plopped into. It turned out to be a perfect fit for me, and I began making obscene amounts of money. (Seriously, obscene, like more than brain surgeons get paid.)

Side note: I still can't believe they paid me as much as they did because, 1. I just sat and played games on my cell phone all day while talking on the phone to clients, and 2. I so would have stayed and done the same job for $75,000 a year. Or $50,000. Or less. Anything was a big step up for
a girl who was a cleaning lady 2 months earlier!

Anyways, after two years at that job, being rewarded, respected, and getting plaques on the wall in honor of moi, I turned in my high six figure income to be a stay at home mom. Now I have no income, no awards, no high bonuses, and nothing to show for my work other than the silliest monkey of a child on earth. (Which is way better compensation, anyways.)

I have never thought so much about my experience of going from low wage, to high wage, to no wage in such a short period of time before. I think I should write a book about it. I have so much to say!

Anyways, I enjoyed almost the whole book here, until the end where the author did her evaluation about how we should become a socialist country. Okay, so she didn't exactly say that, but I bet she is voting for Barak Obama, if you know what I mean.

Here is why I think she was a little overdramatic:

1. Your first few weeks at a job are always the toughest. I remember that from the cleaning job, the day I was given a hideously dirty 3 bedroom to clean. I almost sat on the floor and cried, realizing that just scrubbing the floor in the utility closet could take hours alone, and I was paid per apartment, not hourly. But I also remember the first couple months of my sales job being super stressful, in a different way. I came home one evening and crumpled to the floor of my pantry, sobbing. I just could only handle the pressure of the job so long before I lost it. You get used to your jobs after awhile though, and it doesn't phase you anymore. It happens no matter what, I think, you just can't expect it to happen in the first few weeks, or even months.

2. You always start at the very lowest rung on the ladder of success. It sucks, because everyone steps on your head and drops stuff on you. But typically, if you work hard, you will move UP that ladder and get to step on other people instead. Stepping on people is better than being stepped on. You just have to stick around more than a few weeks to get that opportunity.

3. You can be happy in any job. It's all attitude! For reals. I have worked sucky jobs. SUCKY SUCKY SUCKY jobs. And I was happy, generally.

One other comment section: I think I forgot to put this somewhere in my review, but I don't remember where I was going to say it. So it's just an end note now:

I got to know the cleaning ladies at the hotel I lived in. Particularly, I became friends with a black lady named Delilah Green. She helped me keep my adopted kitten Romeo (now a grown up cat) under wraps from the evil management who banned pets in the room. She had one grown daughter and a granddaughter who lived in Florida. She and her boyfriend and some of his family shared an apartment across town, and she'd ride the bus in. Occasionally I would give her a ride home when she missed the bus, and I got to see where she lived. She'd been a drug addict for years, until she sobered up and found Jesus about two years prior. She was working hard, and working her way back into a real life. Other soldiers from Dale's class didn't like her, and swore she
was stealing their beer from their fridges. It ticked me off. They were drunk at 3 AM enough for me to be pretty well aware of who was drinking their alcohol.

Anyways, whenever I read about these poor working class blue collar women, I picture my friend Delilah. Granted, she had a lot to learn. I gave her a $50 tip and she told me that she used it to buy food and beer for her old druggie friend who had just got out of jail. She was thrilled to be able to help someone, but I was hoping not to have my tip go to buy a prison reject alcohol. My point is, the people who are in poverty often have a reason. They are in their own way. Maybe they use drugs, or they sleep with lots of different men, unprotected, and not married to any of them. Surprise, they get four kids with no dads to help support them. I KNOW this is not the case with every welfare recipient or low wage worker, but often there is blame they need to shoulder. I liked that Delilah took responsibility for what had happened to her, and was grateful for a second chance.

I would really like to read a book that tells the other side of this argument, not just her socialist-esque opinion. It has me thinking a lot.

PS. Finally, I would like to say the following: there were approximately 579 other things that I read in this book that made me think, "Oh wow - I totally want to comment on that in my review on goodreads.com". This was a very brief (okay, actually it is super long and only my sister will probably read the whole thing, but brief in comparison to what I was THINKING about), and random (because it's what popped into my head while I was typing tonight) discussion of my feelings on this book. Does anyone want to join a book club and read this book then discuss it with me? Please please please? For reals, I just had to stop typing because my review got too long, but this is a fascinating topic, and very interesting book that you can't put down.

For the most part, this is a really eye-opening read. It describes an experiement by journalist Barbara Ehrenreich where she takes a series of minimum wage jobs (waitress, hotel maid, housekeeper, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart employee) and tries to survive on the earnings from those jobs. "Surviving," it turns out, means living in crappy hotels and eating fast food while trying to keep two jobs. Her descriptions of the dirty secrets of the jobs she takes are really interesting - when she cleans houses, she describes how the maids essentially just wipe away dirt without actually bothering to disinfect surfaces - but I'll be honest, I was a little disappointed by how few explosive behind-the-scenes revelations she gives her readers. Also, she's really reluctant to tell exactly which restaurant, maid service, hotel chain, and nursing home she was employed by, although she had no trouble name-dropping when it came time to work for Wal-Mart. I wanted to know exactly which restaurant that was "part of a well-known national chain" (called "Jerry's" in Ehrenreich's book) makes servers prepare salad with their bare hands and usually doesn't have soap in the employee bathrooms. As muckrakers go, Ehrenreich is a bit of a wimp.
She also can't seem to shake the whole "I Am A Fearless And Noble Journalist Who Sacrifices Everything FOR THE PEOPLE" mindset she starts out with. When she quits each minimum-wage job to move on to the next one, she makes sure to tell her fellow employees that she's (gasp!) NOT actually a divorced woman with no college education, she's actually a JOURNALIST with a PHD who's INVESTIGATING THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOR A BOOK!!!
Ehrenreich is clearly expecting her fellow employees to be shocked and awed by her espionage skills and applaud her for pretending to be One Of Them so she can write a best-selling tell-all, but that doesn't happen. Every single time Ehrenreich reveals her true identity, the response is an overwhelming, "Um...good for you?"
And it is hilarious.

Read for: Surviving the American Dream

update: If you are in any doubt as to the facts of how things are for the enormous underclass in the US who makes the profits for Starbucks and Amazon and the rest, try this 'game' and make the daily confronting decisions to try to survive a month: http://playspent.org/

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Consider that this horrifying indictment of American capitalism was published in 2002, well before the dehumanising 'gig' platforms ripped through whole industries, destroying the conditions, such as they were, of their workers. Consider the setting is prosperity, with more jobs (if they can be called such) available than human beings to fill them.

This book generated much interest in the US - Ehrenreich suggests this is because 'one of us', nice white people, faked it for the story. You should read in conjunction with this, Hand to Mouth which is the the same story, but it isn't a story, it's the life of a bottom of the pond worker. Ehrenreich provides a foreword.

For more on Nickel and Dimed start with Wiki.

For an on the ground response along the lines of 'Mr Walmart's nice' see Life at Wal-Mart.

And for a you-might-roll-your-eyes-too 'I did what she did and it was super easy, barely an inconvenience, well on my way to riches in no time at all. Months even' sort of article, there is  this.

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, occasionally funny read. And it's important that this read comes off as "quick and sometimes funny" because this is an important message that needs to be received by as many Americans as possible. And non-Americans, for that matter.



RE-READ: 01/20/2016
Everyone needs to read this. So relevant, so important.

I wanted to like this book. I thought the premise was fantastic. But overall, as someone who actually has lived on minimum wage (even supporting a child on minimum wage back when minimum wage was scary low), this book comes up short in several ways.

First of all, Barbara Ehrenreich has a horribly privileged, ivory tower view of how poor people must live. While she does talk to some people who are scraping by, she assumes the majority of poor people make the same crummy decisions as the few to whom she spoke.

Throughout her anthropologic immersion into semi-poverty, she makes choices that the savvy poor (of whom there are many!) would just never make. She eats out instead of picking up beans and rice at the bulk section of the supermarket. She rents a pay-by-the-week hotel instead of asking around for a roommate. It's true that people do make these choices, but the only folks I know in my town who chose the roach motel route were also doing meth or had lousy rental references from too many parties or property damage.

I just think this could've been done much, much better, and it was disappointing. It's sort of like the movie Crash, which I also disliked intensely. A book (or movie) with a message shouldn't bash you over the head with the message. It doesn't need to be over the top to make a point, which can actually turn the reader (viewer) off enough that the message is lost.