So, the author got paid to wait tables in Florida, clean homes in Maine, and organize clothes at Wal-Mart in Minnesota. All right, all of that is completely believable. What's difficult to comprehend is that she also gets paid to write books.

She makes a lot of great points, but the style she does it with is totally condescending. She's so pleased with her own concept that she cannot help but remind readers at least every ten or so pages that she's actually very highly educated. "You might think that the tasks of cleaning a house would be easy for someone with a Phd . . ." Oh really now, would I? She thinks this is some grand undercover scheme and that she's some clever spy and is so excited with her own little game because she really does believe that she is somehow better than the other people working in low wage jobs. "It's so difficult to believe that these people don't realize I'm actually educated and upper-class." The part about "Barbara" versus her mean lower-class Wal-Mart alter-ego "Barb" is outright offensive. "I'm really a better person than this." Okay Barbara, just keep telling yourself that. It's liberal elitism at its most annoying.

I want someone else to write this book with all the same points about worker justice, except the new version of this book needs to also be well-written in addition to making a bunch of good points.

After I originally wrote this review in 2008, I spent nearly the entire next decade working in employment services helping individuals with barriers to employment (disabilities, mental illness, felonies) find and keep jobs. Viewed in the light of that experience, I find this book even more outrageous. Misguided and offensive, her little social experiment has no basis in reality.
Author Barb Ehrenreich's (as in Third Reich) personal politics seem to lie somewhere on the spectrum between Chairman Mao and Charlie Manson. She truly was born too late, missing equally a career dragging rich people from their homes and sending them to prison for no reason, or being a cult follower and writing "rich pig" in blood on the freshly painted doors of a California mansion. How on earth did this steaming pile of lunatic hypocrisy ever get published? Unless the publisher read it and instantly feared crucifixion from the feel-good people. You know, white Liberals, like the author herself. Her White Liberal Guilt is the size and whiteness of the mariner's albatross. But she lives in Key West, and not in a tar paper shack on the beach. Yet, during her saintly sojourn as a maid, actually berates those who have had the unmitigated gall to escape poverty and live like Rich People. That bothered me a lot. She pokes fun at and analyzes their books. Who the fuck does this twat think she is, pardon my French??? In the course of the book, she manages to make fun of Christians and Christ Himself, rich people, Wal-Mart shoppers, Wal-Mart employees, Latinos, the elderly, and a person in a wheelchair. She openly calls things like Revivals and people-watching the poor her "entertainment". She's a complete and utter moron, stating she doesn't care if her coworkers get high in the parking lot at work, or if they steal. Wow. Hopefully, the person doing your lab test to see if you have cancer isn't tweaked, Barb. Or the pilot of your next plane. She thinks quite highly of herself, noting that when asking a sensitive question of a person from Maine she "takes into account the deep reserve of rural Mainers, as explained to me by a sociologist acquaintance". Kinda like Margaret Mead in Papua, New Guinea. Are these people a sub-species to her? She's a pro-smoking Atheist with a savior complex. She's a wacko, mistakenly believing that low-wage workers are all there by the Fickle Finger of Fate. No, some are there because of Felonies. Or horrifically stupid choices. Or Saying Yes to Drugs. None of this is ever mentioned. She blanketly assumes all workers (Of the World, Unite)are touched by some higher being, but doesn't believe in one. She thinks her presence is a gift to them, a gift of, of.. Agape! Which is pure love. Not like agave, from which you get pure tequila. And is really love, not to mention a better gift. I just felt bad that at the end, she didn't get to mow down a Czar's children and thus make the world a better place for all those Wal-Mart employees.

Natuurlijk is het een beetje gek dat een hoogopgeleide vrouw gaat doen alsof ze arm is om er een boek over te schrijven. Ze is niet echt arm, en het lijkt misschien alsof ze het doet voor aandacht, alsof het voor haar een uitstapje is.
Toch denk ik dat ze iets iets goeds heeft gedaan. Het boek gaat niet zozeer om haar, als wel om de mensen die ze ontmoet, de mensen die door haar een gezicht krijgen. De verhalen van de serveersters, schoonmakers en winkelmedewerkers. Zoals ze zelf ook schetst, zie je deze mensen niet vaak als je niet zelf ook zulk werk doet.
Tijdens mijn studie heb ik altijd ik de horeca gewerkt. Ik deed een studie, al was het niet zeker dat ik beter betaald werk zou gaan vinden, en toen ik dit laatste jaar ging uitrekenen hoeveel uur ik zou moeten werken om enigszins rond te komen, zou dat een goede werkweek van 40 uur betekenen. Dit is in vergelijking met de verhalen uit dit boek een positief beeld, maar ik schrok er zelf wel nogal van. 40 uur andermans shit opruimen, mijn rug en voeten kapot maken. En dan kon ik net alle vaste lasten dekken en een keer iets leuks doen.
Het is ronduit bizar dat je zo hard en zoveel moet werken voor minimumloon zonder goede arbeidsvoorwaarden, zonder pauzes, zonder vakantiegeld, zonder vaste tijden en dagen.
Dit boek schetst een extremere situatie dan hier in Nederland, maar toch denk ik dat we steeds meer naar dit Amerikaanse systeem toe aan het gaan zijn en dat beangstigd me. Je kan al bijna niet meer rondkomen van het minimumloon, al helemaal niet als je een alleenstaande moeder met twee kinderen bent.. en het rare is dat ik het gevoel heb dat niemand er echt iets om geeft. Er zijn de laatste tijd wel stakingen in het onderwijs en een aantal jaar geleden onder schoonmakers, maar of er nou echt iets verandert? Ik weet het niet.
Alle politici en beleidsmakers zouden dit moeten lezen, zodat ze begrijpen dat het oneerlijk is en er hopelijk iets kan veranderen.

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.

I'm all for anyone who takes the time to shine a spotlight on the hellish existence of many folks with low-paying jobs. Therefore, I do appreciate Barbara's book. I spent many years in that life, and it's hard, very hard. At times she came across as being 'better' than the folks she was working with, which kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But, all in all, at least her book draws attention to the plight of the low-wage earner.

Minimum wage jobs in the U.S. suck ... big time ... especially waitressing at any family style restaurant. Enough said.

3 Stars = I'm glad I read it.

First, a confession: I met Barbara in New York City some years back and we amiably discussed her books, my classes, and her son, who was about to give a talk on his book on the Middle East. NICKLE AND DIMED is her masterpiece. For one year under disguise, she took a series of minimum wage jobs in the USA, from carton packer at Walmart to coffee and doughnuts waitress. Some of what she found is disturbing: her fellow co-workers were highly religious, mostly apolitical, and many anti-union. Yet none come across as unsympathetic nor does BE weave a political theory of the American working class out of her findings.

I'm going to step on some toes here and I apologize if I do. I AM one of the working poor that she talks about here and I DO believe in pulling myself up and making a better life for myself. But what I want to know is this. Unless you have been where I am, how can you comment? How can you also call her a bleeding heart? Is this a country for the haves only? And the have nots just have not? uhh uhh, I just don't understand. We got an election coming up and some folks are fussing about this country even entertaining about health care for EVERY American. So let me ask again, this country is not for the free and brave but for those who just have it?
Personally, I found the book factual to a point. On what I make, unless the housing is subsidized, I cannot live there. plain and simple. does that make me proud to say? no, just realistic. You cannot make a living, pay bills and rent and eat on less than $1500 a month much less $1000, unless you really got a little someone to help you here. Her staying in a place didn't seem that realistic to me, although she did make some allowances. but then she had to because after all, you just cannot do it on a minimum wage salary unless you have a roomie or man or both. I have read in Donald Trump and Robert Kiyoski's book that the middle class in this country is shrinking and that we as a people should either stay poor, and that is food for serious thought.FOOTNOTE:I thank each of you whether you were with me or not in this review. that is ok. I never got this MUCH reviews on a book that is interesting to say the least. I am still getting by in this country but Lord knows I am working hard to get away from it. thanks again.

This is one of the books I've been meaning to read since it was first published. The author's exploration of low-wage jobs in Modern America is interesting while discouraging. She lightens the mood with a wry sense of humor. She worked at the sort of dead-end jobs I did before I graduated from college. Of course I wasn't trying to live on the peon wages since I lived at home. The pace moves right along, and I never drifted away from my reading. All in all, it met my expectation as a good book to read.

A classic now in the field, and I've long used an excerpt from this in my Intro. Sociology reader for our week on Poverty in the U.S. Still, I remind students that this is the only author we read that doesn't have the "street cred" of a "real" sociologist, some "union card" (Ph.D., mostly) as a behavioral or social scientist, or social theorist or philosopher of some sort, as Ehrenreich is a...gasp....journalist! (I'm reminded of perhaps my own bias about this as I was critical of the layperson sociology that Vance did in Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.) Still, our own experiences are all we have, and both are attempts at a more objective, systematic study and explanation for the lives of the poor in the U.S.

Even as a "reporter" or social critic Ehrenreich uses the social science (anthropological, in fact) technique of "participant observation" as she does "undercover" as a poor person in a number of jobs typical for the poor: dead-end, low-pay, no benefits, no security, harassment (including sexual harassment) and mistreatment to be expected, etc.. As Manuel Castells, the Spanish sociologist of globalism noted way back in The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach in our cities the worst, most dirty jobs will always be "held in trust" disproportionately for women and people of color (interesting he didn't name immigrants, but I suspect he meant them, too) and these are the types of jobs someone posing as one with no marketable skills gets such as a hotel maid and in food services, as Ehrenreich did.

Students in my classroom get their middle-class validations of the poor as lazy and of circumstances most entirely of their own making blown up by this reading, and I think it does create authentic empathy for those less fortunate (of course, many of my students come from lives with these types of jobs, and even work them themselves) but also an understanding of how our culture is predicated on somebody doing the "dirty work". Students are particularly taken, and it turns into a great conversation on censorship and parental rights and ideas of "protecting" youth form certain ideas when I share with them the power of this book, as detailed in the links below from six years ago. (In short, a "Tea Party" legislator in NH was horrified when his son brought home a copy of this as a required course read in school, and they both agreed it was "un-American" to study poverty in the U.S.. The principal (surprisingly, doesn't always happen!) backed up the teacher that the students had to read it, and the legislator pulled his kid out of the school (who cares) but actually filed a bill with the House that would have allowed a parent to disallow a school from forcing their child to read any book or curriculum that they found offensive. (Luckily, the bill didn't make it out of committee.) There is also coverage of this by FOX news, although I can't bear to look at it as I know my eyes will burn from the comments section...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/...

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/nh...

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

3 stars - It was good.

I love the concept of this book and thoroughly enjoyed reading about the author's experiences with going "undercover" to the land of the poor working class. With the current ongoing debate for raising minimum wage to a ridiculous 3-4X its current level, I also found this to be a timely read. The author makes an excellent point in her summary that just because a job is "unskilled" that by no means translates to it being easy. Unfortunately, all of this fascinating material was detracted from by several issues, namely the author's poorly presented illogical arguments (more of a commentary), her prejudices, and redundant preaching for unionization.

Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don't need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents too high.

1. You don't need a degree in economics to understand that if minimum wage were tripled overnight, inflation would trickle into every consumer product and service, eventually putting the minimum wage earner right back into the exact same financial struggle from whence they started.

2. Something is wrong, very wrong, when with a first world mentality one assumes that it is some sort of a right for every person to have their own car and a dwelling all to themselves. There's this radical idea, called a "roommate", that works wonders and creates economic magic. In my younger years I utilized this amazing formula myself and saw an instant 40% drop in my bills. Brilliant! If people want their own place, they will need to earn that luxury.....and it's not that difficult to accomplish if you choose something other than a "minimum", unskilled type of job.

3. You don't need a degree in economics to understand that a minimum wage job should be used as a starting point, or as a flexible job for teenagers, retirees, and family members looking to supplement the household income. It should not be used as a lifelong career for people wanting any semblances of luxury in life, especially if you are a single parent.

I also felt the author was very judgmental towards overweight people, particularly women. Example: Those of us who work in ladies' are for obvious reasons a pretty lean lot - probably, by Minnesota standards, candidates for emergency IV nutritional supplementation - and we live with the fear of being crushed by some wide-body as she hurtles through the narrow passages from Faded Glory to woman size, lost in fantasies involving svelte Kathie Lee sheaths. She also mentions numerous times that she is frequently looked at admiringly by men, and overall an attractive woman. Now, I am an unusually fit person, with years of weight lifting and aerobics behind me. Even knowing that this book is now 13 years old, I was, shall we say, surprised, when I viewed pictures of the author. I would be interested to know if she still holds her judgmental stance towards overweight people today.

My main complaint with this book was the author's gushing love affair with unionized labor -- an idea she tries to push on numerous coworkers without any explanation of how it would benefit them (if she did, it wasn't included in her book). One could easily use this book as part of a drinking game simply by employing the keywords "union" or "teamster". I would expect less redundancy from an author with her amount of experience and education. Her incessant mentioning of unions brought back horrible memories from the position I used to hold at a unionized hospital. In my personal experience, the union promoted mediocrity and I resented being paid the same as other employees with substandard work ethic. I also resented benefits being negotiated on my behalf, which often traded what I cared about most in exchange for things that did nothing at all for me (typically they were parent friendly benefits). I far prefer to negotiate for myself and have so far always succeeded at negotiating a salary that reflects my merits and work ethic vs being paid an "average" that covers all gamuts. In summary, just know that you will have a lot of pro-unionization forced down your throat and if you are not a fan, eye-rolling will occur. Often. Very often.

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Favorite Quote: I don't know what it is about the American upper class, but they seem to be shedding their pubic hair at an alarming rate.

First Sentence: Mostly out of laziness, I decide to start my low-wage life in the town nearest to where I actually live, Key West, Florida, which with a population of about 25,000 is elbowing its way up to the status of a genuine city.

WAA, WAAAA, WAAAAAAA...boo hooooo

What was the publisher thinking? Letting a biology Ph.d write an economics book. There are so many economic inaccuracies in this book they are too numerous to mention. The most important theory she mangles is that she thinks wages she should be raised even if there are enough employees to hire at piss-poor wages. She believes that (she eludes to it, but never makes the point clearly) it is the employers responsibility to provide enough wage to make sure everyone is adaquately housed and has non-worker's comp health care...and, if really considerate of his workers, a car.

Well, what kind of person gets hired for jobs that are low-paying. Ones who need a job! What kind of person gets hired for jobs that are higher paying...ones who have prepared for those jobs. It's kinda like Social Security. It was never set up so people could live on it. It was a supplement. These jobs are not careers, but I think many of the people who work them think they are. You better get the employer's buy-in on that theory before you start working in these fields. Is that the employee's problem about this misconception?the employers? the goverments (yikes)? society's?

The purpose or theme of the book is so unclear that I hope the publisher was not meaning for it to be entertainment...or informative. Was it meant to be a thesis on American economics?? People with low-paying jobs should use this book for warmth...by throwing it in the fire.

But maybe IT WAS meant to be entertaining and informative. Then the publisher should have hired someone who is a bit entertaining and/or a little informative.

This author writes this as though nobody who lives above the poverty line has worked a job that supplies the wages to live below it. It is a degrading and demeaning book to everyone who has ever held one of these jobs...and to the ones who currently work these jobs.

The amount of vitriol about the author and this particular book is surprising. I can see the criticism about her basically taking a "vacation" or "holiday" instead of a hard-hitting expose being valid. In spite of getting herself entangled in her employee lives it seems like this is an exercise in play acting. Though I largely agree with her economic takeaways her agenda seems predetermined and hence any methodology seems preordained. Even with all of these annoyances, the overall affect was one of of a shoulder shrug instead of an angry diatribe. Frankly this book did not do much for me and just mere weeks after finishing it I am at a lost of where or what she accomplished.

Mrs. Ehrenreich, an author of 13 previous works to this one and an activist, after the Welfare Reform Law went out to see if it was possible for an unskilled laborer to be able to afford any sort of subsistence. What she found was not terribly surprising to anyone whose head is not in the sand. Namely, that even in the best of times where the economy is roaring and the unemployment rate is low, still provides little for those on the bottom rungs. She goes about this in three locales, Key West, FL, Portland, ME, and Minneapolis, MN. She takes various hard labor jobs such as a waitress, home health aide, cleaning person and retail worker (Wal-Mart). Unfortunately, despite certain advantages such as having access to a vehicle and a healthy lifestyle, she is unable to sustain a reasonable standard of living. Even without any major hindrances such as a young child (daycare is quite expensive) or a health scare, she is faced with the realization that the system is not sustainable.

For better or worse, my biggest gripe of this expose was how often that Mrs. Ehrenreich seemed out of touch. As anyone who has worked a low paying menial job understands most of the management in these places are idiots. Yes, there are good ones out there but they tend to be few and far between. Most fall in either the gungho variety, where the company is never wrong and you just need to work smarter not harder. Customers are not obstacles to be dealt with but clients who are never wrong. The other camp are those that are burned out and just trying to make it through the day. Overall, they are easier to deal with and placate but some of those types can be the biggest snakes in the grass. I guess as newspaper columnist and acclaimed writer, Mrs. Ehrenreich does not have to deal with many of these archetypes. She also tries to score brownie points by saying she never has had a maid service and repeatedly claims she is in the middle class. I do not know at what income level she thinks the middle class stops at, but there seems to be few people in that class who could wantonly take 3 months off in the hopes of some 21st century muckracking.

Overall, I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich's conclusion that the Welfare Reform Bill ended up doing more harm than good. I wish she took the Clinton administration to task instead of pawning it all in the Republicans in Congress, who I have NO respect for either (especially Gingrinch). Her anecdotes were fairly entertaining. Affordable housing/lodging still seems to be the biggest issue in regards to people having sustainability. She set out to be a muckracker like Jacob Riis or Ida Tarbell but merely wrote a book whose impact is only superficial.