This book has deservedly become a classic because of its premise: Barbara Ehrenreich, the author, spent several months actually trying to live on minimum-wage jobs as a house cleaner, waitress, sales clerk, and nursing-home aide.

I'm in awe of Ehrenreich's courage and originality in taking on this venture, and her writing is readable and vivid: The exhaustion, aching back, itching rash, sweat rolling down her legs, crabby customers, besmeared toilets, never-ending toil; scrubbing floors on her hands and knees, and running back and forth to tables, and folding the napkins just so, while an elderly resident suffering from dementia throws a glass of milk all over her, and the (male) boss snaps at the (female) workers for daring to sit down for one second...Repeated seven days a week. Finally, after a double shift, to collapse in a "home" where she can barely fit into the bathroom.
Ehrenreich combines her narrative with bits of sociological analysis, data, and snippy commentary.

My main criticism is that it feels too detached. I don't get any deep, gut sense of despair, exhaustion, or panic--most notably, no sense of the financial desperation that most of these workers surely must face. Partly, I think that's because Ehrenreich isn't really living this life. As she admits, she always knows that there's a middle-class bank account and home cushioning her, and she can return to her own real world whenever she wants.
Of course that's unavoidable, but maybe the book could have provided more insight if she'd talked with some of her co-workers or their friends. I understand that she couldn't "break her cover" by formally interviewing them. But could she, for instance, have hung out and gone drinking on a weekend?

Although this book was researched and written nearly a quarter-century ago, it is still--unfortunately--relevant today.
I hope that I will have much more appreciation for the workers I encounter the next time I eat at a restaurant or stay at a hotel.

For all the author says about the greatness of the American blue-collar worker (she even brags about her husband being one), she seems to think the work is beneath her. It seems like she is trying to shock her readers by exposing the harshness of poverty. But is it really that shocking for her employer to tell her she missed a spot when she's working as a cleaning woman? Sure, there are bad bosses out there, but you can't expect your boss to overlook your bad job cleaning a house just because you have a good education. Also, although I agree life can be desperate on a minimum wage, the author makes her own situation more desperate by refusing to share a room with someone else. It also strikes me as a little unrealistic that there are no assholes among the ranks of her heroic underclass, only among the bosses. Come on. Maybe I am just jaded because I feel like she has only written this book to communicate to other wealthy people who just CAN'T IMAGINE being poor, while my life is somewhere in between hers and the people she writes about.

Now, there are probably TONS of first-person stories written by people who are poor or were poor. "Angela's Ashes," anyone? They were literally starving. Even the writer of "Shattered Dreams" has only one suitcase full of worldly belongings when she goes off to get married... And she says she remembers helping her mother pour the concrete for their cellar. These are people I'd rather read about. People who are good writers, but don't brag about their intellect; people who experienced hardships, but made them into a damn good story.

What is the point of having a job? To earn money. That’s bad enough, but it’s more than that, because it’s never enough to just do your job. You job does you: asking for more and more and more until it becomes literally unattainable. That’s capitalism. But there’s the American Dream that dangles in front of you, always out of reach. Why do you think they call it a dream? It’s a trap, and few have proven that fact better than Barbara Ehrenreich, who in NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA, not only embeds herself in the lie of living on a minimum wage but supports her anecdotal experience with research and hard data. She works a succession of entry-level jobs in various states and comes back repeatedly with the same results. Most of these workers, including Ehrenreich, have to work multiple jobs and then still are either living check to check or become chained in debt. Housing, which should be a third of one’s paycheck, ends up eating most of their income, creating a loop in which the worker never escapes. It’s exploitation, plain and simple, an industry built on the backs of the poor. Poverty is profitable in America, and until the system changes this resource will be squeezed until dried and discarded. But don’t worry, capitalism will look for a new resource to exploit. Maybe it’ll be you.

I first heard about this book when I was a "wet behind the ears" college student. A sociology professor recommended the book for its discussion on the realities of low-wage America. The recommendation was quickly stowed away into my ever-growing TBR and quickly forgotten.

This marks my first (and now last) attempt at reading this title.

What. A. Let down.

While the book accomplishes what it sets out to do -- prompting a discussion surrounding a working class that has gone largely unaddressed -- she remains a horribly privileged white woman who regularly used her privilege whenever any inconvenience negatively impacted her. Although she attempted to present herself as this educated "savior" looking to expose the hardships of poverty, she took on patronizing and dehumanizing tones. It became apparent that she viewed the poor as lazy and needy. Didn't these workers know that office jobs and careers were a college degree away?! "The fact that anyone is working this job at all can be taken as prima facie evidence of some kind of desperation or at least a history of mistakes and disappointments," (pg. 78). This may be true to a certain capacity; however, having a middle-classed, white woman refer to a working individuals decisions as "mistakes" just reeks of arrogance.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the repeated racial remarks she made about minorities. At one point in the novel, she attempted to argue that the negative perception people had of her as a maid gave her insight into the experiences of black Americans (pg. 100). BFFR, lady. Later in the novel, she voices an ignorant comment about Latinos that finally made me DNF:

"[W]arnings about the heat and allergies put me off, not to mention my worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they so often do," (pg. 121).

I honestly can't stomach this book anymore. Perhaps this book is aimed at a particular audience and I am not one of them. But as other reviewers have already stated, the concept could have been great but was hindered by the author's patronizing and dehumanizing portrayal of the working class. No thanks.