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.

i'm having the same reservations about this as i had with the so-old-why-am-i-even-complaining-about-it ten days in a madhouse by nellie bly (or that book by the white guy who put himself in blackface to expose racism in the american south??? or tyra donning a fat suit to know what it's like to be an obese person?): why do we need people in positions of privilege to put themselves through these little experiments just to find out what every poor (mentally ill, black, fat) person already fucking knows? why can't we give a voice to people who actually experience this shit, people who can't just pluck themselves out of the situations they've purposefully put themselves in, people who can't just return to some life where they have money in their bank account and not much to worry about it. merely acknowledging your place of privilege does nothing to dismantle the system from which you benefit.

i really like the fact that the most popular review for this book is by a woman who advocates the selective "breeding" of poor folk. i mean, the very fact that human pregnancy is being referred to as "breeding" should be a tip off that someone is a big, flaming sack of shit, but i just can't with this kind of bull: "Having children and expecting others to pay for them is irresponsible and parasitic." THIS IS NOT REALLY HOW WELFARE WORKS EVERYBODY. if you're gonna complain about this, i hope you advocate for the abolition of roads, libraries, parks, and everything that has ever existed due to government funds or intervention. i hope you only ever travel via dirt roads and attend private schools, never experience the joy of a library or the ~great outdoors~ at a national public park. 'cause fuck that shit.

i also just want to share this because it's really fucking dumb and shows the other side of dumbass logic:



i have other thoughts about poverty & children, and they're mostly just POOR PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE CHILDREN. POOR PEOPLE ARE ALSO ALLOWED TO NOT HAVE CHILDREN IF THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT. POOR PEOPLE REMAIN HUMANS DESPITE THEIR POVERTY. TREAT THEM AS SUCH, YOU SHITTY DICKS.

---

okay, i'm actually finished the book now (i tend to make preemptive reviews, it seems) and everything still stands, but it's important to note that i did overall appreciate nickel and dimed. i just think the plight of poor ppl would better be exemplified by, idk, actual poor people. stinks to me of co-opting someone else's struggle to make your own point. and it isn't a particularly "liberal" point, unless you're the sad kind of person who thinks rich people are rich 'cause they work hard and poor people are poor because they're lazy. the american dream is hopelessly fucked. barbara ehrenreich was on the right track with this, but really, sitting back and writing books from an upper middle class viewpoint doesn't really do much to help the poor.

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.

Some parts of this book I really liked. The fact that she gave the world a view of how hard it is to make it on minimum wage. I've been there. As a single mom and I know it's almost impossible. Even after going to school it's still hard. One part that stood out for me even now is the fact the employers don't want you talking with other co-workers. They also don't want a minute of your time "wasted." You had better stay busy. Bull crud is what it is.
The parts I didn't like was the fact that she couldn't believe no one figured out she had a PhD. Big whoo. I've worked with people who had degrees and didn't even think twice about the fact that they worked for minimum wage.

Ehrenreich works in scut jobs and writes about it. She has been plowing the field for many a year and does another good job here.

Nickel and Dimed is a lousy book. Ignoring the fact that the author is a marijuana using egomaniac, the book itself is rather simplistic and overall pointless. Ehrenreich can be commended for making an attempt at showing the world that being poor is a condition terrible beyond imagining, but ultimately her plight is useless. Yes, being poor is bad. More than bad. Unimaginably bad. This is a truth that many, including many Granvillians, can't seem to wrap their heads around. But nonetheless, Ehrenreich's comments on social systems are childish at best. Yes, everyone should be treated to having a middle-class existence. And also, there should be no wars. Ehrenreich offers a timeless paradox (the rich exercising unlimited power over the poor) with no visible solution other than "more cigarette dates". Nickel and Dimed is a book that, although perhaps written with good intent, comes across more as Ehrenreich gloating over her own suffering, and her own, higher vision of the social order in America.

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 am glad that somebody attempted this "experiment" of leaving their upper/middle class life to try to see what it was like to live like the working poor. I do think it could have been done better, and maybe different conclusions drawn from the experience, but definitely a good start. I the 15+ years since this book was written, I believe it is only harder to try to squeak out an existence - economically or otherwise - working for such low wages. My eyes have been open and my points of view have changed dramatically the last couple years when it comes to my view point about this. I sincerely believe America is in a crisis that needs to be addressed in the near future if we expect to still be considered the "greatest" or "wealthiest" or anything else "est" in the developing world - to say the least. Our societal compassion and humanity is at an all time low! We should be ashamed at how we treat so many in our society.

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...

Dear Barbara Ehrenreich,

How do I resent thee? Let me count the ways:

1. You are a wealthy, highly educated person who went on a half-assed, anthropological slumming vacation.

2. When said vacation was over, you told your coworkers: "Surprise! I'm not a poor person after all! I'm going back now to my comfortable life!"...and then you were surprised that those coworkers were mostly worried about the fact that they'd have to work the next shift with one less person.

3. You also were surprised that the aforementioned coworkers were neither impressed nor appreciative that you turned out to be a wealthy, highly educated person writing a book about how hard it is to be a poor person.

4. You were slightly offended that nobody saw through your waitress costume; you assumed that smart people are visually recognizable, and it didn't seem to occur to you that real poor people might also be smart and educated.

5. The experiences you had while pretending to be a poor person may have instilled in you some amount of sympathy for poor people, but you will never really know what it's actually like to be poor. It was certainly nice enough of you to decide that you shouldn't judge a class of people until you'd walked a mile in their shoes...but you only managed to walk about three paces before your feet hurt and you decided you had seen enough.

A real poor person does not have a couple grand to "start" with, or to stay afloat between jobs, after finding his or her working conditions intolerable and suddenly quitting. Nor does a real poor person, when he or she develops some nasty rash from said intolerable working conditions, have a private doctor who will phone in a prescription for soothing ointment. Since a poor person does not have access to said doctor, he or she has to just suck it up and go to work itchy.

I'm glad that this book might bring some much-needed insight to middle-and-upper-class people to whom it had never before occurred that it's actually really shitty to make minimum wage, that people working shitty service jobs have bad attitudes for very good reasons, that a person can work very hard and still be very poor, and that there are myriad external obstacles that keep poor people from pulling themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps.

What I am NOT glad about is that this could have been an excellent, enlightening book about the less abstract aspects of our country's economic structure...but it was not. Instead, it was just a nauseatingly narcissistic exploration of the author's personality.

What many people seem not to understand is (among other things) that there is not only one kind of poor person (or only one kind of "working class" person), that poverty is not just a condition, but a cycle, and that contemporary poverty is not some ahistorical thing that just recently appeared when people started having poor money-management skills and learned how to make crack. Contemporary poverty is a result of Capitalism, but one doesn't have to be a commie liberal to know that.

Sure, there are many poor people who are crack addicts. There are also many, many rich people who are coke addicts. I'm sure that if poor people could afford real cocaine, they would buy that instead of crack, but alas, good cocaine is too expensive for poor drug addicts who make bad decisions.

People who are not poor make many of the same decisions that poor people do (like acquiring a drug habit, or having children, or quitting a job). One big difference is that people with enough money can afford to make bad decisions.

Another big difference is that your life feels a hell of a lot different when you don't have an easy out. Maybe working as a waitress is kind of fun and interesting and not too stressful if you know you'll only be doing it until you get bored. It's another thing entirely when your only other real, long term option seems to be some other kind of awful service job, and when you know that this is your life, not a break from your "real" job and "real" life. When you feel tired and desperate and angry and resigned all the time, when every day you perform the emotional and physical labor of serving people who treat you like shit and pay you practically nothing, how are you supposed to gather enough energy and hope to seek out a better life? You probably can't. Instead, you probably are going to buy some beer or weed and enjoy the few moments of your life that you can. Maybe that's a "bad decision"...or maybe it's just a survival strategy.

After seeing Maid all over social media and noticing there was a screen adaptation on Netflix, I kept wondering if I'd read it.

I haven't, but it reminds me of this book I had forgotten about. I read it in undergrad for a sociology class and I remember it made quite the impression on me.

I'm grateful my teacher assigned this book as it is very eye opening although of course, rather staged/sensationalized.

*Edited to Add* This book would be excellent reading for Republicans or those who are against government aid for those in need. The hypocrisy of the religious right knows no bounds, especially when it comes to helping people or having any compassion.

If you're looking for socialist propaganda - full of rhetorical tricks and short on evidence, then this is the book for you. If, however, you're hoping for an unbiased treatment of the life of the poor, a reasonable economic/policy analysis of poverty, or any sort of insight into American culture, then this book will be profoundly disappointing.

There are some interesting issues covered, such as wage inequalities and the plight of the urban poor, but that's really all I can say in its favor. The author early on gives up any illusion of maintaining journalistic impartiality. She interprets all behavior of corporations, managers and employers in the least charitable way possible - often straining credibility. Further, she shows hidden disdain for the poor as well - insinuating that the only reason the poor might take pride in their work is because they've been duped by corporate interests, and denying the possibility that the poor might find any value in their jobs beyond their paychecks.

The author ignores economic realities and the subtleties inherent in an interdependent system like the American Economy and puts forth ludicrously simplistic arguments of what American policy towards the poor should be. It ranges from annoying to infuriating, and is almost certainly not worth the bother of reading.