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.

"Nickel and Dimed" amounts to a good account of living a back-breaking existence while doing unskilled work. It offers a ground-up view of what it's like to apply for work at Wal-Mart, what sorts of neighbors you have when you live in a pay-by-the-week hotel, and the crap food you're forced to live on when you earn $6 an hour. Barbara Ehrenreich is a biology PhD who decided not to interview poor people or follow them around. Instead she decided it would be more interesting to be a low-wage worker for awhile. It makes for some sensational copy and good anecdotes.

But it's not really a great piece of scholarship. Lo and behold, we are forced to conclude, minimum wage (circa 2000) is not a sustainable wage for any kind of living. Wages are too low and rents are too high. Was there another possible outcome?

Sure, we read the book to confirm our beliefs about low-wage work – that you just can't live on the wages, that a lot of these jobs are exhausting, that you're treated without dignity (both by middle management as well as the public-at-large), that you have to suffer through drug tests, that your first paycheck is often withheld, that the circumstances of the working poor don't improve along with the fortunes of the company, etc. ("The Maids charges $25 per person-hour. The company gets $25 and we get $6.65 for each hour we work?") But don't mistake this book for one that does hypothesis testing.

But what it makes for is a good personal journey. And it is read best as a narrative of her own feelings and impressions. On being a maid, she writes that "even convenience store clerks, who are $6-an-hour gals themselves, seem to look down on us." … "There's no pay for the half hour or so we spend in the office at the end of the day, sorting out the dirty rags before they're washed and refilling our cleaning fluid bottles." … "As far as I can figure, my coworkers' neediness – because that's what it is – stems from chronic deprivation."

And at Wal-Mart, employees can wear blue jeans on Fridays, but they have to pay $1 for the privilege.

But insofar as it's a personal journey, you also have to get through a lot of self-aggrandizement. Of the circumstances of her coworkers, she writes, "it strikes me, in my middle-class solipsism, that there is gross improvidence in some of these arrangements." Upon seeing a church called 'Deliverance', she writes, "Could there really be a whole congregation of people who have never heard of the James Dickey novel and subsequent movie?"

At the end of the book, she has answered her question, "how do these people get by on their pay?" with a resounding, "not well." And so, the main question she wants to know is why the working poor suffers its indignities, both individually and collectively. And she offers some good insight – that there are costs ("friction") to trying to find a new job or moving somewhere, that the working poor are often ill-informed, that corporate and management policies are designed with carrot-and-stick to urge and threaten the submission of its employees. And to the degree that it's universally true, it's fun to ponder.

I really enjoyed reading this book. She worked low-end jobs and proved that even though you work hard doesn't mean that you're making the cut. My favorite piece of information that she gave was that most people working at minimum wage with a spouse and a child, can't afford a 2 bedroom apartment and food. This book was eye-opening. Even though it was a great book there was an afterword and an evaluation. These were exceptionally hard to read. Not because of the language but the content is awful. Its everything you just read in a few pages. Overall I did like the book and I love that it has a lexile of 1370!

(warning, a nerve has been touched!)
I have experience working with and researching programs that aid the poor and working poor. I hated this book. The only role it could play is as a weak talking piece for starting up serious discussion about the struggles and needs of the poor.

Barbara Ehrenreich may have stepped outside her comfort zone and into the world of the working poor, but she did it with an educated background, with money "just in case", with a pompous attitude, and with the requirement of a car at all times.

She also did it without many barriers that are very real to the working poor:
-a child or children
-childcare costs
-low IQ or other learning disabilities
-an alcohol or drug addiction
-an abusive partner
-lack of transportation
-English as a second language
-bad credit
-felony convictions
-health disparities
-no high school diploma or GED
-experience as an orphan or in the foster care system
-homelessness
-no positive support system (like her husband and editor)
-depression, PTSD, schizophremia or other mental illness
-lack of drive or self-worth, hopelessness
-angst for "the system"
-lack of basic computer skills
-lack of interpersonal skills
-lack of personal hygiene or simple lack of clean clothing

I live in Minneapolis, where she lived when the experiment ended. In the book she says she was struggling to find housing, but she was postive that she would find it. Fantastic! I hope the housing she would of found had heat paid, because heating costs will break even a middle-class budget when the weather drops well below zero.

This is Nonfiction/Economics. Even though this was kind of depressing and sobering, I loved the humor that the author wove throughout the book. It had me laughing. I also think it added a greater impact to the author's message.

She takes minimum wage jobs while she was in her 50's and tried to live off of those wages. I don't think she once was all that successful n doing that. It was hard trying to make ends meet and she didn't even have a family to provide for.

I liked the way she pointed out how dehumanizing some managerial practices were and yet employees persevered because they had to. This was sad and depressing especially when talking about the crisis this has become in America. So 4 stars.

This book was a huge eye-opener for me. My interest was held throughout the author’s chronicle of her personal (research-oriented) experiments with living off of minimum wage jobs. I would definitely (and have) recommend this book.

Okay, I suddenly got a Like on my non-review of this book, so I'm going to say a few words about it, which I've thought off and on for a while.

I've seen very put-downish reviews here on GR about the book, and more so about the author.

It's held that Ehrenreich was a fake, had no idea what the working poor face, was just trying to make a buck off them, the book totally discredited because she had money and could just walk away when she was finished, or if she got in trouble, yada yada.

This sort of misses the obvious - that her audience was not the working poor. She didn't write a book saying to them, "Hey, look at me! I took on your world and here I am, fine again, with royalties in my pocket."

Uh, her audience was people like me, people like most of those walking the streets of Manhattan hurrying and scurrying about their frantic but pretty well-rewarded life.

She got to me, that's for sure. In some sense, most people with any knowledge of the world and any empathy at all are not surprised at the hardships that Ehrenreich describes. But until it gets shoved in your face - that these people typically work two jobs, that many or most of them have no love in their lives because they have no time for it, that one sickness or one broken car can spell disaster which could lead to homelessness - you JUST DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND. And once you do understand, there is a brand new thing in your life which you never forget, a knowledge, not from personal experience, but simply from a book written with feeling, that YOU ARE LUCKY and there are way too many people out there THAT ARE NOT. And that it might be nice if the society you lived in would try to do something about this, for example a $15 minimum wage.

Thanks for the Like, Teresa.

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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.

3 stars
*not really recommended*

short review for busy readers: a journalist tries out low-wage jobs in 3 different work sectors in 3 different parts of the US to see if they are liveable. Answer: they aren't. Very "my story." Hard data is tacked on at the very end. Meant to be a magazine article or article series. Sassy, conversational writing style. Over 20 years old now, but still relevant in many ways.

in detail:
I didn't enjoy this one from Ehrenreich nearly as much as her Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, mostly because while that book was largely history and data-driven, this one is very personal.

And I far prefer non-personal facts and big-picture connections to "my personal struggle" stories.

There's also a huge difference between this book and the one I just read, Eating Animals. While Jonathan Safran Foer took 3 years for his investigation into the US meat industry, Barbara Ehrenreich took all of 3 months for her investigation into low-wage work. 1 month in each of the jobs - waitress, maid and retail - she investigated.

Hers was not meant to be a deep-dive. Foer's was. But both take a human-interest angle meant to open the eyes of the middle class, not preach to the choir or the converted. Which is something it seems a number of reviewers of this book disliked, thinking it was meant as a handbook for low-wage workers on how to actually get by, or that it was a deep, data-driven dive into the subject of wage slavery, à la Foer.

It's neither.

What it is, is a middle class white woman (no shame in that) seeing if she can cope with how people (mostly women) less fortunate than herself are forced to live.

Is she overly congratulatory that she made it out alive after a month? Yes, because we all pat ourselves on the back when we manage something new and challenging and want to tell people about it.

Could she have done better? Of course, but how would it even occur to someone who has always lived in their own home to look for shared accomodation, for example, or try the YWCA and not a motel? We come from where we come from and our experience is our experience.

But does it all come off as kinda powder puff at best and slumming at worst?

Yeah, it does. But Ehrenreich's heart and mouth are in the right place, as she rightly assumes her own class level would have no clue (and possibly not even thought about) the lives and exploitation low wage workers have to cope with daily. Or how those of her own class treat such workers.

They say that anyone who has ever had to wait tables treats wait staff nicely. That's not always true - there are some real asshats out there - but it's mostly true.

Walking a mile in someone else's shoes is alway a good idea. Nobody says you have to walk to the moon, though, and Ehrenreich doesn't. But she at least put the shoes on, and that's what counts.

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 am 5 pages in. This book better become an exercise in humility.

So far, the author seems to think she's connected to low-wage earners because somewhere in her family history, someone might have worked for low wage. She also thinks that you have to be completely uneducated to work for minimum wage. Maybe this speaks to our current economic state but I have known plenty of educated people in restaurants or cashier positions. This arrogance and disconnect between her wealth and opportunity and real people is the problem.

Finally, poor people take public transportation. They don't drive.

UPDATE : I read as much as I could in almost the length of time it took to wait for a metro. I got to page 20 and I am quitting.

This woman is beyond arrogant. I can't believe she deigned to live and work among the poor (note sarcasm)! The entire tone demonstrates how much better she is than the dirty, trailer - livin' people. I don't believe she got anything at all out of her experiment than a fun story to tell at her cocktail parties. "Oh, darling, remember when I called that poor foreigner "sir"?", she says.

This book infuriated me.

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.