I found this book to on-point. I worked in retail stores, hotels, and call centers. I know that every word of this book is true.
Ehrenreich wrote this book as an expose. She made a conscious decision to not work call centers because she knew she would get slightly or significantly more pay, a type of elite of the working class. (I say better pay with sweatshop characteristics). What do Ehrecreich find out? Working-class people are far from lazy and are instead are overworked, paid inadequately, and are underappreciated. In an era where CEOs are paid more and more millions of dollars, service workers cannot even keep up with the cost of living.
While those of who have worked in the service industry already know all this, this book was written as an expose to help others understand the plight of serviceworkers. I hope more employers will read this book, have their hearts and their wallets opened.

Welfare reform in the mid-1990s was meant to get people off the welfare rolls and into the workforce. As the U.S. had a strong economy at the time, and jobs were plentiful, this was supposed to work out pretty well all around. The problem was that most 'unskilled jobs' paid minimum wage (which was six to seven dollars/hour at the time) and this just wasn't enough to support a parent and child - much less a larger family.



In 1998 Barbara Ehrenreich - a political activist and writer - decided to try to live like the 'working poor.' She planned to obtain low paying jobs and see if she could live on the resulting wages. Ehrenreich then wrote a book about her experiences - this one.


Barbara Ehrenreich

As Ehrenreich points out in the book, she didn't really start on a level playing field with the economically deprived. She was well-educated, in good health, and had no small children. Nevertheless her experiences provided a peek at what it was like to be a member of the working poor.

Over the span of a couple of months Ehrenreich lived in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. In each location, she rented (or tried to rent) an apartment, took one or two low-paying jobs, and attempted to live on the wages she earned. The first problem Ehrenreich encountered was finding a place to live. Without funds to pay a security deposit and first month's rent, it was very difficult to rent an apartment - even a cheap crappy one. Thus, some minimum wage earners (including Ehrenreich at times) had to live in shabby motels, which actually cost more than an apartment.



One of Ehrenreich's co-workers lived in a van. Ehrenreich describes the various places she lived, most of which were ratty, uncomfortable, minimalist, and sometimes dangerous. On occasion she had no refrigerator or cooking facilities.

Ehrenreich's next order of business was obtaining a job or two in each state. This often required submitting applications, going to interviews, passing personality exams (would you steal; would you report a co-worker for theft; do you follow rules; and so on), and getting drug-tested.



Upon obtaining a job, Ehrenrich had to buy appropriate clothing (generally slacks and polo shirts) and travel to work and back. Unlike some low-income workers Ehrenreich allowed herself a car in each location, a rent-a-wreck - which also skewed her 'authentic experience' a bit.



During her experiment Ehrenreich worked as a waitress; a caregiver for Alzheimer's patients; a hotel maid; a house cleaner; and a Wal-Mart ladies-wear employee. Each job was physically difficult, exhausting, and demoralizing... since the workers were closely monitored and generally not trusted by the employers.











While at Wal-Mart Ehrenreich had to make a couple of phone calls to line up a new place to live. To achieve this Ehrenreich had to sneak out of Wal-Mart to her car (using maneuvers similar to Keanu Reaves in The Matrix), get the phone numbers, and use a public telephone. Caught by a manager, Ehrenreich (falsely and nervously) stated she was on an official break. All this would give a person heartburn for sure.

Ehrenreich also ate badly most of the time for a variety of reasons: lack of funds (employers routinely held back the first week's wages), no appropriate place to prepare food, no time to eat on the job, etc. Often, Ehrenreich supplemented her diet with fast food. One of Ehrenreich's fellow hotel maids ate hot dog buns for lunch. And a house cleaning mate routinely had a few crackers.



In the end Ehrenreich - making less money at Wal-Mart than she was paying for living quarters, food, and necessities - quit and went back to her normal life.

I'm sure Ehrenreich had good intentions when she embarked on this experiment but she comes across as a kind of 'dilettante' poor person who was not really playing by the rules. First, a real low-wage worker might line up a couple of roommates to share an apartment, which seems a logical thing to do. Second, Ehrenrich knew about the drug testing but - taking a recreational break - smoked marijuana. This resulted in a few frantic days spent drinking gallons of water (to flush out the evidence) plus the cost of system-cleaning medicine from the drugstore (I don't know if this actually works). Third, Ehrenreich could have packed bologna or PB&J sandwiches for lunch, rather than purchasing (relatively expensive) fast food.



Nevertheless, Ehrenreich did bring attention to the very difficult plight of minimum-wage employees in 1998. It was almost impossible for a working single mother, for example, to pay for a place to live, daycare, nutricious food, decent clothing, incidentals, etc. And if a family member needed to see a dentist or doctor they were just out of luck. Moreover, unlike Ehrenreich - who had a cushy upper middle-class life to return to - the economically disadvantaged could only look forward to continued drudgery. They had no hope for a better life. This is truly sad.

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.

From my perspective, Barbara Ehrenreich was preaching to the choir.

All that I read made me want to stand up and cheer.
I didn't finish the book but I am SOOOO glad she wrote every word of it.

Around the time this powerful book came out, I was busy writing, indie-publishing, and spreading the word about a book that aimed to debunk some of the magical thinking at the time (and to this day) about the "Law" of Attraction. Namely, "Magnetize Money with Energetic Literacy."

I didn't want to unintentionally take some of Ehrenreich's language and plagiarize her in my work. That's why I didn't finish the book. I read enough to respect, and admire, her work On (Not) Getting By in America.

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.

Very quick explanation of the premise of this one: a woman, who is a writer/journalist, is talking to her publisher about what she wants to write about next and says, “someone ought to write a book about how hard it is to get by on the minimum wage in America.” The publisher says, “Okey-dokey (the book is set in the US so I’m trying to give you a feeling of verisimilitude) you’ve hired.” (High fives all around)

Before I started this book I really worried. I mean, I’m a bit of a worrier anyway – but mostly I worried that this would be the sort of book that my mother would hate. The sort of book my mother hates is the sort of book that is written by someone she calls ‘middle class’ (actually, she would probably call them middle-class twits) and these people would then presume to be able to write about what my mum would call ‘the working class’.

These people, these ‘middle-class book writing types’ basically give my mother the shits. It is nothing personal, you understand – it is much more intense than the merely personal. So, it was with gritted teeth that I started this one.

I’m glad to report that not only did I really love this book, I even think my mum would enjoy it.

First of all, Barbara recognises that she is basically an impostor. She recognises that her ‘experiment’ is really only going to be just that – I mean, she is not going to literally endanger her life, health or wellbeing just to make a point. All the same – this is the sort of reality TV program that would never make it to television. Particularly not in the USA.

That fact is something that really struck me while reading this book – I mean, even before she mentioned it herself. Early in the book she compares herself to Upstairs Downstairs – that is, a British television show about class distinctions. I thought it was very interesting that she had to rely on a British show for a cultural reference to the ‘working class’. Later she points out that working class people may well exist in America – but they definitely don’t exist on American television. I couldn’t help reflect that films like Dockers, Billy Elliot (particularly the themes around the strike – but also the themes of homosexuality), Brassed Off, or Kes simply could never be made in America. Isn’t that incredibly sad?

Now, my dear friend Wendy told me once that in some states the minimum wage can be ‘discounted’ if people earn ‘tips’. It took me a while to believe I had understood what she was saying, but if I’d read this book when I’d first intended to read it – when it first came out – I’d have known this already. Tipping is something I find quite repulsive. I hate everything about it – but then, I don’t like watching dogs beg for food, so I guess getting people to beg in much the same way is only going to make matters worse.

What do you think it is about America – I mean, the land that is supposed to believe in equality of opportunity and democracy – that somehow encourages so many people to get off on making people beg and demean themselves? The discussion in this book about the Maids (house cleaners) is illustrative of this. Companies even advertise that they force their workers to clean floors on their hands and knees. I remember my mother talking about a great-auntie of mine who worked for some rich bastard in Belfast. He would expect her to scrub the street in front of his house on her hands and knees. I believe she ended up not being able to walk. Like I said, hard to see how anyone could get off on this sort of humiliation.

I believe in the value of labour – that people are better off if they can work and if their work can be valued. I believe we are social creatures and that we only feel true self-worth if we believe we are making a real contribution to the society we live in. So, when we create an underclass of untouchables, a caste that must work themselves into ill-health and who never have any hope of being able to make ends meet or of getting out of poverty – then that is a choice that we make and one that says as much about us as people as it says about us as a society.

This book doesn’t offer simple solutions – in fact, besides her suggesting that people join together in Trade Unions and find ways to improve their pay and conditions, she makes virtually no suggestions at all. Even this is not presented as a panacea. If anything she worries that anger and resentment will build to the point where it will become unstoppable.

The pre-employment tests given to people applying for jobs are particularly evil and in Australia would probably be illegal. Now, this is really saying something. We have just had the most reprehensible and obnoxiously rightwing government imaginable but even they would have found reason to pause over the explicit anti-trade union discrimination that seems a common place in these employment tests.

It is hard to imagine the dice being more brutally loaded against these people.

The most memorable line in this book for me was the little girl who pointed to a black or Latino child (I can’t remember which now) and said, “Look mommy, a baby maid”. Aren’t societies with caste systems so terribly interesting?

This book constantly reminded me of Margaret Atwood – there was something about the voice, something about the themes, something about the tone. In fact, think of a non-fiction book written by Atwood and this might well be the book you would end up with.

This book isn’t nearly as bitter and twisted as this review might make it sound – I’m happy to admit that this is a subject which makes me quite bitter and twisted. Parts of the book were very moving and other bits very funny. She has a lovely way about her – I’m particularly fond of self-deprecation, I find it an incredibly attractive feature. I also find intelligent women nearly completely irresistible. That she is both of these had me falling helplessly (and perhaps even a little pathetically) in love.

Barbara produces a list of reasons why the US character would allow this mistreatment of such a large section of its citizenry to exist. All the usual suspects end up on the list – you know, US obsession with ‘success’ and the tendency to blame ‘failure’ on the individual and so on. But one of the things I kept thinking was the way American humour so often seems to come down to a degrading string of insults. Humiliation and insults do seem to play an interesting role in the American psyche and this had me wondering if this is part of the reason why tipping is so embraced there while here in Australia we have no idea what to do in ‘tipping situations’.

Before I get flamed – Australia is just as bad, one would only need to go to Bali for proof of that, and we also treat single mothers, Aboriginals, selected migrants and an endless string of others with utter contempt and loathing. I’m more interested in why – in a country that believes it is self-evident that all people are born equal – that such self-evident inequality of treatment could be so seemingly blindly tolerated.

But then, as Barbara points out – the fundamentalist Christians she has contact with also seem to exhibit the exact opposite of what one would take their core beliefs to be. What would Jesus do? From the behaviour of his followers one can only suspect he would do the complete opposite of the stuff he said in his Sermon on the Mount.

This is a wonderfully thought-provoking book and one that I enjoyed very much.

May you never have to live the life writer Barbara Ehrenreich attempted to live as part of a writing assignment. From her admittedly limited experiment she wrote Nickel and Dimed: On not Getting by in America. We are told or reminded of the many ways working very hard in America only promises you the chance to work hard. Not just Recommended but recommended as a critical experience before you can justify having an opinion on policies that effect the working poor.

The assignment Ms. Ehrenerich had was to earn employment in a minimum or near minimum wage job. She was to find housing and transportation appropriate to the position and then see if she could earn enough money to pay her bills. Along the way she experiences what it takes to keep these jobs and experience what kinds of treatment, on the job and off goes with her pretend economic status.
Throughout she is honest about reminding us that she was only sampling a very few weeks of what her coworkers could expect to be doing for years. She always had the choice to end her assignment and return to her significantly more upscale life.

At the time she was writing, there was no law that required employers to allow employees to take bathroom breaks. It is hard to image a world where such a law is required. In one of my first post Navy jobs- I worked several jobs like these; I never had the management problems she did. But I knew an employee from a nearby business who had been hospitalized for lack of access to a bathroom.
Besides the indignities, large and small she was among people who were one accident, or illness away from financial catastrophe. In more than one situation employees seeking to attend schools had the twin problems of not controlling their hours and needing to work extra jobs to pay for the training that might have made it possible to qualify for better jobs.

More than a view from the trenches, Ehrenreich includes research that punctuates the fact that problems she encountered were not unique to her situation. Housing costs for low income people, for example, were then and now increasing faster than wages. Not just what she experienced, but what she documented.

Nickel and Dimed is a short book and an easy read. It is content rich and should be part of a common knowledge base for anyone taking part in American economic policy discussions.

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.

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.

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.

“When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.”

The author goes undercover to see if she can make a living on a minimum wage job. Lucky for her, she would have her own job back any time she wanted. So she goes out into the work field but finds out that she and others cannot make ends meet. Food cost too much, rents were too high, and no one can come with the first and last month’s rent. So then she goes out and gets a second job and works 16 hours a day. She still can’t make it.

I have heard people say that these minimum wage jobs are for kids, people who will soon be moving up in the world. Some say they are just for married women so they can make a little extra money, you know go out to lunch with the girls, go to a movie, buy a new pair of shoes. These jobs are not jobs that will help you move up in the world, nor are the jobs always for kids. There are low paying jobs in nursing homes, and even teachers. As I have read recently, teachers can’t afford to rent a home or an apartment in some States. Here in Oklahoma we can’t keep teachers.

What the author found was that some people, if not many, are living in motels, with a friend, or their cars.

I thought of how we need rent control in the U.S. like we had in Berkeley, California when I lived there. I actually thought of a lot of things but I don’t see things changing. We live in a Dickensian society, because the greed in America is such that companies don't care if you have to live in your car, sleep in a rundown motel, or live with a friend. They don't care if you get sick, just be at work. And forget medical insurance, there is none.

Speaking of which, I remember reading how Charles Dickens lectured to people about the poverty, but no one listened. Then he began writing books, and that changed things in England, but I don’t know how England is now. We have new books now, ones like this, but they don’t change a thing.

The author takes you with her on her jobs as she listens to her co-workers and tries to struggle with working a 16 hour day. She tried being a waitress, a maid, and worked at Wal-Mart. And just don’t get caught taking any food out of these places.
As I sat and watched the Republican debates last night and heard how people were protesting outside for the minimum wage to be increased to $15 an hour, I heard one candidate say that if he were president there would be no wage increases, and he actually felt that wages were too high. Well, guess what? He is now our president. I shuttered and continue to shutter. Another candidate suggested $15 an hour. Well, if she couldn’t make it on two jobs, she couldn’t make it on $15 an hour, but at least the candidate had a heart.

I have lost all confidence in mankind to do the right thing. The wealthy seldom do things for the right reasons, not that some don’t help. But human rights have always had to be fought for by the dispossessed and those who were right beside them. Roosevelt had no plans on helping the poor until the Socialist and Communist parties talked him into helping them, telling him what could happen if he didn’t. Since then programs were created, but then the fight began to get rid of both the Socialist and the Communist parties by demonizing them, and then they began chipping away at the unions and the programs that could help lift people out of poverty. Get rid of a good education as well. An educated population is a danger to society. And now the Democrats are said to be evil communists by those on the right. I remember a woman that I was acquainted with telling me that Democrats were not Christians.

So what does it mean to not be getting by to this author? She means that you can't afford an apartment, and I don't mean a fancy one, but just a decent one. She also means that you can't get decent food; instead you have to eat prepared junk food because you don't have cooking facilities at the motel or in your car, if you are living in one. She means not being able to get sick without losing your pay or your job, because staying home would put you further into debt, plus it could get kicked out of your apartment or motel room. Forget going to a movie; they can't afford it. Forget doing anything fun. Forget cable TV unless there is one in your motel room. Forget even having a TV. Forget living. Forget trying to move up in the world because you can’t afford to even try since it would take time off your job to even look for work, not that there are a lot of high wage jobs waiting for you anyway.

“There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but a culture of extreme inequality. Corporate decision makers, and even some two-bit entrepreneurs like my boss at The Maids, occupy an economic position miles above that of the underpaid people whose labor they depend on. For reasons that have more to do with class — and often racial — prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing. But these things cost money — $20,000 or more a year for a manager, $100 a pop for a drug test, and so on — and the high cost of repression results in ever more pressure to hold wages down. The larger society seems to be caught up in a similar cycle: cutting public services for the poor, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the 'social wage,' while investing ever more heavily in prisons and cops. And in the larger society, too, the cost of repression becomes another factor weighing against the expansion or restoration of needed services. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves.”

“But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.”

“Everyone in yuppie-land — airports, for example — looks like a nursing baby these days, inseparable from their plastic bottles of water. Here, however, I sweat without replacement or pause, not in individual drops but in continuous sheets of fluid soaking through my polo shirt, pouring down the backs of my legs ... Working my way through the living room(s), I wonder if Mrs. W. will ever have occasion to realize that every single doodad and objet through which she expresses her unique, individual self is, from another vantage point, only an obstacle between some thirsty person and a glass of water.”

This book is not new, but it is highly relevant - particularly considering the strikes going on in the United States at the moment. You think it’s possible to work yourself out of poverty in land of the American dream? Think again. It’s not possible to live on one minimum wage job. The author, Barbara, who tries it out as a low wage worker, soon finds this out. Adequate housing is also nearly impossible to get. Despite the 20+ years since this book was released, the situation has gotten worse rather than better.