From Emma Welp - ND

In Nickel and Dimed Barabara Ehrenreich travels to different parts of the United States trying to look for various jobs while being undercover. She is trying to understand and learn about these low income jobs that men and women do everyday all over the world. Barbara then puts herself into the situation on finding a job, finding a place to stay, feeding herself, and paying the bills with the low income job. The main thing is trying to survive with this lifestyle. Barbara worked as a waitress,a maid, and an Wal-Mart employee. During these jobs she would discover how the owner or even manager of the job could and would treat you without respect and not really care about you. For all they thought was that if you work for them they pretty much owned you. Also Barbara would become close with a few of her employees learning about their family and home life. She would learn perhaps why they couldn't quit that particular job even though the pay wasn't great at all. They were stuck there. Perhaps a reason for staying at a certain job was because of the unknown. The unknown fact of if you could find another job? Can I make the distance? What about my Bills? Who is going to watch my children? All of these things the workers would need to think about before they could even quit the old job. When working as a waitress Ehrenreich found out many of them had a second job to help pay bills but still were hardly getting by. Also when she worked at "The Maids" one of her fellow co- workers was injured during her shift but refused to go home because she needed the money. Barbara took over the women's cleaning responsibilities for the day and when they got back to the office she yelled at the boss and stood up for the other women. Also when Barbara worked as an Wal-Mart employee as returning women's clothes to their correct spot and folding clothes she found that this was tedious work. Ehrenreich found out at all of these jobs required you to be on your feet, fast pace, customer service, and doing your best work. In each scenario that Barbara found herself in she couldn't understand why you would want to work in circumstances like this? So little pay, rude bosses, and same old rapid work. But in the Wal-Mart scenerio she found an older women who actually enjoyed the work to get her out of the house and helping people. I think a lot of people in the world today could and can relate to this book. Not everyone has a college degree or even a high school diploma which in cases is sad. Millions of men and women go out to work everyday doing the same job everyday working in stores, restaurant's, and cleaning offices. I think as Americans we forget to think hey someone has to clean up after me? Instead of picking up after ourselves in stores and restaurant's and just being plain lazy in some cases. This book has helped to open my eyes and thinking twice about well if they have a job they must be doing okay right? Nope not at all most of the people can "disguise their poorness". Or in other cases put themselves together nicely enough to get that job at McDonald's or Wal-Mart and go home at night still worried about their bills.