nickel and dimed

Evan Heil

period 2

nickel and dimed

In the beginning chapter of the book, Barbara Ehrenreich explains that she is writer. She's written for companies such as The New York Times, for instance this book is a new york times best seller. She also says that she is mother but all her children are grown up and in adulthood. She was previously married but they got divorced and now she is living with her boyfriend.
Barbara's first job is in key west florida as a server at hearthside. She earns $2.43 per hour plus tips. At hearthsode she begins a friendship with Gail, a wiry middle-aged waitress. She learns of lots of tough times their for her coworkers, for example billy gets $ 10 an hour, lives in a trailor he owns, and is the wealthiest worker there. Only a few weeks in she is unfortunately caught eating on the job by Stu, the uptight one in change. Barbara then explains to Gail that she is going to quit. She then tries a job as a housekeeper getting paid $6.10 an hour and works from " 9 am to whenever". This job however only lasts one day.
The next job location for Barbara is in portland maine. After her search through newspaper ads, she finds a job as a dietary maid at the woodcrest residential facility. She meets a man working there named Pete. He informs Barbara that another worker named molly is a fine person to work with, but she will stab you in the back. Not exactly the kindof workplace environment you would want to work at in my opinion. Barbara next moves out of her motel 6 that she has been staying at, and moves into Blue Haven unfortunately its not as nice as she would've hoped. Barbara next works at Merry Maids a cleaning company. She earns about $200 to $250 a week for an average of 40 hours of work. Her new job is alot of tough work, cleaning, and tough rules. They cant even drink water on the job! After a bit of an outburst by barbara to holly their relationship their relationship gets much tougher, and more bitter. On her last afternoon at the maids she anounces to everyone that she is a writer and is going to write a book about her experiances. She asks her coworkers how they feel about cleaning homes for people who are rich when they have so little. The answer is a little surprising how lori and colleen arent bitter towards the rich it just makes them work harder
Barbara's next city she will work at is the twin cities in minnesota. She applies at both wal-mart and menards who take her through meetings and drug tests. Menards offers more money an hour than walmart, but 12 hour shifts are just too much for her. So she takes the job at wal-mart in the womens section picking up fallen clothes her shifts are 9 hours. As the shifts go on though she finds herself gerring meaner and meaner for example she said, "atleast you get to sit down" to a man in a wheel-chair. She finds a new place at the comfort inn and for $5.05 less per day than other places. One day she makes a very interesting and accurate statement comparing wal-mart as a miny form of capitalism. A few days later she explains to a co-worker that she is going to quit because she cant afford to live off of a wal-mart salary. She also explains to melissa (the same co-worker above) about the book she is going to write about her experiances here.
The final chapter is just a summary of the book as a whole. Baraba gives herself a Bplus, and says she did pretty well with her project. In key west she earned $1,039 ut spends all but 22 dollars on necesitties. In Portland she earned approxiamantly $300 a week after taxes, and only spent 1480 dollars for rent. Finally in Minneapolis she earned $1120 a month before taxes. Unfortunately though since she was unable to find an apartment that whole month is to speculation.