ND from Mckinzee Steve

Nickel and Dimed

            The novel Nickel and Dimed, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a documentary on living low-wage life in America.  Ehrenreich travels to three locations, testing the possibilities of making ends meet in minimum wage workplaces. She faces struggles that are both physically and mentally draining.

            The first location Ehrenreich puts to the test is Key West, Florida. She finds a nearby trailer to rent and finds a job waitressing. Soon enough, however, she realizes that her income from waitressing won’t be enough to make the rent on her trailer home. Ehrenreich is forced to seek another job. She gets a job as a housekeeper at a hotel. The two jobs prove to be too much for her to handle, and she quits housekeeping after only one day.

            Ehrenreich’s next stop is Portland, Maine where she works for the Maids along with working as a dietary aide for a nursing home. Facing challenges such as a heavy backpack vacuum cleaner and hands and knees floor scrubbing, she finds working for the Maids to be very physically challenging. Working both jobs keep her on a very tight schedule and working seven days a week is very stressful.

            The final location of her experiment is Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ehrenreich soon learns that the housing market is very tight, and there are no apartments available that she could afford with her low-wage Wal-Mart job. She is forced to live in different hotels at extremely high rates and soon burns through all of her money.

            In the chapter entitled, “Evaluation,” Ehrenreich argues that the upper classes of America could potentially control impoverished America, but either remains ignorant to the facts of their situation or refuses to do anything about it.

Question 17: After reading Nickel and Dimed, do you think that having a job-any job- is better than no job at all? Did this book make you feel angry? Better informed? Relieved that someone has finally described your experience? Galvanized to do something?

After reading the book I still believe that having any job is better than no job simply because a job provides opportunities for income, and you’d at least have a chance to make a way for yourself.  This book did make me feel angry because the attitude she had towards her situation, if you really don’t like a particular situation you will find a way to change it. I do feel better informed to the realities of specific jobs; however, I expected it to be a worse situation. Ehrenreich seemed to over dramatize her experiences with a bitter tone and outlook. I do work in a job where the wages are similar to the ones Ehrenreich described, but the atmosphere is not as horrible as she makes it seem. There are things that people don’t like about every job. I wouldn’t want to work minimum wage for the rest of my life but if I absolutely had to, I’d find a way to make it work and not waste my time having a negative outlook on my life. As horrible as it sounds, I am not inspired to do something after reading this book, because without a lower class there can be no upper and middle class. Let’s face it; somebody has to do the dirty work. If we spread the money around, we’ll have a classless political system, otherwise known as communism.