Barbara Ehrenreich experiences many hardships in her time as a minimum wage worker. These hardships include, poor lodging, limited food due to budget, irritating or incompetent managers, bad coworkers, few holidays, and of course low pay. Barbara learns during her experience that no job is really unskilled and that they are all incredibly physically and mentally tiring, and that if you don’t want to live outdoors you have to have at least two minimum wage jobs. In the end Barbara feels that she was an average minimum wage worker but that she made some mistakes in her job and lodging choices( such as choosing Wal-Mart over Menards). She also feels that the poor are often over looked and forgotten in matters such as housing and labor rights. If Ehrenreich were to attempt her experience again today she would have to make several changes. First, her everyday forty- five minute commutes to work would be impossible to do high gas prices. She would also have to budget her food more tightly do rising prices of that commodity as well. Finally she would have a huge problem just getting one job with today’s unemployment rates, getting a second job and holding it would be a huge obstacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment