Nickel and Dimed

In Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich takes on mimumum wage jobs to expirence what life is like in poverty. Through these experiences Ehrenreich disproves many sterotypes about people who are poor. The first sterotype is that people who are poor are lazy. When in reality they are some of the most hardworking people. They work physcially demanding jobs such as the house keeper that Ehrenreich worked as in Maine. If someone is jobless this also does not mean that they are lazy. In many places it is hard to find and hold a job. Another sterotype is that if someone has a job they are fine. One job was barley enough for Ehrenreich and she did not have a husband or kids she had to provide for. An exzample of this sterotype in the book is when Ehrnreich is looking for assistance to help her get through the month. They are curious as to why she neds assistance when they find out she has a job. This really opened up my eyes and made me wonder why there is not more help for the poor. If working two jobs and government assistance is not enough something needs to change. Minimum wage workers can not afford schooling to obtain better jobs so they are stuck. It is time for the typical sterotypes of the lower class to change and we should begin wonder what needs to be done in order to help.

Nickel and Dimed

In Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author takes on the challenge of attempting to see what it is like to live in the United States on minimum wage. She works at a hotel that she calls the “Hearthside” as a waitress in the attached “family restaurant.” Ehrenreich is disgruntled by the manager and even goes so far as to say, “Managers can sit…but it’s their job to see that no one else ever does.” She usually has six tables she works at a time, sometimes more. Ehrenreich worries about being, “overqualified.” At first she seems to have the perception that just because you have some sort of degree, low paid jobs will be easier for the employee. Thus she learns the valuable lesson that this is not entirely true. She especially gets this shock at The Maids and Wal-Mart. When she finishes at the Maids she is surprised that she passed the physically daunting work. Ehrenreich often complains of said work to require much bending and lifting. Even describing the pools of sweat that runs down her back while she works. At The Maids she meets many women who are entirely devoted to their job. One girl, Holly, hurts her ankle one day and continues to work. The women seem to work hard and can barely make ends meet. Some even take pride in passing the Accutrac test they are given to see if they qualify. At Wal-Mart Ehrenreich works in ladie’s wear. There she organizes and puts away clothes. However, she ends up working eight to nine hours per day. Not an easy task no matter what job you are doing. In her “Evaluation” of her experiences, Ehrenreich seems to think that those that are not earning a minimum wage salary seem to simply ignore the plight of the poor. She feels that more should be done ease their grief by perhaps making living arrangements easier or raising wages even more.
Reader’s Guide Q. # 15Do you think Americans make excessive demands on the family unit rater than calling for the government to help those in need? Absolutely not. I think Americans have less of a tendency for asking for help from family in comparison to some cultures. This seems to be imposed most by the thoughts of living in an independent country in an independent way. I think people should be helping their families first without consulting the government until things get truly unbearable. Family should be the first line of defense. I think Ehrenreich doesn’t seem to realize that there will always be a lower class that does jobs no one wants to do. Trying to get rid of this class is what the Russians tried to do and that didn’t really work out for them.

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.  

The Martian Chronicles

In his science fiction novel The Martian Chronicles, author Ray Bradbury tells the story of the colonization of Mars. Like in the colonization of America, this process began with the sending of expeditions funded by the government of the mother country. However, in the book, there is apparently only one country interested in colonizing Mars, America, but several European countries had desires relating to America. Another similarity between the two processes relates to the spread of disease. Diseases carried by Europeans wreaked havoc on the Native American populations, and chicken pox almost entirely wiped out the Martians. Another similar trend was the nature of early settler towns. In both the New World and Mars, mining towns were important to the new settlers. Finally, people leaving for Mars and the New World had similar push and pull factors. Black people in America, in the book, wanted to leave so that they could start new lives as equals, and Europeans wanted to leave in order to have religious freedom.

Nickle and Dimed

In the novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich finds herself struggling while living a low-wage life. The first place Ehrenreich lives as an employee is Key West, Florida. She works as a waitress at a restaurant she identifies as the Hearthside, finding a trailer nearby to live in. She also works as a hotel maid, and finds doing both extremely difficult. At the Hearthside, she finds most of the workers struggling just as much as her with rent and living expenses. She also finds a lot of frustration and anger. Ehrenreich finds out a lot about her co-workers. Gail lives in a place for $250 a week with a roommate that drives her crazy. Claude the cook (along with other Haitian men) live in crowded situations. Pregnant Annette lives with her mother. Marianne lives with her boyfriend in a one person trailer for $170 a week. Billy lives in a $400 a month lot. Andy, another cook, lives on his boat. Tina, another waitress, lives in a room at the Days Inn for $60 dollars a night with her boyfriend. Joan lives in her van. She leaves Key West before her trial month is even up, struggling to live a succesful life like many of her ex-co-workers.
In the next chapter of Ehrenreich's life as a low-wage worker, she moves to Portland, Maine. She works for The Maids, a housekeeping service. She takes another job at a nursing home she identifies as Woodcrest. She also finds working in Portland very difficult. The manager at The Maids, is a complete jerk and a cheap one at that. She encounters co-workers at The Maids that don't get sick leave, dont get to go home when they are injured, and take the job just for the little extra money just to get them by. As a dietary aide at Woodcrest, Ehrenreich has to do her job plus everyone else's job one day, finding that it's not an uncommon thing.
Finally, Ehrenreich moves to Minneapolis, Minnesota. She finds that the avalibility of apartments, ecspecially cheap ones, are not common. She scores a job at Wal-Mart in the ladies department. She discovers that workers at Wal-Mart do not get overtime, have very strict rules, cannot use profanity, and cannot even speak the word "union". She also discovers that Wal-Mart workers have been fired for wanting better wages and benefits, but managers claimed that they were fired for breaking company rules. She stays in hotels the whole time she lives there, which are mostly unsecure and uncomfortable.
Many of Ehrenreich's co-workers are in hard situations and some they just can't ecscape of. Ehrenreich adapts to the low-wage life, but she still can't support herself, ecspecially without a living companion. She also finds that many of the workers can't quit their jobs for higher paying jobs because of transportation issues.

All Quiet on the Western Front

In his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Remarque gives each chapter a special focus on a specific aspect of World War 1. For example, chapter 6 focuses on combat and trench warfare, and chapter 10 focuses on life at the hospital, frequent death, and painful injuries. The book is written as a first-person past tense narrative, with frequent flashbacks to events that happened prior. This jumping around enhances the story, as Remarque is able to include relevant pieces of information and back story, while excluding the redundancy of writing about days that are very similar to each other.

Of particular interest to me was Remarque's use of dialogue to explain his beliefs. In chapter 3, he has Stanislaus Katczinsky compare man to beast to explain the army and Himmelstoss's behavior. Since he was a veteran of World War 1 himself, Remarque could speak knowledgeably about the army, and Kat was the best character to relay his opinions through due to his age and experience over Paul and his classmates.

Also striking, to me, was the hypocrisy and nationalistic fervor present in the German populace. Schoolmaster Kantorek embodies both of these traits, as he urged all of his students to enlist in the army, even the unwilling Joseph Behm, but did not volunteer himself. While Paul is on leave in chapter 7, he encounters more of this fervor from a school head-master, who is convinced that he knows more about the war than Paul.

Nickel and Dimed

During the process of researching lower-class life and conditions for her book Nickel and Dimed, author Barbara Ehrenreich faces several struggles. For example, while waiting tables in Florida, she has to serve a group of 10 picky British tourists in addition to several other tables simultaneously. In Maine, Ehrenreich is, on one day, the only dietary worker in the the Alzheimer's ward of a retirement house. She has to handle the meals of many people with much less help than she would normally get. In Minnesota, Ehrenreich struggles with finding employment. She is particularly worried about passing drug tests due to her marijuana use. These experiences, and others, show her how poor people live. Becoming poor and just struggling to put a roof over her head reveal the tribulations of some of the poorest of Americans. Her argument in the "Evaluation" chapter is that wealthy America is in control of the fate of poor America and remains ignorant to its troubles or deliberately tries to push them out of sight.
Reader's Guide: Question 17
1.) After reading Nickel and Dimed, do you think that having a job-any job-is better than no job at all? Yes.
2.) Did this book make you feel angry? Yes; the author's liberal bias and cynicism often got in the way of the telling of her experiences.
3.) Better informed? No.
4.) Relieved that someone has finally described your experience? No; the situations described in this book are dissimilar to my own experiences.
5.) Galvanized to do something? No.