Nickel And Dimed Sociology

Barbara Ehrenreich’s meritorious non-fiction, Nickel and Dimed, details the life of Ehrenreich as she goes undercover in the low-wage workforce. She works several minimum wage jobs all across the United States in the shadow of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In an excerpt from her writing, her sympathetic view towards the American low-wage workforce and their disgusting workplace is revealed through a coalition of rhetorical strategies. Ehrenreich metaphorically casts the role of Jerry’s: a restaurant in Key West, Florida; to the gastrointestinal system.

Nickel and Dimed, a memoir by Barbara Ehrenreich, is about the millions of Americans working full time on a low wage budget trying support themselves. Ehrenreich soon discovers that even a low paying job requires mental and physical effort. and one paying job is not enough, you need at least two. The Quote “ The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over.” by J.G Ballard can relate to the book Nickel and Dimed. This quote means everyone’s dream of a perfect house and going on vacation or even having money in this world is over. “Still, it’s a shock to realize that “ trailer trash” has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire

Ehrenreich starts her journey in Key west, Florida and experiences the difficult lives of these people. She works as a waitress at Hearthside, and soon gets herself another job at Jerry’s after realizing that she was not making enough money to pay off the $500 home she rented. Sleeping late, waking up early, then going back to work becomes her new schedule, and the people she works for are very oppressive. Ehrenreich finds out that just because you have a low paying job doesn’t mean that it isn’t difficult. In fact, it requires lots of physical strength to keep up to

Barbara Ehrenreich in her book “Nickel and Dimed” first handily accounts her experiences and trials as a well educated and prosperous woman who goes out and encapsulates the life of an American service worker, through reading, I questioned the validity of her words, experiences and wondered how much of the real trials did she actually face. It is no question that Ehrenreich worked the hours, put in the labor, and accounted her own work difficulties but prior her experience set limitations which include basic privileges such as no intentions of homelessness or going hungry but these privileges are also ones that she experiences that her co-workers most of the time, don’t. Ehrenreich even goes through and depicts the housing arrangements of her

“Nickel and Dimed” is a story about journalist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join the number of Americans who had work full time for poverty-level wages. She was inspired by her curiosity about how people living on low poverty wages survived in this country and also by the welfare reform act, which promised that having a job could help lead to a better life. But Ehrenreich wondered about how anyone could truly survive, let alone prosper, on $6 or $7 an hour. In order to find out, Ehrenreich left her home and moved to states like Florida, Maine and Minnesota. She settled for the cheapest homes she could possibly find, such as lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. She also accepted whatever jobs she was offered, working jobs like being a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, waitress, Wal-Mart sales clerk and a nursing-home aide. Before doing her experiment Ehrenreich described the low wage jobs as being unskillful, however she quickly discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," and that even the lowliest jobs required exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is simply not enough; you will need at least two. By publishing the her research

Throughout Ehrenreich’s writing, she developed her essay around the story of her going undercover as a minimum wage worker to understand what the lifestyle of a low wage income is like for people that live in poverty. Some details she included were her work environments, the judgemental customers, her relationships with the other employees, and her overall experience as a server. Ehrenreich included how gross her work environment at Jerry’s

Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of the book, Nickle and Dimed, takes the reader into the everyday life of low-wage workers. Ehrenreich leaves a lifestyle complete with money, a house and healthcare, behind so she can document what it is like to be a part of the working poor. Ehrenreich attempts to live a low-wage job in three different states. First, she begins her new life in Key West, Florida, working as a waitress at a family restaurant called Hearthside. Making only $2.43 an hour plus tips, Ehrenreich’s first low-wage job makes it almost impossible to survive on such a low income.

In chapter two of Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich experiences low-wage work in Maine, which has a high population of English-speaking whites. Over the course of her time working at with the Maids as a housecleaner, she witnessed many health issues that affect her coworkers and experience health problems herself. A major problem that the poor face is access to proper healthcare, in both treatment and prevention. The inability of the working poor to stay healthy is a key factor in their continued suffering.

Besides a check, that she had to turn right back over to pay rent and buy few groceries in order to live for the next day. In turn, that same above described situation is the depressing truth about the cycle of poverty and the experience of one woman who placed herself in a project in order to relate the desperation of minimum wage workers of America.

Ehrenreich makes these observations with academic precision, interspersed with firm middle-class values, but these judgments were not made from an ivory tower, coldly calculated and formed with the disinterested tone of the scientist that she is. To the contrary, Ehrenreich attempted to immerse herself in the lives of female underclass minimum-wage earners and performed her research by taking work and attempting to live off of wages earned by working at truck stop diners cleaning companies. She lives in seedy motels and eats the waste of customers right along side those whom she is studying (2001). In this way she ideally positions herself to understand and report on the dehumanizing effects that

Ehrenreich use of descriptions allows people of upper and middle class able to understand that earning a minimum wage is not living wage to survive in life leaving them without having any doubt that every person in the U.S should have equal opportunity when it comes to job wages. Ehrenreich put away her old life to test an experiment showing the personal struggles that she went through while trying to live on a minimum wage salary. She uses descriptions and examples of all the bad experiences that she encountered as having two jobs in order to live a stable life. This is shown in her words “For six to eight hours in a row, you never sit except to pee” (Ehrenreich 1). She describes how she worked six to eight hours without stopping for break

The main idea of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich demonstrates the complications and the way on how minimum wage workers survived during 1996 in Florida, Maine, and in Minnesota when the welfare reform had an impact on minimum wage. Her goal was to experience how to settle for rent, food, and bills while working in minimum salary. The idea of this project came in mind when she discussed with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s, about future articles in magazines and then asked “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled? How, in particular, we wondered, were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to

Barbara Ehrenreich's intent in the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America exhibited how minimum wage isn't enough for Americans to get by on and that there's no hope for the lower class. Her main objective was achieved by living out the life of the "working poor". During the three cases studies she worked many jobs that are worked by many that are simply striving to live day to day. The jobs she had didn't generate sufficient income to avoid or help her rise out of poverty, in fact the six to seven dollar jobs made survival considerably difficult. Enitially, she believe the jobs didn't require any skill but while on her journey she started to realize they were stressful and drained a lot of energy. In addition to that she

Barbara Ehrenreich is a best-selling author, who wrote the descriptive narrative essay titled, “Serving in Florida”. In this writing, Ehrenreich tells the readers about her experiment into seeing if it was truly possible to live off of minimum wage, in a low-wage community located in Florida. Ehrenreich initially published this writing in her novel called Nickled and Dimed, but since then, it has also been published in other books for students in school. In “Serving in Florida”, Ehrenreich finds a place to live for about $500 per month. While living there, she had a waitressing job, paying 2.13 per hour plus tips. Throughout the writing, Ehrenreich described the obstacles that made it almost impossible to live off of only minimum wage.

Income plays a monumental role in ones health and well being. Lower income individuals and families are more likely to have less access to nutritional foods, healthcare, and are more likely to suffer from mental illnesses. Because of these factors qualitative literature focusing on the connection between minimum wage and well being are