Essay about Nickel and Dimed by Barbra Ehrenreich

In the book Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, who is a famous journalist and writer. She explores how low-wage workers survive in America by going undercover. Ehrenreich notes that her experiment will take place in three different states: Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. In these three sates she works as a maid, waitress, and in retail. Ehrenreich’s goal at the end of each month was to have enough money for the next months’ rent.

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book that can be appropriately described as a piece of investigative journalism. While eating an expensive lunch with the editor of Harper’s, Lewis Lapham, Ehrenreich’s sociological interest is piqued. She is perplexed at how low wage workers manage to pay their expenses with seemingly almost no financial resources. Because of the recent welfare reform at the time (2001), one of her main interests was how women that were used to receiving welfare would survive on $6- $7 an hour. Therefore, she decides to partake in an experiment. She creates a drastically lowered version of her identity, claiming she is a divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after several years. Her main goal is to see if

When I purchased Nickel and Dimed earlier in the semester for the course, I read plenty of reviews saying that this was a must-read for everyone. I assumed that it would be a fairly informative book regarding the reality of poverty in America with bits and pieces of sad, disheartening testimonies thrown in along the way to reinforce our view of poverty; what I did not expect was the amount of honesty and humility that would come packed into those two hundred pages. Ehrenreich uses her experiences in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota to catch a glimpse into the lives of those living below the poverty line in America who struggle to make ends meet working

“Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow” (Ehrenreich, 2001, pg. 199). Barbara Ehrenreich wrote this in her captivating book Nickel and Dimed, where she embarked on a journey that revalued the truth behind life in low-wage America. Growing up I was led to believe that nothing worth having comes easy. As long as I worked hard and gave everything 100% I was guaranteed success, in essence hard work was the key to success. Ehrenreich revels the sad reality for many Americans where hard work, the type you never thought possible that leads to exhaustion, does not guarantee success. Ehrenreich had very unique objectives for writing this novel and she was able to reveal the impacts of social policy then and now.

Barbara would have never discovered for herself how difficult balancing a low pay job and having no one to look after your child could be. Not to mention, I think that this scenario really opened Barbara’s eyes talking to someone in depth about having a low-wage lifestyle and what that is like. Question 7: Throughout the three chapters of “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich the theme of poverty is very evident. In Chapter one, Barbara is working Hearthside and talks to her coworker Joan about her living situation.

After reading the introduction to Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, I immediately felt that that she had advantages over other people that would be working similar jobs since she is an educated native English speaker. No matter what jobs Barbara Ehrenreich will be attempting to work, this will immediately put her ahead of anyone who doesn’t speak fluent English or is an immigrant in the United States. Barbara Ehrenreich admits to this at the end of the introduction chapter by saying, “Just bear in mind, When I stumble, that is in fact the best case scenario: a person with every advantage that ethnicity and education, health and motivation can confer attempting, in a time of exuberant prosperity, to survive in the economy’s lower depths”. Barbara Ehrenreich has everything going her way when it comes to working a job. She is white, educated, and has emergency funds to fall back on if she fails in anyway. She also has the advantage of being able to focus on working while others may

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich tells a powerful and gritty story of daily survival. Her tale transcends the gap that exists between rich and poor and relays a powerful accounting of the dark corners that lie somewhere beyond the popular portrayal of American prosperity. Throughout this book the reader will be intimately introduced to the world of the “working poor”, a place unfamiliar to the vast majority of affluent and middle-class Americans. What makes this world particularly real is the fact that we have all come across the hard-working hotel maid, store associate, or restaurant waitress but we hardly ever think of what their actual lives are like? We regularly dismiss these people as

A journalist who has Ph.D in biology wanted to know how people could live with just seven dollars per hour. In Nickel and Dimed, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, introduces how people live with low-wage jobs. She told that employers sometime see their employees as potential criminal, their employees' work environments do not suit for their works, and the employees's wages does not satisfy what they need to survive.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book composed of Ehrenreich’s experiences working minimum wage in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. Ehrenreich’s sheds light onto what it is like for most minimum wage workers and brings insight into what it truly is like trying to make it on $6-$7 hourly wage. Nickel and Dimed does a wonderful job of giving insight to the everyday lives of the working class and somewhat understanding their lives better. Before reading this book, I had my share of thoughts on the working class based on what I knew from growing up with family members and even my father being apart of the working class. This book reinforced a lot ideas that I had about the working class and opened my eyes into what it means to live above the poverty line.

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

In the essay by Barbara Ehrenreich, titled Nickel and Dimed written in 2001. This article talks about how Barbara struggled through her low-income life at the time in Florida. Due to high rent and low wage, her experience shows us that the most middle-class Americans have a huge financial problem. Now, she wants to prove why economic crisis still exist in some parts of America.

George Ritzer came up with the phrase “McDonaldization” to describe the extreme rationalization that our society has become accustomed to. Drive throughs, assembly lines, ATM’s, packaged salads, or, even, salad bars or buffets. Efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control are the four main parts of McDonaldization that require for it to work.

Mcdonaldization, according to George Ritzer, “is the rationalization taken to its extreme.” I have the “luxury” of being employed by Sears, company which is a chain of department stores across the country. At Sears, I am an appliances sales consultant. A normal day in this position consist of arriving on time to get my reports for the day. These reports are different customer information, complains, and request that have to be dealt with by either me, or I have to find the appropriate person to be able to help. Once that is taken care of, it is my job to catch up on the appliances the Sears sells and formulation a sales pitch that will successfully persuade the customer to buy their appliances during their visit. This consist of finding out the known problems, known questions, and solutions that have worked for other people. After this is done, it is time to engage the customer.

Verifiable Principles – The validity of scientific principles can be verified. They provide reliable basis for predicting the outcome of future events. Similarly, management principles can also be tested in different conditions in different organisations. For instance, whenever there is an imbalance between authority and responsibility, the job becomes impossible.