Summary Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

Ehrenreich, found out that Portland is another $5 an hour type of town, and that jobs are heavy labor and at risk for injuries (37). Afterwards, she worked for a hotel as a maid, where there was a lot of indifference like how the hotel charges $25 an hour to a client for their room clean but the worker is only getting $6.65 out of that pay (44). Interesting fact was that the hotel said “Cleaning fluids are less expensive than your time”, which shows that the hote value workers above cleaning products (45). Chapter 3, talked about her last destination, which was Minnesota, but originally wanted to go to Central Valley in California but changed her mind because people said the jobs and low-income housing are filled up by Latinos (69).Barbara Ehrenreich got a job at a retail store called “Wal-Mart,” where she talked about in detail about the interview and how she needed to pee in front of a health professional for a mandatory drug testing to get employed (72-73). Ehrenreich mentions how a housecleaner, who helping a man with cancer clean his sores and cook him food in exchange gave her $325 for her rent, which shows that there was a people that will help low-income workers (75).

She also notes that there are plenty of jobs available. When she arrives she stays at Motel 6 but at the rate of $59 a night she needed to find a job and more permanent housing. She eventually finds a cottage for $120 a week and decided to take it. Ehrenreich applies to many places including goodwill, nursing home work, work in warehouses and even manufacturing. Just like in Florida she has to take multiple choice question “tests” including many opinion questions so the workplace could decide who would be a good fit for the position. She discovered that jobs in Maine do not pay any better than jobs in Key West. She was hired with the Maids, a housekeeping service and also at a dietary aide in a nursing home. Ehrenreich worked seven days a week and was not happy with the way employees were being treated. There were complications at both jobs and when she felt she could not handle them anymore she told her co-workers who she really was and moved on from

The criteria that was chosen for this paper showed that Ehrenreich demonstrated effort and experienced real life scenes as a low-wage worker for the sake of the project. Ehrenreich's project has taught me to appreciate the low-wage workers around me such as the maintenance workers. They work so hard and at times I do appreciate what they do because I am to concerned about myself at times and without them our school wouldn't be as clean as it is. I have now started to to greet them and say a simple thank you. Thank you Barbara Ehrenreich, because of you, I am more thoughtful of workers and

The most difficult problem Ehrenreich faces is lodging. Finding a place to stay is very costly and exhaustive. As Ehrenreich finds out, a lot of her coworkers live inside their cars or with roommates in very small quarters.

Continuously, Ehrenreich concludes with disdain that living off of a minimum wage job without being homeless is difficult or impossible. At each of the states she travels to, she finds she must work two jobs in order to afford even the most basic rooms. She notes that her troubles are not unique. Persistently, she writes about her coworkers being homeless or in one instance, not even being able to afford proper food and instead eating only a bad of

A hardship that Ehrenriech addresses is the fatigue involved in low wage jobs. There are many instances where Ehrenriech complains that she has to stand for over eight hours at work. “Now I have nine hours instead of eight, and although one of them is an unpaid dinner hour, I have a net half hour a day more on my feet”(163). At Wal-Mart, her shift changes from an eight-hour dayshift to a nine-hour night shift. Everyone wealthy or poor has to overcome many difficulties a t their respective work environments. For example, doctors have to be on call at all times, and occasionally have to run to the hospital to take care of an emergency in the middle of the night—everyone has to deal with hardships. Ehrenriech would refute this by saying that though everyone has to deal with hardships, those working at minimum wage a lot of times have trouble making ends meet. They have to deal with a lot of fatigue and stress. As a result of working all the time, minimum wage workers don’t have much time for themselves. They are always stressed, tired and overworked. As a result, they resort to

Ehrenreich reminds her readers that the minimum paying job isn’t enough to provide a decent house for herself, instead she has been living in a trailer. She reiterates that not only working conditions of the lower class are a factor to their poverty, but living conditions for the poor aren't as pleasant as they are for the upper middle class. She follows with another restriction that rises after a coworker of hers spends too much time at a bar. The employee turns out to be another woman who is, "another trailer home dweller and a mother of three". She provides these details because the environment that lower class employees live in tends to drive them to getting drunk, or even into harmful habits for themselves and the people they surround themselves with.

As the author moved from locale to locale she identified a variety of recurring hardships faced by the working poor. The chief concern for many was housing. Finding and maintaining economical housing was the principal source of disruption in their lives. For many of the working poor it’s not uncommon to spend more than 50% of income on housing. These leaves a scarce amount of money left over for anything else and creates a situation where the person is always worried about losing their shelter. In a nutshell, it’s Ehrenreich’s conviction that wages are too low and rents are too high. She does speak with many individuals who simply cannot afford the high rental rates and are forced to live with family, friends, or in some

Ehrenreich is a guinea pig in her own experiment of establishing a stable income with the help of a tight budget to get her to her goal, which is to build a financially stable life, as well as the help a minimum wage job. She performs this in three different locations; each having a lasting impact on her as she learns the difficulty of assimilating in a city with economic setbacks. Ehrenreich has her ups and downs in her experience, especially with money. After the ordeal, the author of the book learns about how much money is depended on and how it can change a person because she experienced it on a first-hand account. Documenting on her journey, Ehrenreich encountered people who were at their lowest and were still attempting to make the best out of it. She met immigrants and coworkers who shared stories of their low salaries and were still grateful for what they receive. This shows that it makes people more appreciated and humble for what they have because it could have been worse. Barbara Ehrenreich gained the talent of adapting to new locations, attempting to establish a secure economic foundation while having financial

In the beginning she was reluctant and did not want to do it herself. She was going to have "some hungry neophyte journalist with time on her hands" do it instead. For the first sections of the book, the author is passive and does not care. Despite trying to educate the public of the strife of the minimum wage workers, she is not passionate about what she is trying to teach. However, as the novel continues she becomes more actively involved. With this involvement she quickly becomes exhausted. Referring back to this invalid out of date experiment, when Ehrenreich was too tired to continue she had the option of quitting, of going back to her normal life. The people she was trying to imitate do not have that luxury. They do not have the option of quitting and starting over when they feel tired. Or they do not like their job, or they are being mistreated in the workplace. Actual low wage people rely on the one or two jobs they have to live. Getting fired or quitting for them is like a death

Most of Ehrenreich’s coworkers pay $500 or more for their rent. 5. When Ehrenreich goes for her job interviews, she gets disrespected most of the time because the employers she meets want their applicants to feel like they are lower class people. This happened to her in her interview for Merry Maids when her employer complains about finding decent help and telling her not to calculate her pay into hours. Ehrenreich never talks about an employer being nice, but in her low-wage work, she tries her best to prove herself, but she is still not treated with

Throughout the book Ehrenreich’s co-workers all seem to struggle, such as the trouble with housing in Key West and healthcare in Maine. Having a place to live, eating properly, and healthcare seem to be the biggest cause of concern within the working class. Most of the jobs that she worked, the workers did not have healthcare packages or benefits. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to have trouble trying to manage their health and struggle to pay for medication, let alone a visit to the doctor. Without healthcare and a lack of proper diet (in Maine she had a ‘thirty minute’ lunch break but most of her co-workers barely ate anything close to a meal) it is not hard to see how the working class can easily be shot into poverty; seeing as most of the working class that she had encountered were just living above the poverty line. Reading about what she noticed and noted about her co-workers it isn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be to fall below the poverty

Ehrenreich applies for many different jobs and ends up choosing between Wal-Mart and Menards. She picks Wal-Mart and find herself working in the women 's department organizing and hanging up clothes. She realizes that she must became friendly with the dressing room attendants in order to make her job easier. Again her supervisors constantly get on her about wasting time. She uses her break times to talk to her fellow workers about a union but quits before really getting anything started.

The situation Ehrenreich is describing is the reality of millions of Americans; they work multiple minimum wage jobs, and are paid “so meagerly that workers can’t save enough to move on.” In addition, Ehrenreich recalls the actions of the U.S. government in regards to assisting these Americans. The article opens with the contribution of President Lyndon B. Johnson on the “War on Poverty”, then the “attack on welfare” in the 90s, concluding with The Great Recession. While writing Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich abandoned her comfortable life to live the life of a low-income American; she worked multiple entry level jobs including Wal-Mart, a maid service, and as a nursing home aide. Through these actions, Ehrenreich establishes her ethos. Because she’s lived the lifestyle she’s describing, she has the authority to speak on the topic. Ehrenreich concludes with her proposal to help the

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.