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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (平装)
by Barbara Ehrenreich
| Category:
American society, Poverty, Unskilled labor, Non-fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 148.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
An American dilemma vividly investigated through excellent field research. |
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AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 18 items |
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Bani Sodermark (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
This is not Barbara Ehrenreich's first book. She had made a name for herself in journalistic circles with her books, including the collection of essays, The Worst Years of our Lives and Fear of Falling. In this book, she explores the wage situation and life conditions of blue collar workers in contemporary America. Her findings make harrowing reading.
Ehrenreich shows clearly how the rich poor divide has widened to epidemic proportions. That the average unskilled worker has to put in the greater part of the day working at repetitive, uninspiring tasks, day after day in order to earn a pittance, barely enough for a small family to survive on basics. How the decline of the powers of labour unions gives them virtually no cover at all, as regards even basic medical facilities and job security. That an employer's mindset, in general, is such, that all the employee is worth is the few dollars s/he earns in the hourly wages to be paid to him/her and to get the maximum fiscal benefit out of that, throwing all other humanitarian considerations to the winds, all in the name of free enterprise. Ehrenreich concludes that society will have to pay dearly for the kind of denial that squeezes every ounce of energy out of human beings, rendering them incapable of doing anything to improve their lot in life.
In her latest book, Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich expands on the theme of the same employer mindset, i.e. employees are commodities to be used and discarded as and when needed. The subject of study in that book, is the white collar worker, who is unfit for unskilled labour and the surreal situation s/he finds him/herself in.
I read Bait and Switch before I read Nickel and Dimed and the latter moved me more, because of the serious physical exploitation involved, a situation that captures the unskilled worker in a vice like grip, difficult to prise open. The very fact that the author puts herself in the kind of situation over a period of weeks together, before writing about it, speaks volumes for the innate genuinity of the material she imparts in her book.
An interesting point to ponder over is that what goes around comes around. The kind of automation that we expect from blue collar workers in our society is also very likely, the kind of treatment we expect of ourselves, albeit, in a totally different sphere of operation. The question is, do we want to be automated beings who work for daily wages? Or conscious humans living creative lives?
The answer would be the same for those for whose labour we are ourselves responsible, how do we view them? Do we provide them also room to pursue their dreams, even as we long to pursue our own? |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
In a cross-country, low-wage endeavor, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the depths of poverty at a time renowned for its opulence in her work, Nickel and Dimed. Her findings are eye-opening as she discovers minimum wages hold "an overwhelming, dank sense of failure": low-wage employees often struggle to make ends meet, injuries in the workplace are a common occurrence, and workers toil through long hours of strenuous labor with little sympathy and even less of a prospect for a positive future (48).
Unfortunately for Ehrenreich, the power of her novel falters beyond its literary merit and pure emotional appeal. A few short pages into the piece, the political motivation for writing such a novel becomes readily apparent as Ehrenreich rescinds her promise to serve as a candid journalist and, instead, resorts to slanted statistics and language in an effort to stoke sympathy for herself as much as, if not more than, those laboring around her. Rather than depicting the plight of those in low-wage occupations and then seeking to understand the economic causes for such conditions, the reader is told the whole problem stems from "the wonks who brought us welfare reform" without any meaningful attempt to support such claims (4). Ehrenreich even admits: "I don't know how my coworkers survive on their wages or what they make of our hellish condition" (89). If she does not know how those who are working minimum wage are living or what they think of their surroundings, what is the intent of the book? Ehrenreich would have been better served spending her time examining why Wal-Mart has become the world's largest corporation and what that means about the demands of its consumers and employees alike rather than doing an injustice to those in poverty by attacking the company that continues to deliver low cost goods and employ her coworkers.
Ehrenreich turns to Europe in search of a model representative of all that is right in the working world in contrast with the United States, claiming, "Europeans, no doubt spoiled by their trade union-ridden, high-wage welfare states, generally do not know that they are supposed to tip [in the U.S. because they don't have to in Europe]" (19). Unfortunately for her, much of Europe is literally downing in debt - yes, even more than the "horrible" U.S. in terms of GDP - as unemployment is hovering around nine to eleven percent and employment regulations across the board are stifling those who are searching for better work.
Employing additional economic slight-of-hand, Ehrenreich cites stagnate incomes for the poor as an indicator of their plight. "In the first quarter of 2000, the poorest ten percent of workers were earning only ninety-one percent of what they earned in the distant era of Watergate and disco music" (203). However, its not clear if this statistic is adjusted for inflation and the statistic is an inaccurate evaluation of change over time for individuals--that is to say, a person in such a low-income category is unlikely to remain there for an extended period. Evidence for this more accurate portrayal of poverty is the University of Michigan's Panel Survey on Income Dynamics. This study discovered more than half of individuals earning the lowest twenty percent of earnings in the country had a five-fold increase in wages in four years or less, while only five percent of all individuals in the bottom quintile remained there after fifteen years. In all, it would seem the only time Ehrenreich truly alluded to the economics around her was with a sarcastic remark: "After all, if there weren't people who had far too much money and floor space and stuff, there could hardly be maids" (108).
In her attempt to blame specific groups (conservatives, managers, and the wealthy) for the plight of the poor, Ehrenreich detracts from what could be a valid and important message: "the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment" (117-118). Instead, she employs paltry few statistics to validate her claims and even less exploration of the lives of those around her. In her final conclusion, Ehrenreich reasons we should feel "shame at our own dependency on the underpaid labor of others" while conveniently disregarding the myriad of products available and produced in this and other countries that makes nearly every good in America affordable (221).
More importantly, Ehrenreich fails to explain how her own father brought his entire family out of poverty, "My father... managed to pull himself, and us with him, up from the mile-deep copper mines of Butte to the leafy suburbs of the Northeast, ascending from boilermakers to martinis," and why she now feels this upward mobility is no longer possible in America; maybe she believes that hourly-wage workers simply are incapable of anything but tragedy (18). Perhaps the real question is: what did Ehrenreich do with all the money she made writing this political censure? And would she and the rest of America be willing and able to find--let alone pay for--products only produced at premium wages? Nickel and Dimed has certainly helped shed light on the poor since it was released, but not without a few flaws. The real tragedy of the piece is the lack of focus on Ehrenreich's coworkers and the startling absence of any mention regarding the most important way to begin to lift her coworkers from poverty: education. |
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Wendy Brown (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
It was a very interesting book, and Ms. Ehrenreich is a very good writer. I enjoyed the writing.
That said, however, I didn't think Ms. Ehrenreich had a very objective stance. She"said" her intention was to provide objective reporting by going undercover and working as a low-wage earner, but she obviously had an agenda, and the fact that she only spent one month in each place - and not consecutively, either, knowing that at the end of that thirty days, she would be going back to her cushy life ... well, I just felt a little cheated. She lambasted the landlords, the employers, the customers, and even the communities in which she lived.
And as a Mainer, and someone who has lived in Old Orchard Beach for nine years, I was a little insulted by her portrayal of us.
That aside, however, I felt like she was out to prove that a person can not "survive" on a low-wage income, but the truth is that millions of people do - every day, and few of them bitch and moan about how awful it is... but as she pointed out, they have hope that if they work hard, they can make it out of their rut.
And the truth is that they can! I did. Given the circumstances in which I found myself at 18, I could very well have been one of those young girls (a wife at 18, a mother at 19 and again at 21...) that she described, but I'm not. I'm a thirty-something college grad with five kids, a nice home, and my own business.
I enjoyed the entertaining jaunt through Ms. Ehrenreich's fantasy tour of the lower class, but as a former resident, I know that much of her observations were skewed by the fact that she wanted to prove how destitute the working poor are, but in fact, she was unable to do so.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.) |
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Vickie Jackson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
I wish I'd read these readers' reviews and merely borrowed this book from the library, instead of spending $13.00 at an airport bookstore on this book.
This isn't the sort of book I'd ordinarily delve into, but some co-workers of mine were discussing the premise of this book, and it sounded like an interesting social experiment, so I decided to read it and see what the hulaballoo was about.
It didn't take me long, let's say less than four pages, to realize Barbara Ehrenreich was full of herself. Ever prideful of her blue-collar Teamster-infused heritage, she repeatedly reminds us that "Home Town Girl Makes Good,"(being college educated and all), and now earns a good enough living that allows her to live very comfortably, to do as she pleases, and to still have a savings account. A stark contrast to her temporary lab rat co-workers you'll meet throughout the story she weaves, to be sure.
Her arrogant tone intereferes with the ultimate results of the experiment at hand: at the outset, she declares she would "try to live on minimum wages," while meeting her expenses. However, she gave herself a safety net: she would never allow herself to go hungry or be homeless. If that were ever a possibility, she would use her ATM card to withdraw money from her savings. It would probably come as a big surprise to the author just how many less-than-middle class people don't even have a checking account, much less a savings account. And if she came off as being believable to her new-found friends in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, the believability factor was lost on me, simply because I knew she wasn't really buying into her situation. She gave herself an out. She should've read "Black Like Me"... now there's commitment to a project.
Yes, it's a travesty how ill-respected blue-collar or "unskilled" labor is viewed in this country; the regular Joes are the backbone of this nation, and you betcha, they are all underpaid and overworked. I think everyone should be required to be a waitress/waiter just once in their life; it would change your perspective of labor forever.... but I digress. And yes, she took several industries to task for their abusiveness and ignorance, but seemed to miss the reality of these perpetuating mentalities, borne of hereditary economics, geography, and education (or lack thereof).
By the end of the book, I ended up thinking this was really more of a book about exposing the Wal-Mart Corporate Monster; I was convinced that this book was Ms. Ehrenreich's thinly veiled agenda to ultimately skewer Wal-Mart, rather than focusing on how much of our society depends on minimum wage (sometimes multiple) jobs to survive; she missed a great opportunity to provide some discourse into some other areas that affect our earning power as a nation...namely, the illegal aliens who are willing to work for wages far less than minimum wage. She went from the uncomfortable skin of a working stiff, to steaming indignation at realizing how annoying and inconvenient life without an ATM card was, to, finally, surreptitiously engaging her fellow "Wal-Martians" in conversations about forming a union. Why couldn't she just play along on everyone else's level and embrace her poverty, instead of acting all educated and all that?
I found myself angrily reading and forcing myself to finish this book, because, by God, it had cost me $13.00. Hmmm... that would've been almost 2 hours of folding clothes at Wal-Mart for BARB.
Unfortunately, Ms. Ehrenreich, the "real" working class doesn't have the luxury of opting out of life's crises with a simple swipe of an ATM card. I wish I'd opted out of swiping mine when I paid for this book. |
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Anime Dork (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
I'm not sure how to explain how I felt when I read this book. I was torn between interest and irritation. I did think it was a good idea. She says what needs to be said, that it's impossible to live on a minimum wage job, and that much is true so that was all I was really worried about.
I want to address some of the issues this stirred up as a result. There were many that accused her of not finding a roommate as most people have to do. This is a little silly because the point of the story was to prove if one person could support herself with a minimum wage job, and they simply can't. If you need a roommate to survive, then obviously, you're not making enough.
Also, it's not always easy finding a roommate that you can either live with comfortably, or that you know will pay their half in full without any problems. I assure you, I was a victim of having a roommate that stopped paying their half, and it took months to get them to leave.
Next, some people foolishly argued that these people should've just gotten a better job. I think her point was that when someone is satisfied with what they are doing, why should they be spoken down to, labeled as 'unskilled', given the entire burden of keeping the business going, and yet still can not make their bills or live a somewhat luxurious life of being able to eat three times a day when they are working full time?
It has actually been proven, that it was easier to live in the sixties (somewhere around there). If inflation of wages had kept up with the inflation of cost of living, we would all be making 9.50 at minimum wage. I read an article about it not too long ago. So technically, in the sixties, minimum wage was 9.50. I wasn't even surprised. I had just been talking to a friend about it. I told her, I make 8 an hour scooping ice cream of all things, and I can't imagine anyone making a dollar less. I get the feeling minimum wage was supposed to be ten an hour.
Anyway, like I said, thank god someone actually wrote a whole book on it. Even if everyone on earth disagreed with her, at least she helped to spread awareness. And I do think it was big of her to actually go in there and experience the life for herself. For those that argued she bought expensive doctor prescribed medicine for her rash, and still drove her car rather than selling it in her time of need, you have to give her some kind of break. I mean, I'm not asking her to die for me. She didn't even have to do anything if she didn't feel like it, she could've just read up on it and wrote a research paper like most authors do.
The only reason I did give it four stars was because, even though she admits to having misjudged the lower waged working force, she does speak down to her co-workers throughout the book, and I don't think she can help it. She also is extraordinarily racist. I've never read something by such a racist woman. Dear god, every second it was, the mexican guy, or the black guy, or the whatever woman.
She says things like, how she's worried the hispanics will steal up all the crap jobs before she can get them, or that all the hotels are owned by east indians and she's sure the wife of her apartment probably doesn't know english, is a mail-order bride, and is sad since she's in a country without a temple. Does she have any idea how ignorant that sounds? It's racist, plain and simple. Terrible, terrible racism.
I was also disturbed at the chapter dedicated to the drug test she was sure to fail for wal-mart. Here she was, all high and mighty declaring how much better she was than everyone, how much more refined and sophisticated she really is, and yet she smokes weed. What kind of fifty year old sophisticated woman can't pass a drug test for wal-mart? Hypocrite? I think so. |
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B. Williams (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Speaking of the wealthy and powerful top 20%, which includes writers who have written best-sellers, Barbara Ehrenreich has been smart and lucky enough during her career as a writer to reach the point where she can leave her cush, upper-middle class existence to forage in the ranks of the working-class poor... in the interest of journalism, of course (and lucrative book sales). Nickel and Dimed is the tale of Ehrenreich's adventures as a waitress in Key West, a Merry Maid in Maine, and a Wal-Mart associate in Minnesota. Beginning with the exclamation that it is no secret that she has money and connections, Ehrenreich lays the ground-rules for her sojourn in poverty. First, she will need start-up money, but not much - something like $1000. Second, she must find adequate housing - no sleeping in the car or leaning against a tree in a public park (as I have seen many people doing in downtown Austin). Third, no starving. If she cannot afford food, then Ehrenreich's plan is to give up and go elsewhere. Fourth, no lying about skills and qualifications on the resume, although Ehrenreich deems it appropriate to leave out the fact that she has a Ph.D in Biology. With those rules in place (and a few others as well), Ehrenreich lands a job as a waitress in Key West. As we would suspect, it is awful, horrible, pays dirt, and puts her in such destitution that if she wants a chance of making rent on her ramshackle trailor, she has to take another job as a waitress. With two jobs and very little money, Ehrenreich burns out from the energy drain and stress. She then heads north to Maine, where she finds employment with a maid franchise. Ehrenreich's job is to clean and mop and dust and swipe the homes of the well-to-do. Again, the scenario quickly deteriorates into one similar to Key West, only this time Ehrenreich has an irritating rash to go along with her irritating boss. In a flash she heads off to Minnesota where she finds work as a zoner in the ladies apparel department at Wal-Mart. It is here that we see the beginning of what might be the long-term effects on character of low-wage work. By the time Ehrenreich is close to the end of her stint with Wal-Mart, her disposition has turned surley and she all too often finds herself cursing customers, coworkers, and the boss under her breath. Very many people who involuntarily live in comparable situations sooth their pain and suffering by spending evenings with a 6-12 pack of cheap beer and whatever mind-numbing garbage happens to be on television. Not Ehrenreich: she spends her nights recording the day's events on her laptop. She is buoyed by the fact that not only does she have a nice, comfy life waiting for her at home in the Keys, but she also has the possibility of a New York Times best-seller flowing out of her brain and through her fingertips. Sometime later, after Ehrenreich's world had returned to normal, a horde of people buy her book, making it a best-seller. People paid $23 for the hardcover - or roughly 4.5 hours of labor at minimum-wage - and $13 for the paperback, which is a steal at 2.5 hours. |
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Drebbles (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed is an interesting, if flawed, look at how people who work at minimum wage jobs get by in America. Ehrenreich takes on a series of low paying jobs - waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aid and clerk at Wal-Mart, working at each job for a month while finding out if she has enough money to find a place to live and pay for rent and still have money left over for groceries. The descriptions of each job and the amount of work she does for little pay is eye-opening as is the struggle to find affordable housing. The way management (as well as the general public) treats the workers is also eye opening. The "affordable" housing that Ehrenreich finds is often a squalid hotel room with little security. And with little money left over after paying rent, meals are hard to come by, and forget about being able to afford health insurance.
The major flaw in this book is Ehrenreich herself. She's not really poor and it's hard for the reader to emphasize with her because it's clear she'll walk away after only a month in the job (often leaving her coworkers in the lurch). She also doesn't work consecutive months at a time, instead spreading the jobs over a long period of time, returning to her "real" life in between, so she never goes more than a month at a time having to live paycheck to paycheck. She never gets close to her coworkers, the true poor, which would have added real insight to how the poor really live. When Ehrenreich develops a rash, she's quick to call her own doctor and use her credit card to pay for the prescription, rather than use over the counter medicine. Towards the end, Ehrenreich seems to tire of her assignment and seems contents to live in a series of hotel rooms rather than really look for affordable housing. Her last stint at Wal-Mart seems suspicious - she turns down a higher paying job and then continually complains not only about having to take a drug test but the way management treats the workers. She complains that Wal-Mart pays so little that workers can't afford to buy clothes there, only mentioning in passing that employees get a discount. With all the media attention focussed on Wal-Mart, it's hard to believe her choosing to work there was accidental.
In the end however, the book does make a difference, at least to me. I'll think twice before carelessly tossing clothes back on the rack wherever I feel like when I shop and will tip waitresses 20% if not more. |
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Cynthia Knowles (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Barbara Ehrenreich seems to have missed the point of her own research. Her proposed plan was to move to a new city with a small amount of capitol, find a minimum wage job and a place to live and try to make ends meet. She was searching for insight into the working poor who represent a large segment of American workers, made larger since welfare reform. She had the opportunity to be their spokesperson, but instead she was too busy complaining about her own discomfort.
For starters, Ms. Ehrenreich doesn't give up her health insurance or car during this entire experiment. In fact, at one job she develops an itchy rash and instead of doing what the working poor who have no health insurance would do - go the the nearest drug store and buy something OTC and hope for the best - she calls her personal out-of-state dermatologist for a prescription so she is itch-free in a matter of days. Barb, honey, that's not how it works for people without health insurance! They work sick, uncomfortable, injured and even itchy. Really.
She also had the advantage of a car, which she used to drive to multiple employers during the first few days of a new job hunt, filling out applications, having interviews and hunting for an apartment. A car is a luxury many working poor don't have, so they are not able to visit 10 or more potential employers on a single day to put in applications and have interviews like she did. The real working poor use public transportation, bicycles or shoe leather. If the job location or housing is more than a mile from a public transportation route, it's off the radar for many people. I wish Barb had tried this at one of her test cities so that she could see how inconvenient, frustrating and limiting public transportation can be.
She seemed to have her pick of jobs at every location, finding work was never a problem, and she berates those who say it is. However, she refused to work more than an 8 hour shift, and complained that at one job she had to go 2 1/2 hours without a break and she didn't think she could make it. Oh gosh, the horror! Would love to see her do farm work, or road work.
There is a lot of complaining about the cost of rent increasing faster than the minimum wage scale. This is true, and an excellent point. She failed at all of her minimum wage locations because the cost of housing broke her bank at the end of the month. But never once did she consider having a roommate. That would have cut her expenses by 50%! And when she got to the end of the second week in Minneapolis without a paycheck and without a reasonably priced room, it never occurred to her to sell her car. Barb may have been working with the poor, but she just didn't get it.
I was offended by her inappropriate sarcasm and her obsession with ethnicity - describing every single person she saw or met by race FIRST. But I was most offended by her not understanding that people come in a vast range of "normal." There are many people working the jobs she worked who just aren't capable of working as a manager or professional writer and never will be. They have found employers who respect their abilities and they take great pride in their work. The same work that Barbara had such contempt for. In fact, while working at Wal-Mart she describes her work by saying, "I could be a deaf-mute...autism might be a definite advantage." Really, she wrote that, real sensitive, huh?
She also seems to think that everyone who is lower middle class is fat, and that fat people are to be disrespected. She writes, "Everyone knows that the lower middle class are tragically burdened by the residues of decades of potato chips and french toast sticks." She refers to Wal-Mart customers as "wide-bodies" and fears if she's standing in the wrong place at the wrong moment she might be crushed by one.
She laments over and over, "Why don't they get out of these jobs, find something better, move up in the world?" Just maybe, Barb, some of these employees are already working up to their abilities, are proud of the fact that they have jobs, and a social circle at work of people who respect them.
Her true colors show when she walks out on, quits without notice, and even leaves other employees the responsibility of returning her uniforms in every single location. She has no thought for the workers she left short handed, or the bosses who were left under staffed. She might write that her coworkers are important, and she might have done some kind things for them, but she was an irresponsible and thoughtless employee.
I give this book two stars instead of one because it is well-written. It is the content that I object to. Barb might write about the lower middle class, but she surely does not understand what it means to live lower middle class. She never really got it. There are many better books on the plight of the working poor listed on this amazon page and in many of the other reviews.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.) |
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