Download Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America PDF Torrent
The bestselling, landmark work of undercover reportage, now updated
Acclaimed as an instant classic upon publication, Nickel and Dimed has sold more than 1.5 million copies and become a staple of classroom reading. Chosen for “one book” initiatives across the country, it has fueled nationwide campaigns for a living wage. Funny, poignant, and passionate, this revelatory firsthand account of life in low-wage America—the story of Barbara Ehrenreich’s attempts to eke out a living while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart associate—has become an essential part of the nation’s political discourse.
Now, in a new afterword, Ehrenreich shows that the plight of the underpaid has in no way eased: with fewer jobs available, deteriorating work conditions, and no pay increase in sight, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.
As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to “girl,” trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at 5 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as “Some people work better when they’re a little bit high.” In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.
So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the “bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?” Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month’s rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit–where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. –Lesley Reed
- ISBN13: 9780805088380
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
List Price: $ 15.00
Price: $ 4.95
From the perspective of a tourist,
Nickeled and Dimed has an interesting premise: an upper middle class woman tries to live on wages of an unskilled jobs in three different locations in the US. Here Ehrenreich describes her experiences doing just that and tries to relate these experiences to a larger frame of reference by laying out statistics about the US.
From having done this and that over the summers while in college and having spent the past year earning 3.85/hour plus room and board I can sort of compare my experiences in accessing Ehrenreich’s book. Two things that made Ehrenreich’s experiences harder than they probably would be for a person who was living the life that she was trying to visit are that she moved around frequently and she wasn’t as frugal a shopper as she could have been. The moving around means that she was always starting fresh. From my experience after about 2 months in a city I know where to go for this and that and my expenses drop. Also she wasn’t the most frugal person. When she had to get khaki pants on short notice for a waitressing job, she spent 40$ on pants with a stain from a discount store. In Florida (the same state) at about the same time I had to get khaki pants on short notice and found them for 15$. I’m kind if fat and so there was less of a selection for me than for someone in a more common size. I doubt that normal people in such jobs would spend 40$ on pants. 15$ felt like alot to me. From Ehrenreich’s description she didn’t bat an eye at 40$
Ehrenrich’s descriptions of co-worker’s plights are more realistic. While it isn’t so hard to get by at poverty level (unless you get sick like missing work sick) I have trouble imagining how to raise a family on minimum wage. Descriptions of co-workers whose food budget was tiny are common. I kind of wonder how these people felt about being quizzed. I feel that there was too much focus on rent and food. These are big expenses but they are predictable. Once one finds a way to make ends meet that’s stable at least.
One aspect of being poor that I feel was neglected was the lack of medical care. Insurance coverage is expensive and if it doesn’t come with the job then that is a big budgeting item. Also jobs without benefits are the one that pay less. Also the difficulty in getting sit down work if one gets injured is a huge issue. Ehrenreich kind of touches on these with statistics and concern for a co-worker with a sprained ankle respectively, but she spends most of her time discussing how the nations poor can’t buy food or make rent and trying to make poverty an immediate life or death issue. For me poverty is about not having a safety net.
When I was working for 3.85 and room and board (no benefits at all) I had a co-worker with higher pay use this book to explain how easy I had it. At the time I was trying to scrape together enough for a dental visit and pay some work related expenses. (I had switched jobs and underestimated the fees for work related training and equipment.) She was angry that I was having trouble getting cash together because that reflected badly on the company. Which brings me to a point: Everyday you are in contact with someone who is living at poverty level. Because they shower and know how to get by you may not realize this. The starving limping people Ehrenreich describes aren’t common, but that shouldn’t be used to undercut the problems faced by poor people who are not in an emergency state right now. It seems to me that many of the people I know who have read this book have strange ideas about the poor to begin with. So if you haven’t been poor for a while then don’t make this your only source for info about it.
I reccommend Nikeled and Dimed, but take it with a grain of salt. Ehrenreich is a tourist of poverty and has a shallow impression not a deep understanding of the issues.
Was this review helpful to you?
|I really wanted to like this book but…,
I’m not sure I’ll be able to adequately explain my feelings about this book. While I expected to love it, it left me disappointed. But I can’t understand all the anger I’ve seen in reviews I have read. Barbara Ehrenreich’s heart is in the right place, I’m just not sure that she has the proper attitude or experience to write a realistic picture of what it’s like to try to survive on a low paying job. She tried, though, and I suppose I need to give her more credit for that. Her premise is that no one can have a decent standard of living while working for minimum wage, and I agree it’s very difficult. But she believed that before she started her experiment, and I don’t think she learned anything new from her adventures in the world of low paying jobs. She only searched for details that confirmed what she already believed, and in the end, she persists in placing blame on the workers who probably feel trapped in a situation they don’t know how to leave.
I think that the major fault I find with this book is Ms. Ehrenreich’s attitude. She seems condescending towards her fellow employees and resentful towards her employers. And at all times, it’s obvious that she can’t understand what it really feels like to have to live on what she’s making. She knew she would never have to. Her attitude towards her co-workers is perhaps understandable. What seems most inconsistent to me is her opinion towards ALL of her bosses. I was especially disappointed in her description of one of her managers at Wal-Mart. She introduced her boss, Ellie by saying “I like Ellie”, but then went on to scornfully describe her style as “the apotheosis of ‘servant leadership’…the vaunted ‘feminine’ style of management.” What’s wrong with a person in a position of responsibility showing some respect for those she manages? Why couldn’t Ms. Ehrenreich just accept her good luck in having a supervisor who was a genuinely nice person? I’m sure Ellie isn’t getting rich on what she made at Wal-Mart, either. The pay scale for EVERY job within that store probably compares unfavorably to any work with which the author has ever supported herself!
The author’s attitude towards the people whose houses she cleaned in Maine also troubled me. They are not the cause of the low pay and long hours she and her co-workers endured. It was obvious that Ms. Ehrenreich was ashamed of cleaning houses, of being in a role she saw as subservient. It isn’t like that for everyone. Friends I have had who cleaned houses for a living, even through an agency, often became friends with the people whose homes they cleaned and I never had the impression that my friends felt inferior to the homeowners. However, it does seem obvious to me that the owner of the agency Ms. Ehrenreich worked for was being very short sighted when it came to his attitude on wages. By refusing to even consider a pay raise for his employees in what seemed to be a tight pool of potential workers, he was guaranteeing that his business would not grow.
Many of my personal feelings about this book come from the fact that from 1980 until 1993, I supported myself with a series of low paying jobs, everything from fast food worker, to telephone sales, to even Wal-Mart. Did I live well? At times I did. Most of that time I worked at least two jobs at a time, often with fewer than one or two full days off each month. But like Ms. Ehrenreich, I had the advantage of being a single woman with no children to support. I have no doubt that had I been raising children, I would have needed some kind of financial assistance. Things I could choose to do without as an adult would not be an option for a mother. Could a mother with children live without a car? Could I have given my children a good life without access to affordable health insurance? Could a mother with children live in a three-room furnished attic apartment with about 300 square feet of space? I have nothing but admiration for all the people supporting themselves and their families on low wages. Often people who knew I worked two jobs would ask why I worked so much, even inquiring if I had children to support. I always laughed and replied, “If I had children, how would I afford all the child care I would need to pay for to work so much? When would I have time to actually spend time raising my own children?” But even working up to 60-70 hours each week, the most I ever made in a year was about $18,000 gross. A careful, single woman (or man) could manage pretty well on that. But how could anyone support a family on those wages? While the author feels sorry in an abstract way for the difficult position of her fellow workers, she didn’t come away from her experience with much compassion for them. She still doesn’t understand that in the world of workers with few skills or little formal education, there are few choices, yet most of these people work very hard and take some pride in what they do. I expected this book to…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|