Barbara Ehrenreich

On (Not) Getting by in America

Nickel and Dimed

The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Nickel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

On (Not) Getting By in America

west

Mandy

The subtle horror of this book being two decades old and not one bit of it is outdated.

I started working at a restaurant in Japan partially for a similar journalistic endeavor (but for personal discovery), and I hadn't expected my empathy for blue-collar workers to soar that high. I was curious about the manual workers' culture in a different country, and it isn't too different in the dogged management and tiredness

Xin Ma

Megan Snodgrass

I'll begin my review by saying that this book touches on an important topic and bringing to light that living on minimum wage was nearly impossible in 1999, and just as impossible in 2019. The book itself is an easy and palatable read, you could finish it in a half a day. The whole point of the book is that Barbara is going to do investigative journalism by figuring out how to live on minimum wage in 3 different cities for a month.. She was 'all in' except she refused to do xyz, she would allow herself more starting money than anyone would typically have, she would have a car to drive, she refused to be homeless, and she would utilize her current health care. This sounds nitpicky and I am fully aware of that, as I would also have had an extremely difficult time doing this, but it just rubbed me the wrong way when she is supposed to be writing on her experience in that situation. She's allotting herself many things that would not be afforded to someone in such a situation. Further.. there were quite a few comments that came across as nationalistic, and she commented on race in a rather off-colored way. I think if you're trying to learn more about minimum wage living in the US there are better books than this.

linda

This is actually a pretty slim book, but it took me quite a while to get through. Barbara Ehrenreich, an undercover investigative journalist, spent two years (I think) working in Key West, Florida, Maine, and Minnesota in low-wage jobs. In Nickel and Dimed, she documents her experiences. Ehrenreich’s takeaway: the minimum wage is not a living wage; the American working poor are suffering because of systemic failures in healthcare, infrastructure, etc. 

Because of the upward skewing of the housing market, many workers have to take on two, or even three jobs to afford rent. Ehrenreich lived primarily in a trailer park and motel rooms. Getting a minimum wage job has many requirements: a stringent interview process, drug testing (transportation and time cost), “personality” tests (when literacy is a huge issues), many of which would barr workers from an impoverished backgrounds. Once she was hired for a minimum wage job, Ehrenreich found that “no job, no matter how lowly, is truly ‘unskilled.’ Every one of the six jobs I entered into in the course of this project required concentration, and most demanded that I master new terms, new tools, and new skills-from placing orders on restaurant computers to wielding the backpack vacuum cleaner.” Employers stifle the ability of workers to negotiate wages during the hiring process, discourage economic literacy, and offer employee rewards in lieu of wage increases. For the most part, the affluent are blind to the plight of the working poor because of increased economic segregation and decreased (and often inaccurate) representation in the media. 

Ehrenreich injected humor into a rather serious topic during the book, but there were moments when I sensed her condescension around the people she was working with (constant reminders to the reader that she has a PhD). Also, she often quit jobs and moved onto new ones, when others would not have had the same flexibility. I think Nickel and Dimed only represents the tip of the iceberg; the reality is much worse.

Amber Laha

I tried to read this, but the way she talks about the people who work minimum wage jobs was offensive. She called these jobs unattractive, like somehow these jobs arent fulfilling to some or they couldnt possibly be working these jobs for any other reason than to get money. The fact that she compares a job she had to a prison camp horrified me. Considering what I have read about them, I highly doubt it is comparable. I also found this to lack authenticity. She had money, she didnt experience the true feeling of not having a back up. She speaks only her experience and other people's experiences are through her eyes. Her experiences in these jobs, is not enough and does not speak to how others view them at all. And the way she viewed her co workers that were people of color seemed problematic. She tried to emphasize that she wasn't racist or biased but by doing so it made me feel she was the opposite..

Nikki Sojkowski

This was one of THE WORST books I've ever read. As my father put it: "this book was written by a loser author who doesn't know what she's talking about". So Barbara here went 'undercover' working low-wage jobs to basically see what it's like. And, wow, it's hard! Shocking, I know. She's just condescending throughout the book and the whole entire thing is basically her acting like a victim.

Going into this, she made 3 rules for herself:
1. She wouldn't fall back on her education/normal job skills
2. She would take the highest paying job offered to her
3. She would take the cheapest "acceptable" accommodations she could find

She also said she will never go homeless or without food because she will have her 'real' ATM card with her at all times. She also keeps her laptop to connect to her 'real life.'

First off, her definition of 'acceptable' is much different from a typical persons definition. If I was in a low-wage job, I'd probably find someone to room with and help pay rent, does she do that? No. She also always has a car with her, which she pats for with her 'real life money,' not any wages earned by her low-wage job, and she does this on her own with no medical problems. It already feels like she's cheating on her experiment! That could perhaps all be forgiven if she wasn't so vain. She's completely full of herself and her superiority complex makes for a REALLY obnoxious book. 

Here is what really gets me: she acts shocked at what should be really obvious things. She's shocked that no employer questions her background and asks why someone with a degree needs a 'poor person job'- of course not, they just want your labor and 'smart people' fall onto hard times too! She's shocked no one found her hobby of writing to be strange. It's like she expects them all to be illiterate/uneducated with no aspirations of their own! Some people just get into bad circumstances and get stuck in low-wage jobs! Again, she's shocked that no one recognizes her as 'educated'- again, of course not! No one gives her a job at first- again, she was shocked even though she has no physical labor experience on her resume. Lastly, she's amazed that during her undercover work her coworkers were never slackers, drug addicts, or thieves. She is absolutely amazed that these people actually work hard and do their very best. How 1% are you Barbara??

So the synopsis is that she tries to live on minimum wages in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. IF the above rules didn't indicate her lack of resolution to actually commit to the bit, she cheats even more. Staying for free in rich friend's apartments, using her old life's money to pay for a motel etc. It's just seems to completely defeat the purpose of her experiment. She has a slight health problem in Maine and immediately calls her fancy doctor in Florida who gives her expensive medicine that she pays for with her old life funds and not the minimum wages she's supposed to be living on.

To top it all off she's pretty upper-class stereotypical and downright mean as well. She considers experimenting in California as well, and I quote, "but warnings about the heat and the allergies put me off, not to mention my worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as the often do." HOGGING. CRAP. JOBS. Like they WANT to be in that situation. If they could make a better lives for themselves I bet they frickin' would! But they have to work all day just to put food on the table (figuratively-- there might not actually be a physical table).

Her horrible methods aside, she does make two good points (though news articles make the same ones). 1) 1/5 of homeless people have full or part-time jobs. 2) Unemployment is not causing poverty, the low-wages that exploitative companies pay is what's causing poverty.

TL;DR? Long Story Short: Pass on this flaming piece of trash book.

Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting by in America

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