A Hard Look at the Low End of the Economy

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	• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Barbara Ehrenreich Holt Paperbacks, 2002 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 1079 reviews view larger image
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A little too much Barbara

Though I am glad I read this book, I was disappointed by the authors' self-centered writing. The people she works with seem like mere extras, although they are the real experts on the subject. Additionally, I was surprised that Ehrenreich did not follow the advice (to find a church) given to her by a contact in Minnesota who had previously been in a similarly difficult situation. I can't remember much other direct, practical advice that is related in this book, and yet Ehrenreich fails to follow that piece of advice. The book was worth reading, but it seemed like the author could have done much better.

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Informative Piece of Reading ...

Someone recommended this book to me not too long ago. I had read "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" by Judith Levine. This friend of mine recommended this one as a better read. I have to agree with my friend. This is a much better reading than Levine's book. While Ehrenreich's views are colored by the fact that she knows she can escape any time and go back to living her comfortable life, I think she did a fair job of portraying what it is like to live among the working poor. There were definitely not a lot of "poor me" attitude in this book, especially about herself. I didn't detect any smug pity for others in this situation, just a fair reporting of the experiment of her experiences.

It is an eye-opener. I have forgotten how hard it is to scratch a living while working in retail places that only pay you minimum wages or how brutal waitressing is on your body. I have totally forgotten the mentality of working with no time to relax. My family is not rich by any means though we may be more intellectual than interested in sports. My dad was laid off during the Reagan years, one of the thousands of blue collar workers who suddenly found themselves without jobs. I remember very vividly watching both of my parents going off to look for work during those years. As soon as I turned 16, I started working too in order to scratch some money for college. After college, I couldn't find a job in my field (this was during the Bush Sr. years), so I worked as a bookseller in a book store, retail clerk in a clothing store, jobs that are supposedly not minimum wage but were anyways. I had to move home because I couldn't afford to live on my own even with roommates. It took me years to get out and back on my own. This is just in the mid-west, mind you. I can't imagine what it would be like in bigger cities with bigger rent bills.

I found this book to be very interesting and very informative. Yes, Barbara may be middle-class, but I think she is of the upper-middle class, not the lower middle-class. She admits to having a pampered job and she also admits that her jobs as a waitress, nursing home aide, and Wal Mart salesclerk were hard and can be mind-numbing. But she addes to her antedotes with revelant bits of information that I find so interesting. It really isn't being talked up in the media (at least not in my newspaper, it is). What I found very interesting was the food vouchers and what they can provide for you. It makes me wonder if that contributes to the rising obesity rates.

I could go on and on but the reviewers before me really raised up some valid points in his/her reviews. I found this book to be more personal than others (not that I have read every single book on this subject) and would like to learn more about the working poor. This book was an excellent starter for this issue. This book also serves as a reminder of my working days before I met my husband.

1/5/08

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A Hard Look at the Low End of the Economy

I you have forgotten what it is like getting by on the minimum wage, this is a good first book to start with. Ehrenreich works at various minimum wage jobs for this book and she does a good job explaining some of the mental somersaults these people put up with trying to have a life on a low wage. She talks about the jobs as well as trying to find living arrangements on this meager wage. This is a book version of the TV show "30 days". If you have seen that show, this book is like that.

The part the struck me the hardest was how a co-worker at the local retailer was wondering if a $5.00 shirt was going to be reduced in price again because she couldn't afford it yet. Ehrenreich does a great job explaining how hard the work is for domestic house cleaners. She goes into great detail explaining how scrubbing on your hands and knees is supposed to promote extra cleanliness to the customer while at the same time she is told not to use too hot water even though it won't clean as well if it is not hot enough.

This book left me in a very foul mood after I had read it. I came very close to ending up a minimum wage worker before I was able to earn an education and my ticket out. This book brought back unpleasant memories that I thought I had forgotten.

"Nickle and Dimed" is a very good and fast read. If you do not know of this world, Ehrenreich gives you a glimpse into it and she does not romanticize their plight, although she does seem to cheer them on. There are no heroes here, only desperate people trying to live. It certainly gives you something to think about when you are in the next retail store. Highly Recommended.

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Could have been much more than it is.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Henry Holt, 2001)

So this whole "changing the way America looks at the working poor" bit doesn't wash with me. Why? Maybe because I find it hard to believe that people don't already know everything that Ehrenreich tells us here. Maybe that's because I've spent well over half my working life at, or just above, the poverty level. Been there, done that, couldn't really afford to buy the T-shirt, much less pay the rent on the closet in which to store it. In other words, I find it kind of pathetic that a book like this had to be written in the first place, however I feel about the book itself.

Many of the flaws, shortcomings, and shocking statements from someone who is as purportedly bleeding-heart-liberal as Ms. Ehrenreich have already been done to death, so my recounting them again isn't going to contribute anything. They're there, and they take away from the book. I do appreciate its premise (even if I do find it redundant, given how many of the working poor there actually are in this country), though I, like many other reviewers, wonder at Ehrenreich's seeming lack of experience with some of the things that might well have helped her stretch a buck (yard sales, etc., are wonderful things; I went close to a decade without buying a single book that didn't come from thrift stores, library book sales, etc.), and even though I am one hundred percent in agreement with her ideas on the soul-sucking evil that is Wal-Mart, even I found the anti-Wal-Mart screeds a little on the crazy side.

A more balanced book like this would, I think, be a very good thing. This is not that book, but since it's all we currently have, it'll have to do. ***

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