Rating: 
Summary: ????
Review: so i saw everyone knocking this book for it's "whining" approach to social righteousness. And how she didn't take the most menial jobs that were out there. After reading this book, my views on shopping and other cases has changed. After reading the section on Selling in Minnesota, i will never just discard an article of clothing whereever i feel fit. I will take it back to where i got it and neatly fold or hang it. The point was clear to me that no matter what kind of work a person is doing they should not have to do extra work do to human inconsiderance.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: As a previously well paid employee who is now trying to live on a quarter of my former salary, this book really resonated with me. My recent experiences have shown me how hard some of these low pay jobs are and how difficult it is to move beyond them. We tend to automatically denigrate those who can't climb the economic ladder, not understanding how difficult that is when they have no resources, no paid time off, no savings. I think the author did a great job of showing in detail what these jobs are like and how body and mind battering the jobs and especially the attitude of management can be. I've read some of the other readers' reviews and am dismayed with their accusations of her whining, etc. She is merely reporting a situation that she so clearly shows is out of view to the middle class. I think the book would have been stonger if she had stuck with simply reporting and refrained from her political and sociologal analyses, though I certainly agree with much of her final Evaluation.
Rating:
Summary: 4 stars for the scenarios, minus the 5th star for whining...
Review: Hmmmm.I grew up in rural North Carolina and Georgia around all the sorts of people and job situations that the author investigated. She wouldn't last a month if she were really in this sort of situation. As other readers said before, she totally relied on previous money...but her main "shield" to me was that she knew it was all TEMPORARY. She never faced the dispair of never really having money and not knowing how long such a situation would last. I did appreciate her enlightening the plight of the workers and the housing conditions, but she herself annoyed the heck out of me. Whining, moaning and groaning about basic work (having been a waitress myself - get over it sister) and being all hoity toity about the jobs that she would even interview for (I mean, hel-lo, if she was truly homeless and out of $$ I don't think she would have been so picky) - it got a little old. But I do think it was a definitely good, although upper-class and social-class prejudiced, read.
Rating:
Summary: Exciting Ehrenreich
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich, with a Ph.D. and well-paying job in journalism, decides to do some old-fashioned journalism with the help of encouragement from her boss. She was going to experience life through the unskilled low-wage workers. She wanted to see how easily she could survive with a job that pays close to 7$ an hour, like the many millions of Americans that have this wage.
Through her experiences at three jobs as a waitress, maid, and employee at Wal-mart, she discovered many overlooked things about low-wage workers. Firstly, she realized that even though you are being paid 7$ an hour, you still have to work very hard. An educated skilled worker such as herself wasnt able to outstand her co-workers. Next, getting by on the low-wages was very difficult for her at times. She had to eat very inexpensive foods and even get free meals sometimes. She lived in a one-room motel and trailer park which were basically the lowest rent she could find without living in her car. She concluded that the wages in America were too low. America needs to realize how severe the living conditions are for the supposedly "unskilled" workers and have to do something about it.
I am a 14 year old kid. I do not recommend this book to other young teens because they have no purpose in reading it. They can not relate to the topics because they are not trying to find jobs. I would, however, recommend this book to adults. No matter what their position in life they can relate to these topics in someway. For most, the facts will be interesting and relevant.
Rating: 
Summary: Valid Scenario - Fake Worker
Review: If good writing is something that makes you react, then this book is great writing .... er,I guess ...because it made me alternately furious and irritated. Most of the criticism I long to deliver has already been given in greater detail and more eloquently in the "Have your quiche and eat it, too" review - but I will add this: the author makes ONE [and only one] excellent point, and makes it repeatedly: the lack of affordable housing at the lower end of the economic scale is a disgrace in a country as affluent as ours, and by consuming such a high percentage of the net take-home pay of the minimum-wage worker, poor housing condemns him/her to remain a renter, not an owner, because he/she can never seem to accumulate enough capital to get a few steps ahead - a long term lease on a decent apartment or a down payment and mortgage on some thing permanent. There are many possible solutions to this problem, but the author never pauses in her self-centered litany of backaches and toilet-bowl brushes to consider them. Ms. Ehrenreich's basic scenario is true: a single, unskilled worker with very little money and no friends, family or ties in a community arrives and tries to "start up" a decent life - and it's terribly hard - but the book presents at least one possible source of aid which Ms. Ehrenreich obviously disdains [the African-American aunt who says " find a church - you always find a church" and tells how church members drove her to a food bank the first day].
In spite of reminding us various times about her Ph.d in Biology and her daughter at Harvard she is absolutely vitriolic [Envy? Hate? Class warfare?] toward the homeowners of the houses she has to clean - their square-footage, their decorative copper pots, their balsamic vinegar and olive oil - she seems to long to take all large-home-owners out and line them up against the garden wall.... Whose houses did she think she was going to be hired to clean? The bottom line is this: the author never lived the life she was supposed to be investigating for more than a week or two - and she took breaks between the three skimpy months that she "worked" for minimum wage -- a lot of each month was spent job hunting or housing hunting, she failed to get anything in writing during interviews, she marched off jobs the minute the going got very tough, sometimes she didn't even bother to resign, just gave her uniforms to a co-worker to turn in, blew off a better-paying job that she had already landed because she had drunk coffee the day before and was just "too exhausted" to report to work the first day, complains endlessly about the drug tests and how she had to pay $30 for medicine to eliminate the results of her own illegal drug use, so she could pass the test. Frankly, she lacked the common sense [splurging on $11 "burger and a glass of wine" dinners when she really needs to conserve money -- not much ingenuity about cooking for herself] and the tenacity needed to start at the bottom and stick with it as a truly desperate person would simply have to do. Simply put, she was the kind of "flaky" worker who rarely gets ahead, and whom co-workers and supervisors learn not to count on, no matter what her academic pedigree might be.
Rating: 
Summary: Facts and hypocrisy ...
Review: Major rambling ahead ... Ok, I HAD to read this. My university made it the mandatory freshman connections book. This MAY have influenced my opinion on this book's mediocrity, however I do not believe so. I find it hard to take the word of a upper-middle-upper-class yuppie liberal woman who lives in a beach house (don't quote me on that) in Key West regarding conditions of the underclass lifestyle. (Nothing against liberals, just against everything else.) Granted, she did some research, but that research was half-assed at best. She frequently went back into her reserve of money from her 'real' life. She walked out of a fairly decent paying job offer because they wanted to give her a drug test. She seemed to miss the point of the experiment: YOU ARE UNDERCLASS NOW. Real underclass workers do not have the option to turn down a job due to a one-time indignity. (The fact that this drug testing only turns up marijuana, probably one of the tamer illicit substances, is for another debate.) In short, don't buy this. Do read it, though. It does have some interesting facts and situations. Borrow it; I'll send you my copy.
Rating:
Summary: Wolf In Sheep's Clothing
Review: Although the beginning of the book puts Ehrenreich on the correct path toward understanding the ways of the minimum wage life, by the end of the book she has completely martyred herself. Instead of attempting to relate her story, she condescends to her co-workers and leaves the reader with a better-than-thou feeling from the author. I was insulted, after watching and working with people living on these wages. I hope the upper class understands this after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: My views on Nickel and Dimed
Review: I thought that this was an excellent book. One of the best ways to truly connect with one's readers is if you go out and experience what your writing about for yourself. This is exactly what Ehrenreich does with this book. I think this is an easy to read book that exposes our society for what it really is. This book teaches people who go around judging others a valuable lesson. I learned from this book that our society really does not take into consideration how much work people do and what little they get in return. This book definitely spoke the truth about the way this country works. I would definitely recommend this book to others. Peoople can actually relate to this book, because it touches on issues that people must deal with on a regular bases. I liked the fact that the author took it upon herself to go and research what she wrote about. In my opinion this gave the author some credibility because she experienced what many Americans have to live with everyday. Through this book she teaches others how unfair life is for so many, and yet people walk around judging or not even caring at all.
Rating:
Summary: Looking backwards
Review: Ehrenreich presents this book as an investigation into the question of whether someone really can get get by in America on the wages of the working poor. However, the account of her months spent as cheap labor (first as a waitress then as a housecleaner and later a Wal-Mart drone) works best as a simple eye-opener. To her readers, those who can afford the money and time to buy and read her book, she offers an all too rare glimpse into how millions of our fellow citizens live their lives. Some reviewers have criticized the educated voice in which Ehrenreich tells her story and the reminders that her poverty is only temporary. I found her eloquence and wit engaging, giving her message a voice it might otherwise have lacked. Her story becomes most tangible when she drops the mantle of journalistic objectivity and relates her inner thoughts. When she notices the lady of the house watching her scrub the floor on her hands and knees, she wonders if she'll be recognized from some university lecture she once gave. Left alone on a late shift in Wal-Mart, she fancies herself the ruler of the ladies' wear section, making the rounds to keep her subjects in line. Similarly, I prefer to commend Ehrenreich's honesty in distinguishing between her experiences and those of the real poor, rather than to accuse her of hypocritical class pride. Any good researcher is careful to disclose the extent to which their study generalizes to the real world. However, Ehrenreich experiences don't answer her research question quite as conclusively as she seems to suggest. True, she had advantages in terms of prior health care and access to a working car, in contrast to many of her peers, and she only barely scraped by. On the other hand, it's no coincidence that very few of her new coworkers live alone; they rely on a support network of friends and family that Ehrenreich scrupulously tries to avoid. Of course, this observation hardly invalidates Ehrenreich's other points. The bottom line? If you don't believe that the disparity between rich and poor is so large, take a look at the lifestyle portrayed in any primetime sitcom, and then read this book.
Rating:
Summary: review for "nickel and dimed"
Review: i thought this was an excellent book and exposed many interesting things about the working class lifestyle that i was not aware of. while i agreed about most of what ehrenreich said about the inequality of those working minimum wage jobs, she was not realistic about some of the things she complained about. there are typical things within every occupation that one must complete that aren't always fun (i.e., drug tests, certain rules of conduct)and it seemed that she missed the point of that sometimes. i would have rather learned more about the lives of the other workers she worked with; it would have been more realistic.
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