Rating: 
Summary: A must read
Review: This book is an outstanding look at one woman's foray into low-wage work - a healthy, white woman without children in tow. This book should be required reading for lawmakers - actually, lawmakers should have to try to live on low wage work by themselves for a month, and see if they make it! (Especially those who were born into money - most of them just cannot relate to the struggles of the working class.) Oh, and to the reviewer who claimed that Barbara Ehrenreich used a racial slur - "niggardly" means stingy or cheap. It's not a racist term, stupid. Buy a dictionary. And her remark that Latinos "hog all the crap jobs and housing" was sarcasm. Really. What is wrong with some people?
Rating: 
Summary: Nickel n' Dimed? So is everyone else, lady!Quit yer bitchin!
Review: This book really pisses me off. Here's why:I appreciate the initiative Einrich took in trying to live in the working poor's shoes, but what kind of benefit does she see in addressing this subject? Which is a better solution, to have 12 million women pushed out of the welfare system, and into jobs that pay below living wage, or to have them sitting at home at our expense? We are very lucky in this country. Even the poor have a vastly higher standard of living than in 2/3rds of the world. News Flash: we are not socialist. Americans get to live as either kings, beggars, or somewhere in between, based primarily on a capitalist system. Survival of the fittest, or at least the fit, and to hell with the rest. I'm classify myself as a liberal democrat, but the author promotes the kind of "I'm not responsible" thought that plagues this country at all levels, and is likely responsible for many of our social ills. Liberalism needn't imply irresponsibility, mental helplessness, entitlement, or defeatism, and Barbara Einrich ought to be embarrased of her promotion of this new "ideal." Also, I have taken many drug tests in my life, since they are mandatory at basically all major companies in the US (Ford Motor, Pfizer, US Government, etc.) I don't consider them degrading, just a fact. (Although, I don't approve of drug laws.)
Another thing: The trick question "Everyone works a little better when they're high" is not a trick, unless you're stupid, in which case I see it as a perfectly valid employment question.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading for the comfortably distant.
Review: Barbera Ehrenrich illustrates that there is a mean and cynical side to the people in this country. If you criticize her as whiny or not honest or aver the "I was there and it wasn't like that then," misses the point and I would hate to have you as a boss, because you're a mean person. She did this to see if a welfare mother could make it as an entry-level wage employee and she demonstrated that there is no way to make it on your own as a single person with no children. That you have to rely on family or friends, that you are treated with disrespect by employers, that our modern transportation network and zoning laws are a major obstacle, that a working stove and refrigerator is a luxury, that fresh, healthy foods can be a luxury, that the point where poor people make the trade-off between health and work is lower than any feeling, much less objective, person is comfortable with. Thank you, Barbera for showing me in new ways just how rich I am. My increased empathy for the poor has forever been set in concrete.
Rating:
Summary: Great expose of coporate America...
Review: This book is well written and thought provoking, and exposes some major fallacies in welfare reform theory. I am constantly questioning how my colleagues in the retail industry survive on their salaries, which in most cases, are several dollars above the current minimum wage. (I do it only because I am single, have no children and several roommates, and gracious family members who have helped me finance my higher education.) Ehenreich goes beyond the grim statistics and uses her personal experiences to provide a meaningful glimpse into the culture of low-income, mostly uneducated working women. She does a great job at exposing the "profit over people" motive of many U.S. corporations ... , and she does it without sounding overly self-righteous as she is acutely aware of her own priviledge. It's too bad most working women won't get to read this book because they are too tired after long days scrubbing pubic hair out of bathtubs, stocking lightbulbs for dear Mr. Walton, and serving out their roles in the master-slave relationships that modern day capitalist economies demand. If you are self absorbed and only concerned about making money and/or believe in the time-worn false cliche that "it is possible for everyone to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" I hope nobody gives you this book for Christmas or your birthday because you will not like it very much. Three cheers for Barbara Ehenreich...
Rating: 
Summary: Reality Check: it's not really that bad.
Review: I disagree with the findings of this book. I'm poor. I started off working at 7.20 per hour at the job I have now. I opted to live with roommates to save money, rather than live alone as Erenreich does. I worked really hard, asked for raises and now I make 10.85. I live quite comfortably, I have enough money to go to school and go out. This book essentially says that America is a bad place to live. This is far from the truth. Ehrenreich should go try the same experiment in Ethiopia and then she might have a different opinion about America.
Rating:
Summary: Save your money!
Review: and don't buy this book. I wish I had read readers' reviews instead of that of the New York Times. This woman is so far to the left that it can't be charted and unfortunately this fact permeates her writing. The overwhelming majority of the book details her complaints (about everything) and her dislikes (all supervisors, fat people, people with any money, people who employ others to do any sort of manual labor, etc.). Sadly, she missed a terrific opportunity to inform and gain empathy if not sympathy for those who earn little. While there are undoubtedly a lot of people living as she did, there are many (and I would guess a whole lot more) who don't whine and cry because they have to work eight or more hours a day, who are willing to commute 45 minutes or more each way, who don't feel drug tests are an indignity, who are willing to make sacrifices in order to become financially stable. I'm on the board of a non-profit that provides tutoring and partial high school scholarships for disadvantaged kids and I've seen this. I assure you that terrible things do happen; not any of Barbara's horrific incidents like having to eat your dinner on the bed because there is no table (she actually devoted an entire paragraph to this), but parents who run off to Mexico, siblings who are killed in drive-bys, siblings who are sent to prison. I employ a cleaning lady who is a Polish immigrant and speaks little English. She doesn't think she has a horrific life. She is a widow (most of her relatives have died from cancer) and lived with her sister and niece until she was financially stable enough to move out on her own. This took a bit longer than it might for others because until two months ago she sent [money]and a box of clothes/food/household items each month to her son and his family in Poland. Such a scenario is not possible within Barbara's self-limited world. I could go on. The point is that this book was written from a very biased perspective and you won't know much more when you're done than you do now. If you're interested in learning more about the lives of people with limited incomes I suggest that you speak to them, especially anyone you see regularly, and consider getting involved with a non-profit.
Rating:
Summary: Grrh!!
Review: I have owned this book for over a year now, and have read it several times. I get angrier every time I read it. The author's plan, to live the life of an ordinary working woman for three nonconsecutive months in three vastly disparate regions of the country ( Key West Florida, Portland Maine and Minneapolis Minnesota) in order to learn and describe how ordinary working woman ( and men ) cope with life on the lower end of the wage scale, seems a noble one, harking back to the early days of investigative journalism. Trouble is Ms Ehrenreich herself is anything but noble, at least not as portrayed in this book. On the one hand she comes across as whiny and immature, unable to cope with the minor indignities she encounters in her jobs. On the other hand she has a "better than you could ever hope to be" attitude which comes painfully across when she describes her coworkers, or the people she serves in the restaurant, or encounters in the store. She is a bigot, in the most politically correct way possible. She does not insult minorities or foreigners , but instead saves her gibes for everyone else. Another thing which I found particularly annoying was her apparent assumption that nobody from the bottom end of the wage scale would actually read her book. Her solutions to the wage inequities are ludicrously simple, and prospectively disastrous. Raise the minimum wage, obviously. Trouble is doing so would throw a lot of people out of work and put a lot of companies out of business, leaving us all much worse off than we are now.
Rating: 
Summary: Anyone who didn't like this book missed the point!
Review: The point of Ehrenreich's book was not to bash Americans who work, it was to point out the disparity between the AMOUNT of work they do and the compensation they recieve for it. She not only does this with the details of her own experiment, but with extensive economic analysis at the end of the book. She's on your side people! The truth is that low-wage workers are often prevented from recieving 40 hours per week, thereby entitling them to insurance benefits, and that the average wage paid out for these jobs might support one person, but without a second wage earner in the home, they will in no way support an entire family. She is talking here not about well-spoken, well-educated college students, who can earn hundreds of dollars a night serving in upscale restaurants. Sure, if you have a job in Bennigan's or Friday's, you can claim to earn "only" $2 an hour, but we know that's not true, don't we? She is talking instead about people who work in so-called "greasy spoon" restaurants, earning maybe $30 in tips on an 8-hour shift. I've been there, she's right about these people. If this book didn't change your life and the way you view the working world around you, you're obviously scared.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, has its moments
Review: In her latest social commentary, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover to experience, for herself, life as an "unskilled worker." In order to find out how anyone could survive on $7 an hour Ehrenreich left behind her life as a prominent member of the press, and underwent a journalistic foray into the world of the "low-paid" worker. For three month-long spans between 1999 and 2000, she took her car, laptop, and $1000 to three completely new locations and attempted to sustain herself while following her three rules. First, her educational background must not be a factor in her employment; second, she would take the job that paid the most; third, she would take the housing with the lowest costs while maintaining a suitable standard of living. Even as a healthy, white, native English speaker without the burdens of childcare or transportation issues, Ehrenreich soon experienced the mental and physical hardships that accompany life as a low-paid worker.
She worked as a waitress in Key West Florida, a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant in Maine, and finally a sales representative for Wal-Mart. She quickly noticed the limitations of her new life. At seven to eight dollars an hour, she found herself confined to "flophouses and trailer homes". Her food situation became restricted to fast foods and the cheapest of deli foods. She also was forced to deprive herself of many activities she had enjoyed in her previous life. Not only was she not making money, but her principal was actually shrinking and eventually in Maine, she was forced to hold down two simultaneous jobs in order to supplement her rapidly diminishing savings. Unfortunately, even while holding two jobs, she found herself slipping further and further out of her sense of financial security.
The true thrill of this book is not the exciting conclusion that Ehrenreich draws from her experiences as a member of the lower class, but her experiences along the way. Ehrenreich learned of the many injustices that plague these overlooked workers. She proves that no job is truly unskilled, and the "working poor" are as diligent as an executive or a journalist. However, it seems that no matter how hard they work they still seem to find themselves moving toward homelessness or worse. Their wages remain outrageously low, while their rent and expenses continue to rise astronomically.
Through this passionately written book, Ehrenreich tries to give an inside perspective into the challenges that millions of Americans face everyday, but that many of us may never experience. She gains an edge over any Academic, Economist, or Social Scientist through her personal approach. Actual accounts of people's lives give a private touch that draws us into the book. She writes in detail about full-time employees who cannot afford housing and are forced to sleep in their cars thus refuting the theory that a full time job assures the basic necessities of life. She addresses the invisibility of the poor to those living in the upper-middle class or as she terms, the "other half" (217). She tackles the economics of the lower working class and gives insight into the never ending cycle of poverty.
In a clear-cut style all her own, Ehrenreich confidently takes on these issues and addresses other potent subjects like the "living wage." She fits the "working poor" into the national economy and culture by deducing that the "working poor are the major philanthropists of our society." It is a masterfully written, humorous, and irate account of lower working-class America. Recommended to anyone who has ever had a job.
Rating:
Summary: Good book. Easily misunderstood.
Review: Judging by some of the silly reviews that precede mine, this fantastic books is easily misunderstood and/or misinterpreted by stupid people.
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