Rating: 
Summary: Could I do it? I don't know...
Review: I had a little bit of experience working service jobs like the ones Dr. Ehrenreich held when I was a teenager. They were hard work, they paid little, but I always knew that this was just a starting point, and that because I was born into privilege, that I would have much better jobs as an adult. But nothing I did or didn't do gave me this privileged life, and by the same token, the millions of people born into unprivileged circumstances did nothing to deserve it. I'd like to thank Dr. Ehrenreich for her excellent book. Educating people about a problem is the first step toward fixing that problem. I resolve to help, in whatever ways I can, the people I encounter whose lives are harder than mine.
Rating:
Summary: Really educational
Review: This book should be required reading for all, especially executives and policy makers. (In fact, I think all execs and lawmakers should have to live the way Ehrenreich did for one year - perhaps things would change.)
I loved this book. BE's experiment shows the struggles a healthy, educated white woman with a car, without kids in tow undergoes trying to make it on skimpy wages. Plus, she also knew it was temporary. Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone, often with children, an old junk car (or no car) who has to live the way she did permanently. Ehrenreich goes into detail about the choices she and her coworkers have to make each day, and she also reveals the degradation employers inflict upon low-wage workers - drug testing, rules such as "no drinking water", etc. The reader may even be tempted to boycott that chain store she worked at, like I do. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Chronic Complainer Survives Brush with the Poor
Review: Before I read this book, I only knew Barbara Ehrenreich as a loose cannon columnist in The Progressive (her latest offering blames Bush for the 9/11 disaster because he took a vacation seven months earlier). Now I'll always remember her as a pompous egotist who is more interested in touting her own hip musical tastes and ability to recognize Somolis by accent than in forming sustaining relationships with those outside her class. Taking on unnecessary hardships to benefit others is a noble choice, but Ms. Ehrenreich is no missionary - quite the opposite, in fact. Her intention is not to give up her own comfortable lifestyle and give to the less fortunate, but rather to temporarily dip her foot into the same pool that the common folk swim in for the purpose of selling a book to support said lifestyle. Perhaps that is why she comes across as so disdainful of the poorer people she encounters, be it their appearance, practices or beliefs. She describes having to work for managers without teeth, "pudgy fourth-grade teachers" and "large Mexicans" (though, of course pointing out that the "Anglos" are larger - and this from someone who openly anguishes about whether to describe a young woman as Asian-American, Hispanic or both). The obese receive particular criticism for their size and Ehrenreich is careful to tell the reader that she herself is "an unusually fit person, with years of weightlifting and aerobics." Yet she reserves the most venom, it seems, for those who hold religious beliefs, giving the clear impression that she feels these people are beneath her. This sort of intellectual bigotry fits perfectly with her style of writing, and perhaps the company that she keeps in her "real life," but it doesn't enhance her image among those unimpressed by such snobbery. No less than six times, an average of once every thirty-seven pages, does Ehrenreich remind the reader that she has a Ph.D., apparently to distinguish herself from the average people around her, lest we forget. Yet, even overlooking the fact that she smoked pot days before an expected drug test, the sources that she uses for statistics are highly questionable, academically speaking. Asking the AFL-CIO to estimate undocumented employer transgressions and getting figures of any kind from the National Coalition for the Homeless, which did nothing to correct Mitch Snyder's gross exaggerations in the 1980's, does nothing to augment credibility. Still, to call Ms Ehrenreich an "Alec Baldwin" liberal wouldn't be entirely fair. She's not as wealthy and her research did involve a sort of sacrifice, albeit in small doses and to no one else's benefit, really. In the end, perhaps she's merely "Ebenezer Scrooge" material, feeling that the poor are the responsibility of the taxpayers and shouldn't hamper one's personal standard of living.
Rating:
Summary: It's one thing to do it. Another thing to feel it.
Review: While I applaud the intent of the book, I wince at the concessions that Barbara Ehrenreich allowed herself-- because those concessions serve as security blankets that many of the working poor don't have or have never had in their lives.
She marvels at how her co-workers accept their lot in life. What she fails to do is to really explore who they are and where they came from in an attempt to figure out where this acceptance stems from. Even while partaking in the experience, she's on the outside looking in- reporting how people live, but not necessarily how they got there and why they stay there. If a person is raised in poverty, they're often not given opportunities or hope for a better life. They exist and they do what they can to survive. They don't have any other choice. What privilege, money, and education gives someone is hope- they have someone or something to fall back on and they have proof that life can be better, even in the tough times. None of the people Ms. Ehrenreich worked with had her advantages. Her experience was akin to saying "I'm going to put on black make-up for a day, so I know what it feels like to be black." In short, Ms. Ehrenreich tried on the shoes but never really wore them.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic writer, fantastic book!
Review: This book was one of the fastest I've ever read. If you enjoy "real-life" horror stories, you will jump right into this amazingly candid look into the lives of modern-day slave laborers ... not in some third-world country, but right here in the United States. You will never look at maids, retail workers or waiters and waitresses the same way again. By walking in their shoes, the author showed me ... rather than told me ... what it is like to live in the quiet, underpaid desperation that plagues so many of our lower middle-class workers. This should be required reading for everyone!
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting read.
Review: Yes, it's true that it might not have been entirely realistic for a middle class journalist to go "undercover" as a minimum wage worker (waitress, cleaner,...), with a wealthy life to fall back on, but the author never pretends that her experience is Genuine with a capital G. She wanted to show others of her class and those above it what life is like for the people they normally do not think about. She didn't fail at this. At my job sitting at a desk, I face boredom, weight gain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and getting chilled by too much air conditioning. If I find myself in dire financial trouble, it'll likely be through overspending on my credit cards. The women in this book faced homelessness, malnutrition, and illness because of lack of health care. Suddenly, my life and job looked like paradise to be appreciated. If a book made me take a look at what I had and made me really think about what other women didn't, it was worthwhile.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, annoying author
Review: First off, let me say that the concept of this book is brillant. It invokes the hay day of investigative journalism and muckrucking. However, the book's author leaves much to be desired This is my first encounter with Ms. Ehrenreich's work, and I must say I am not that impressed. Not that there were any major flaws in her experiment. That was actually done quite well, as good as most could have hoped to do it. My problem with the book is that Ms. Ehrenreich comes off far to egotistical for her own good. Many times in the course of the study, she turns it into a personal account, why she is so great for doing this, why she is so smart, why she is so much more qualified then the rest of the poor (she says 'over qualified' so many times I nearly threw a fit). Basically, she strikes me as an Ivory Tower liberal who wants a medal for doing what millions do every day. Maybe I'm just nitpicking though. Overall- I agree with the concept of this book, and it raises many important questions, and for that reason it is worth reading, at least until a study by a better author comes along.
Rating:
Summary: Truth, or something quite close
Review: This book is essential reading for anyone who thinks they have a soul. How you react to the indignities heaped upon the real, live people in this book will let you know where you really stand. Educate yourself. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: No easy answers, but plenty of questions
Review: After being loaned this book with the caveat that the author's middle-class escape hatch somehow invalidated or at least dulled the impact of her experiences, I was prepared for disappointment. Instead I found myself glued to the book, finishing it in 24 hours, and almost missing my train stop. While Ehrenreich herself has a way out of the circumstances into which she has thrust herself, the people about whom she writes do not, and it is their circumstances that are so frightening and heart wrenching. Those of us in the middle class rationalize the lives of the working poor by saying to ourselves or each other, "they could get out of this if they would work harder/stop spending money on booze/take advantage of all the programs that are out there" and so on. In fact, options are limited, in part because it is so difficult to learn about the resources available, and in part because the luxury of time and energy to investigate said resources is unavailable to so many. Ehrenreich takes the time to find an agency that will provide her with an emergency food supply, which on the one hand I approved, as it showed how time consuming the process is, even for someone who has no children or other dependants for which to care, but on the other hand, I found myself thinking that someone else needed that food more than she did. Ehrenreich makes it clear just what the consequences are of the service economy for the people who provide the services, and how corporations are responsible, no, should be responsible, for their plight. I am not the Marxist that Ehrenreich is, but anyone with a sense of social justice, or justice at all, will find himself moving from anger to pity and back again throughout the course of this small book. The question is, what are middle and upper class Americans able to do, and for what are we ultimately responsible? Is it better as an individual consumer to stop patronizing the employers of the working poor as a protest against their plight, or to continue to shop at Wal-Mart and eat at chain restaurants because then at least we contribute to their wages and can leave larger tips?
Rating: 
Summary: No "Grapes of Wrath" Here
Review: As a dedicated populist, I was looking forward to reading this book. I teach high school history and assign the Grapes of Wrath to all my AP US History students. I was looking for a book for the students to read to demonstrate how the poor live today. Instead, what I found was a book about Barbara Ehrenreich and her jobs. It was not about the people who hold those jobs. I do not want to know why she refused to hire a maid when she could afford one, I want to know why someone takes a job as a maid and how they live on those wages. It helped me truly appreciate the stark brilliance of Steinbeck and his ability to portray the reality of poor American people. It also demonstrates the distressing inability of the popular liberal media to understand or describe the reality of life for poor Americans. I agree with another reviewer -- read Studs Terkel. I would also would welcome other recommendations for short reading that I could assign to my class.
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