Rating: 
Summary: I really wanted to like this book but...
Review: I'm not sure I'll be able to adequately explain my feelings about this book. While I expected to love it, it left me disappointed. But I can't understand all the anger I've seen in reviews I have read. Barbara Ehrenreich's heart is in the right place, I'm just not sure that she has the proper attitude or experience to write a realistic picture of what it's like to try to survive on a low paying job. She tried, though, and I suppose I need to give her more credit for that. Her premise is that no one can have a decent standard of living while working for minimum wage, and I agree it's very difficult. But she believed that before she started her experiment, and I don't think she learned anything new from her adventures in the world of low paying jobs. She only searched for details that confirmed what she already believed, and in the end, she persists in placing blame on the workers who probably feel trapped in a situation they don't know how to leave.I think that the major fault I find with this book is Ms. Ehrenreich's attitude. She seems condescending towards her fellow employees and resentful towards her employers. And at all times, it's obvious that she can't understand what it really feels like to have to live on what she's making. She knew she would never have to. Her attitude towards her co-workers is perhaps understandable. What seems most inconsistent to me is her opinion towards ALL of her bosses. I was especially disappointed in her description of one of her managers at Wal-Mart. She introduced her boss, Ellie by saying "I like Ellie", but then went on to scornfully describe her style as "the apotheosis of 'servant leadership'...the vaunted 'feminine' style of management." What's wrong with a person in a position of responsibility showing some respect for those she manages? Why couldn't Ms. Ehrenreich just accept her good luck in having a supervisor who was a genuinely nice person? I'm sure Ellie isn't getting rich on what she made at Wal-Mart, either. The pay scale for EVERY job within that store probably compares unfavorably to any work with which the author has ever supported herself! The author's attitude towards the people whose houses she cleaned in Maine also troubled me. They are not the cause of the low pay and long hours she and her co-workers endured. It was obvious that Ms. Ehrenreich was ashamed of cleaning houses, of being in a role she saw as subservient. It isn't like that for everyone. Friends I have had who cleaned houses for a living, even through an agency, often became friends with the people whose homes they cleaned and I never had the impression that my friends felt inferior to the homeowners. However, it does seem obvious to me that the owner of the agency Ms. Ehrenreich worked for was being very short sighted when it came to his attitude on wages. By refusing to even consider a pay raise for his employees in what seemed to be a tight pool of potential workers, he was guaranteeing that his business would not grow. Many of my personal feelings about this book come from the fact that from 1980 until 1993, I supported myself with a series of low paying jobs, everything from fast food worker, to telephone sales, to even Wal-Mart. Did I live well? At times I did. Most of that time I worked at least two jobs at a time, often with fewer than one or two full days off each month. But like Ms. Ehrenreich, I had the advantage of being a single woman with no children to support. I have no doubt that had I been raising children, I would have needed some kind of financial assistance. Things I could choose to do without as an adult would not be an option for a mother. Could a mother with children live without a car? Could I have given my children a good life without access to affordable health insurance? Could a mother with children live in a three-room furnished attic apartment with about 300 square feet of space? I have nothing but admiration for all the people supporting themselves and their families on low wages. Often people who knew I worked two jobs would ask why I worked so much, even inquiring if I had children to support. I always laughed and replied, "If I had children, how would I afford all the child care I would need to pay for to work so much? When would I have time to actually spend time raising my own children?" But even working up to 60-70 hours each week, the most I ever made in a year was about $18,000 gross. A careful, single woman (or man) could manage pretty well on that. But how could anyone support a family on those wages? While the author feels sorry in an abstract way for the difficult position of her fellow workers, she didn't come away from her experience with much compassion for them. She still doesn't understand that in the world of workers with few skills or little formal education, there are few choices, yet most of these people work very hard and take some pride in what they do. I expected this book to display more respect for workers who provide very necessary services to our society.
Rating: 
Summary: What American dream?
Review: For many people, the immense growth of global companies like Wal-Mart has meant extreme wealth, and/or cheap convenient shopping. For many others, those that have to work there on a daily basis, the Wal-Marts of the world represent something completely different. It's living at or near the poverty level, being only one step away from the homeless shelter, not having access to adequate medical treatment, and not having the opportunity to learn new, marketable skills to advance beyond the current situation. If you've ever worked at a fast food restaurant, Wal-Mart, or other near minimum wage job, you can identify with the folks Barbara encounters in "Nickel and Dimed". During her travels, Barbara works at a Wal-Mart, in a nursing home, and a restaurant among others. As could be expected, the experiences are less than rewarding. They are fraught with humiliation, grueling mindless work, and constant struggles just to maintain basic necessities such as a car (or even some kind of public transportation just to get back and forth to work), housing, and food. Forget about health insurance, dining out, and many of the other "luxuries" many of us take for granted; its just not part of the picture. With all the "prosperity" in the US, one would expect situations such as there to be the exception rather than the rule. Unfortunately its not, and the proportion of people that live this life is growing. Must a profitable business come at the expense of sane, safe, rewarding working conditions where people treat each other like human beings? Barbara's experience would seem to indicate that. It's just not so. No matter what your financial status, this is an eye-opening book, more so for some than others. Awareness is a good first step to bringing about change but until public policy changes to encourage businesses to invest in people and pay living wages significant change will be an uphill battle.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Since the welfare cuts of the Clinton adminstration, there has been very little effort to explore the results of these drastic changes. This is a good start. well written, well documented, and engaging.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: Much like "Fast Food Nation", this book should be required reading. Although most of us have had low-paying jobs when
we were in high school or college, many of us are lucky enough not to have to continue in those types of jobs as an adult.
For those who do, though, the road is much tougher than the people people who hate welfare recipients think. As Ms. Ehrenreich found, some people who work full-time - or even some
who work two jobs - still have trouble paying for basic necessities. I'd read some criticism of Ms. Ehrenreich and this book, but I
think she did an incredible job. She didn't just work at one or two fast-food jobs from the comfort of her real home - she worked at half a dozen menial jobs in restaurants, hotels, in a rest home, a maid service, and a Wal-Mart, in three different states. She found co-workers living in cars, living four to a hotel room, going without medical care because they couldn't afford medicines or treatment, going without lunch for the same reason, showing up for work when sick or injured because they couldn't afford to lose the income, and the list goes on. I highly recommend this book. I couldn't put it down and stayed
up until 1 a.m. two nights in a row reading it.
Rating:
Summary: The Other Side of the Payscale
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich performed a courageous experiment in social downward mobility in Nickel and Dimed, her exploration of what life is really like for those at the bottom of the payscale, now that welfare has been "reformed." While it's not in the class of George Orwell's classic Down and Out in Paris and London, Ehrenreich gives us a real taste of what it feels like to work in the service economy, and how your job and your employer rule (and can ruin) your life. Her style is serviceable, with the occasional flourish ("The floor is slick with spills, forcing us to walk through the kitchen with tiny steps, like Susan McDougal in leg irons"), and her leftist viewpoint will either please or enrage you, depending on your outlook. In the boom times about which Ehrenreich is writing, things were hard enough near the bottom of the economic ladder. God knows what things are like for the waitresses, housecleaners and Wal-Mart "associates" today. But I'm glad that Barbara Ehrenreich made her experiment in downward mobility, and came back to tell the tale. My only real reservation is that the conclusions in her final chapter don't seem to dig deep enough, and that she seems more interested in patting herself on the back ("I think it's fair to say that as a worker, a jobholder, I deserve a B or maybe B+") than extrapolating from her personal experience to reach wider conclusions. But it's a small flaw in an otherwise fascinating book.
Rating:
Summary: What It's Really Like
Review: I read this book with a mixture of amusement and dismay. Amusement because I recognized so many of the situations she described - all the wacky things people do and put up with to survive - and dismay because I was reminded how depressing, degrading and exhausting it was to live on the kinds of jobs she describes. Not only has Ehrenreich captured the essence of what it means to live on minimum wage, doing work that no one else wants, but has clearly and compassionately articulated the issue facing us as a nation as well. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity where hard work and tenacity pays off. Instead it has become the home of millions of hardworking poor who despite their efforts can do little more than survive. This is not a pleasant book to read, but it's a good one.
Rating:
Summary: VALUABLE BOOK , IMPORTANT SUBJECT, LOW QUALITY SCHOLARSHIP
Review: NICKELED AND DIMED (2001) by Dr. Barbara Alexander Ehrenreich, Ph.D. (Biology, Rockerfeller University, NYC 1968) is a good book worth reading about an important subject. Dr. Ehrenreich's book offers neither an index nor a bibliography, however. The absence of these makes her important book far less useful than would have been the case had they been provided. Good as NICKELED AND DIMED (2001) is, the book is fraught with shortcomings. It's a "is the glass half full or half empty?" situation. Given the fact that so few widely distributed books on the subject of the War on the Poor in America are available in these days of the most recent (2002) Bush Dynasty presidency, I'm glad to have a half full glass, which beats the [heck] out of an empty one. Doc Ehrenreich's description of her travails at [a local retailer] is very good. The Evaluation chapter at the end of the book is also good. The book is about several jobs the author took of the low level, almost minimum wage type. It describes her experiences getting and handling these jobs, and also trying to pay her living expenses based on the scant income she received. She makes the true point that nobody could possibly survive on money provided by almost minimum wage jobs of the [local retailer] type. In the early 70's, the president of Haverford College, Dr. John Coleman, who at the time was also president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, used part of his sabatical year to take three grim and grimey blue collar jobs of the unskilled, low paid type. He, too, wrote a book about what he faced, and how he got through it all. It was called BLUE COLLAR JOURNAL (1974). Another good book. Also with no index. Also written by a Ph.D. It's sort of the BLACK LIKE ME book idea, but without racial themes or problems. How the "other half" (other 80%?) live. Well, Dr. Ehrenreich gets"A" for good intentions, and also for actually getting a book published about what's become almost a never discussed subject: dreadful jobs at low money in a high expense world (especially with regard to housing and transportation) and the efforts of people to survive it all. We owe a lot to Doc Ehrenreich for providing this book. It's a shame, however, the needed index and bibliography are missing...and she certainly knows better.
Rating:
Summary: Pay attention to the world you live in
Review: .... this is the message I recieved from "Nickled and Dimed". Barbara sets out to determing if people earning a few dollars more than minimum wage can get buy in America. By testing three locations and three different types of jobs, she charts her progress and revelations in finding a job, finding an apartment on a low wage, trying to work out the logistics between getting from one to the other, and wondering if she can keep up the pace necessary to survive. What she finds is somewhat surprising and very disturbing. As someone who regularly hears people complaining about the cost of eating in the cafeteria, why people are forced to tip, and that only "lazy" people can't get ahead in this country, I have to seriously wonder what the reality of working in the USA really is. This books has made me think about my place in the system (am I tipping enough) to smaller aspects (when in [local stores], I can replace items of the shelves I removed them from).
Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opener
Review: Among the untold number of books published every year, a tiny percentage may be suitable for everyone, and of those only a few are must read for everyone. "Nickel And Dimed" is one of them. The Author, Barbara Ehrenreich, takes a courageous journey into a life that we all do our best to avoid. She works at low paying jobs and lives on the pay she gets from them. She learns first hand what it means to be a waitress, a maid, or a sales clerk for a retail giant. As she shares her experience with us, we catch a glimpse of a part of our society and culture that we may only be intermittently aware of at best. This is not a book about how things ought to be, but rather how things are. Ehrenreich provides answers to some perplexing questions such as why economic prosperity and labor shortage do not translate into higher wages.
Rating:
Summary: Reveals what it is like to be a member of the working poor
Review: Barbara Ehrenrich is an essayist and social critic who determined to reveal what it was like to be a member of the working poor. An estimated 12 million women were pushed into the labor market by welfare reforms in the 1990s. Ehrenreich has done a remarkable and unique work of personal journalism to find out just how such women were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour -- only half of what is considered a living wage. To research her subject she became a waitress in Florida, a cleaning woman and nursing home assistant in Maine, a Wal-Mart clerk in Minnesota. She experienced life as a member of the "working poor" -- right down to the manditory urine test. The result was her debunking of the notion that there would be positive psychological effects in just getting out of the house, as well as such unintended consequences as swiftly rising rents, workers taking as many days off the job as they can, and a chronic infringement of civil liberties as this unskilled and semi-skilled workforce are managed (perhaps it should be mis-managed) by their employers. Written with both wit and candor,Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is a terrific and insightful read. It is also available in paperback.
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