Rating: 
Summary: A Nobel Effort
Review: How do people get by on minimum wage? They sure don't shop here!Barbara Ehrenreich's book does document a total submersion study of her explorations into poverty. For even trying she should be commended. Still this is an insulated point of view for an insulated audience. Want to know what it's like to be poor? Read this book and dream on. At best this book documents the bad choices women in poverty can take, like working for Wal-Mart instead of risking venturing into the non-traditional hardware plumbing department at higher wages. It's like her idea of poverty meals was fast food. (She admits the idea was formulated over a $30 dinner.) At best it simulates the leading edge of a fall from grace. The initial start of the learning curve. Her conclusion? Unions for all. Okay, maybe so. She didn't have to stick around to follow through and those that would benefit aren't reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Whiny and inaccurate
Review: To see what conditions were like for women re-entering the workforce after years on welfare, the author went undercover as a divorcee with no job skills and worked menial jobs trying to make rent. It was a great idea, and I was interested in her findings. But they were presented in such a whiny, negative way that the only thing I was sure about was that I never wanted to employ Barbara Ehrenreich. The first thing she tried was waitressing, an honest profession and one that probably half of all Americans have done at one time or another. Her feet hurt, her back hurt, she couldn't keep up, her coworkers were mean to her, the customers didn't treat her like a real person. She walked off the job in the middle of a busy day with no notice, in fact, she didn't even tell anyone that she had left. On to housekeeping, which was much the same. And finally, when she worked at Walmart, she was downright rude to customers and coworkers. I would have liked to have seen more numbers. For example, it would have been nice to know what the author considered "necessities" to spend money on. I had a hard time understanding why, when she was making $250/week, she had to take a second job to make rent on a $120/week hotel room (utilities included). More documentation and figures might have made me more sympathetic. It also would have been nice to simulate caring for a child on a low income; I had trouble understanding why a single person with no other responsibilities couldn't live cheap. I didn't think this book fairly portrayed the lives of the working poor. Like many readers, I spend several years working two part-time jobs at minimum wage with no benefits. Somehow I managed to make ends meet without without becoming whiny and bitter. I also never adopted an "us against them" mentality pitting myself against my "wealthy" customers, and I seldom saw this kind of bad attitude displayed by my fellow poverty-ridden coworkers. A person's attitude is different when they don't have the luxury of walking off the job and returning to their "real life". The book was interesting and I finished it. However, it shouldn't be taken as fact. To find out about the real lives of the real working poor (the ones who have to be poor for more than a month at a time), talk to your own neighborhood fast-food worker, waitress, or Walmart associate.
Rating: 
Summary: Out to lunch
Review: ...a major "methodological" weakness of the author's argument is the requirement that she live in temporary housing that is ALWAYS priced at a premium. her own evidence contradicts the notion that housing is universally unaffordable. she notes that a modestly paid two-income family household is able to rent a three bedroom house for less than she is paying for rat-hole temporary quarters. she also cites a co-worker who lives in a house with her daughter, once again on a modest salary. most people on a low income (including former graduate students like ms. ehrenreich) live in SHARED housing, with a lease, that is always cheaper than staying in a motel or other transient housing. i also noticed her total reluctance to criticize her co-workers for personal choices that keep them impoverished. for example, a fellow maid, barely out of high school, living with her (unemployed?) and abusive boyfriend, becomes pregnant, even though she claims she doesn't have enough money for a $2.50 lunch. (from ms. ehrenreich's descriptions, the real problem seems to be an eating disorder). in another description, a 23 year old waitress is has three children to support. the author doesn't seem to acknowledge that most of the jobs she takes are entry level and someone entering the workforce at age 58 is not at an advantage. as she herself noted, there are opportunities for growth in every job she took; most of her supervisors were once "workers." but since she stayed only a few weeks at each (a fact disturbingly buried in the book's introduction), she never saw beyond the drudge work that is common to all entry level work. and why should employer's demand that their employees remain drug free? ms. erhenreich never mentions federal laws REQUIRING a drug-free workplace. there may be a case for reexamining the plight of the working poor, but ms. ehrehnreich's shabby analysis and biased observations are less than satisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Hammer and Sickled
Review: We all need to be reminded often that the folks who serve us and clean up after us and check us out have lives that deserve our concern and, often, our respect. Barbara Ehrenreich's book tells us something of the lives of a number of women and men who live near the bottom of America's economic scale. Unfortunately, Ms. Ehrenreich too often employs gossip, rumor, guesses and suspicion rather than fact or analysis to explore her subject. She quotes gossip (her word) that Stu, a manager she dislikes, is involved in drugs, and offers that, "I'm ready to believe anything bad about Stu." Later, she relates "the most up-to-date RUMORS (emphasis mine)" that "the drug Stu ordered was crack and he was caught dipping in the cash register to pay for it." Yet when another employee is fired for stealing, her response is, "my GUESS (emphasis mine) is that he had taken...some Saltines or a can of cherry pie mix and that the motive for taking it was hunger." Despite her glee that Stu might have been caught with drugs, Ms. Ehrenreich hates drug testing. "I SUSPECT (emphasis mine) that the demeaning effect of testing also may hold some attraction for employers." And again, "My GUESS (emphasis mine) is that the indignities imposed on so many low wage workers--the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being 'reamed out' by managers--are part of what keeps wages low." Ms. Ehrenreich's in-depth analysis of people on welfare: "I SUSPECT (emphasis mine) that most welfare recipients already possess (traits deemed essential to job readiness: punctuality, cleanliness, cheerfulness, obedience), or would if their child care and transportation problems were solved." In her last chapter Ms. Ehrenreich attempts an analysis of what she has observed. Among the points she sees as most telling: "In the first quarter of 2000, the poorest 10 percent of workers were earning only 91 percent of what they were earning (in 1973)." Ms. Ehrenreich would like you to believe that the same people who were poor in 1973 are poorer today. But that's simply not true. Only 5.1 percent of those who were in the lowest fifth of the income scale in 1975 remained in the lowest fifth by 1991. Almost a third had advanced to the TOP fifth. The income gain for those who had been in the bottom fifth was $27,745 (in 1997 dollars). Those who had been in the second lowest fifth in 1975 gained $24,195. The middle fifth saw their incomes increase $10,161; those in the two highest fifths of income distribution in 1975 enjoyed gains of $9718 and $4354, respectively. What are Ms. Ehrenreich's solutions? Early on she says we should decrease inequality, not seeming to understand that this is a goal, not a course of action. She advocates an increase in the minimum wage but doesn't mention the overwhelming evidence that this would help some but hurt others by reducing employment opportunities. She advocates more public housing, overlooking the disasters that have been visited on the poor in many such projects. Ms. Ehrenreich wants "generous public services" like those provided in "most civilized nations." By this, I suppose she means places like France, where it is so expensive to hire and fire employees that unemployment has hovered around 10 percent for more than a decade. The author ignores the one cure for the problems she documents: economic growth. Thus, although she notes the 9% increase in income for the lowest earning fifth of families between 1996 and 1999, she says these increases "do not seem so impressive to me." She doesn't understand that income growth at this rate would double earnings in a generation. Perhaps that would not be fast enough for Ms. Ehrenreich, but economic growth is the only poverty program that's ever worked anywhere. She forgets that growth of 2 percent per year has increased American's earnings by 560 percent in the last century. In 1900 almost everyone was poorer than Ms. Ehrenreich's servers and maids and clerks. Today, few are. In the book's last section, the author gives what I think she would consider to be a fair summary of her experience: "Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. It doesn't take a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents are too high." I would sum up her story differently: "Something is wrong, very wrong, when a person holds several jobs for a grand total of less than three months; comments continually on the avarice, slovenliness and obesity of her customers; has hardly a good word to say for her employers; leaves all her jobs within a matter of weeks and without bothering to give notice; and then is shocked that one in her position is not well paid." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition
Rating: 
Summary: A book that should be read by every student
Review: This book should be required reading for every student that doesn't value the benefit of getting an education.The common denominator among the people descibed in this book--with the exception of the author--was a lack of education. None of them had any skills that could provide a decent income, and as such were forced to take minimum wage, unskilled jobs.This is what's facing people who don't learn useful trade skills, or stay in school.I found the chapter on Wal-Mart work conditions enlightening, but not really surprising, since that company had previously been found guilty of exploiting overseas labor.The point Ehrenreich makes about the lack of affordable housing is important and true. I live in Los Angeles, where at present home prices, you must have an upper class income to afford buying a home.The current real estate prices here totally prevent any thought of home-buying for middle-class, much less poorer people.Despite all this, however, I'm still in favor of welfare reform, since I've witnessed many people have 6 children when they couldn't realistically afford to raise one, knowing that they have the cushion of welfare to support them. It doesn't help those poor kids, though. One more thing: in my life, I've worked some of the types of jobs described in this book, and I, too, found that the less I got paid, the worse I was treated, and the harder I was expected to work. Those jobs still bring back nightmares, and I have only sympathy for those forced to work such awful jobs.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad truth but entertaining book
Review: I read this book in a single sitting because I could not put it down. Barbara Ehrenreich goes 'undercover' to experience for herself the working, and living conditions that many low-wage workers have to endure. She notoces first hand how minimum wage (or slightly higher) paying jobs are incapable of sustaining adequate living needs. She also provides an exceptional account why it's so difficult for many people to rise above the lowest income levels despite their best efforts, showing how difficult it is for many of the workers she meets to rise above their income levels. Ms. ehrenreich , a biologist and writer for prestigious magazines, becomes a waitress, a house cleaner, a cook, and a Wal-Mart clerk - among other jobs and describes these experinces with the appropriate rigor but also with humor. Readers will also enjoy Ehrenreich's fitting sarchasm and spite amidst the sadness. I particularly enjoyed the WalMart chapter full of insight on Sam's brainwashing Big Brother ways. After you read this book you''ll become far more conscious of what the person behind the counter, your waitress or your maid are really feeling when they smile and accept your order.
Rating:
Summary: Trying Make It On Minimum Wage
Review: Welfare has been reformed. No longer will deadbeats feed comfortably at the public trough. Now they have to get a job. Poverty has been beaten. Or has it? This is the question posed by Barbara Ehrenreich, a female, fiftyish writer who also has a Ph.D. in biology. To look for an answer, Ehrenreich went undercover and lived for several months as someone trying to find and hold a minimum wage job and live on her income. She relates her experience in Nickel and Dimed.
Ehrenreich's biases show clearly in her narrative. She acknowledges up front that she was a semi-radical student in the sixties, that her husband was a Teamsters' organizer, and that her father and uncles worked in the mines and on the railroads. She is definitely not pro management or a conservative Republican. However, her experience makes a strong case for the need for a safety net for people who working on the low end of the economic food chain.
She starts her experiment near her Key West, Florida home. She goes into the community with a start-up bankroll and a "rent-a-wreck" for transportation. She soon finds that housing is the big problem. It is expensive-easily taking up more than half of the gross pay from a minimum wage job. Without the capital reserve to make the sizable deposit required for an apartment, she is forced into motels or trailer parks that rent by the week. And all of these types of places are miles and miles from where the jobs are. She also finds that although there are lots of help wanted ads, she is invariably steered toward waitressing. She tries this for a month, and quickly finds that she cannot make it on one job alone. She will have to work two jobs just to have a hovel to sleep in and junk food to eat.
Moving on the Portland, Maine, Ehrenreich finds more of the same. Here she is steered toward housekeeping jobs, and discovers that many businesses keep the help wanted ads going even when they don't have any jobs to offer. They do, however, expect that their high turnover will create vacancies soon. What they are doing is keeping a reserve of prospective employees on tap. After Portland, she finishes her experiment in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Here she finds that housing, a problem elsewhere, is nearly insurmountable. She turns down a job with a building supply place to work at Wal~Mart. As the pressures mount and increasingly she is not getting by, she even starts a little union organizing campaign; but it doesn't get anywhere before she returns to Key West to write her book.
Although Ehrenreich's biases clearly show (she never met a manager she didn't dislike), she does demonstrate a clear problem in our society and raises valid questions that our society needs to answer. She is unable to make it working at minimum wage, and she starts each new experiment with a bankroll and a car. People who work for minimum wage stay below the poverty level. And the official definition of poverty is based on food costs, while housing has become a larger and larger problem. Drug tests are an especial problem for Ehrenreich. She disapproves on principle; she cites evidence that they are ineffective and beneficial only to the testing companies; and particularly notes that test sites are far removed from work areas and living areas, making getting the test another sometimes insurmountable hurdle.
Rating:
Summary: Making merely nickels and dimes
Review: The novel Nickel and Dimed tells the true story of the "working poor". Barbara Ehrenreich, an investigative journalist joined the millions of Americans "who work full time, year round, for poverty level wages." She was constantly surrounded by the "nobodies" of society. She experienced their every day life. She learned what it was like to be looked down upon and to have people assume things about you because of your social status. "The problem of rents is easy for a noneconomist, even a sparsely educated low-wage worker, to grasp it's the market, stupid. When the rich and the poor compete for housing on the open market, the poor don't stand a chance."(199). Barbara Ehrenreich was surrounded by people who were looked down upon because they had nowhere to live except for either their vans or low income housing. But what right does society have to look down on them when they are competing against the rich simply for a place to live. Nickel and Dimed took the reader to a place that is rarely seen in society or even spoken of. It takes us to another society, the society of the poor. It is uncommonly seen because the poor is a society kept confidential and for the poor to speak up would be an alteration that they are frightened of making. "Someday, of course--- and I will make no predictions as to exactly when--- they are bound to tire of getting so little in return and demand to be paid what they're worth.... But the sky will not fall, and we will all be better off for it in the end."(221).
This book teaches many valuable life lessons. It teaches the reader not to judge workers at minimum wage jobs. Their status does not mean that they are unqualified or uneducated. They could be highly educated people that had a string of bad luck. I believe that I could relate to the book because of the realistic approach that the author took in writing it. I liked this book because it showed how life is really like in the poorer communities of our country and how our society tends to ignore it. I thought that Barbara Ehrenreich was a great author because she tackled the obstacles that came her way when she was a part of the "working poor" with a sense of intelligence and cleverness. The book mesmerized me and proved all those who thought that people on welfare just chose to be that way, when in reality it is apparent that the wages are too low and the rents are too high for the "working poor to survive".
Barbara Eherenreich presents new insights about our economy and society. She explores the social class known as the "working poor", who many in society tend to ignore. Society looked down on this class when they depended on the government for their "handouts" but now that these people are out in the workforce they have nowhere else to apply but the lowest waged jobs. But they are working at least aren't they? Is that not what society wanted? Yet we have to think to ourselves these people are not making enough to survive and without government handouts what are these people to do? Barbara Eherenreich tackles these problems and shows society that we have a new problem at hand, ignorance. Society chooses to ignore these problems when it is one of our biggest. They way that she enters the workforce and presents the problems that are present is amazing and because of that I enjoyed the book to the greatest extent. I believe that is if society chooses to face this problem we can grow as an economy. "A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness."(195).
Rating:
Summary: Posing Poor
Review: Ehrenreich takes a break from her Mocha Frappacinos and spa weekends and heads to Maine, Minnesota and Florida to see what it's like to be a low-wage worker. Along the way she's a waitress, a Merry Maid, a Wal-mart associate, and a nursing home assistant, among other things. She doesn't play the role of working poor very fairly however. She gives herself a car, promises herself she won't live in squalor, when she turns out to be allergic to something at Merry Maids, she calls a dermatologist friend and has him prescribe something. She is childless, and rich with resources, even if she claims not to be. She also gives herself over $1000 start up cash. How many actual working poor folks have these luxuries, especially the car. And even with all this....she can't make it. That's the good message of the book. That the working poor are just that, working and still poor. She is writing to a "pop" audience so if you are looking for scholarly analysis, it's not here. It's also not a study so expecting a methods section (or any methods at all) will leave the reader disappointed. For those who think that the poor have it easy, this book communicates the clear fact that they do not.
HOWEVER, while Ehrenreich attempts to show just how hard it is to be part of the working poor in America, she does something else. She frauds people. I do not doubt that she wanted to see if she could "be poor" or "make it" at the various jobs she took, but to 1. take a job that someone who really needed it could have had, 2. pose as "one of them" with a group of workers who don't have time for games like this, especially when the result is not to help them, and 3. claim that you are making $2.15/hr. plus tips when, factoring in the profits of your book, you make exponentially more. Were Ehrenreich to donate all profits to those she worked with, at least there would have been some justice. All-in-all, Ehrenreich's biting sarcasm comes off as arrogance and snobbery as she suffers just a little for the sake of a book. She can't explain to the reader what it is like to be poor, because she never was. She never had the psychological factor of knowing "this is not going to change" to deal with. I appreciate Ehrenreich's message of "I'm a wealthy, Ph.D. who's health and smart and even I can't make it." But the ethical question of "Is this right to do?" can not be overcome.
Rating:
Summary: Nickel and Dimed Short Changes the Working Poor
Review: Nickel and Dimed Short Changes the Working Poor From 1998 to 2000 Barbara Ehrenreich took it upon herself to experience what many men and women experience everyday in America, a life of poverty. Nickel and Dimed is her response to the effectiveness of the welfare to work reform in the United States. Ehrenreich's book is intended to identify the challenges of the "working poor". However, I found that it actually perpetuates stereotypes of a population trying desperately to become self-sufficient. It accuses private industry of imposing indignities on workers to keep wages low, and offers no solutions to the many challenges welfare reform has created.
Ehrenreich conducts her study in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. Her goal is to try to survive on entry-level wages in each city. Ehrenreich arrives in each city, rents a car, a luxury to most low wage earners, and attempts to secure affordable and relatively secure housing. She applies for the stereotypical low wage jobs such as waitress, housekeeper, retail clerk, and dietary aide.
Ehrenreich's description of those with which she works often is characterized not by their intellect, skills and abilities, but by their race, hairstyles, weight, and the condition of their teeth. These descriptions only perpetuate stereotypes of what "poor people" look like. Ehrenreich actually suggests that you can identify a class of poverty by their appearance.
Ehrenreich's describes where she works in each city. Most of the businesses' names are changed to protect the employees. In Minneapolis however, Ehrenreich abandons this concept, and identifies Wal-Mart as her employer. She then goes on to expose the company for what is her perception of large-scale corporate mistreatment of low wage earners. Ehrenreich's inconsistency in reporting her data, coupled with her repeated references to unionization makes me consider the possibility that this book is not intended to educate society about the struggles of the "working poor", but to promote the theory that private industry's goal is oppression of entry level workers.
The most troubling aspect about Nickel and Dimed is that it makes only one dismissive comment about the support services, and partnerships available to assist the "working poor" in their transition to self-sufficiency. Further, it makes no mention of company initiatives, policies and programs that are in place to address the challenges of their entry-level employees.
I strongly agree with Ehrenreich that there is an affordable housing crisis in our country and that entry level wages are not enough to enable families to become self-sufficient. Unfortunately, Nickel and Dimed is one woman's account of a world in which she has had limited exposure. It does not, in my opinion give an accurate account of the experiences of the working poor or the services available to assist them in their transition to self-sufficiency.
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