Arriving in Portland, Maine in late August too late to pick up her car; Barb checked into the Motel 6 for the night. Barbara had chosen Maine for the next phase in her experiment because of its mainly white demographic. Thinking she would see what it was like to be the norm in the low-wage pool of applicants, maybe she would have a better grasp on the lower tiers way of life. After a speaking engagement the previous spring she noticed many advertisements for employment in the city. Barbara thought she could find a quick job, no problem. Barb did not bring much with her to Maine, jeans and tees, some khakis and long sleeved shirts, and hygiene necessities; the hiking boots and books were never touched. The first day of dwelling hunting she noticed there were not affordable apartments in Portland. She scoured the newspaper for anything, and came upon a room for rent. Calling for an appointment her roommate was described as being a character; and to just give her a chance. Arriving at the dilapidated motel and boarding house she was taken to the basement where she immediately knew this would not be her new living quarters. Several more apartments and motels are called and feeling defeated Barbara heads back to Portland. On the route back she stumbles upon the Blue Haven Motel. Rent is a little more than she would want but the amenities are Waitressing is out and so are office type jobs. She begins to apply for cleaning services, warehouse, nursing homes and general work type jobs. She finds a job fair and is introduced to her first personality assessment test. There are no right or wrong answers, we only need to see if you are a good fit for our business; is the point of this examination. Barbara sees that; as in Key West; one job will not be enough to scrounge by in Portland. Her interview with The Maids is successful. She also attains a job with Woodcrest Residential Facility; an assisted living home; as a dietary
As stated by the author, she choose Maine “for its whiteness”. She also stated that Portland was the perfect place for “a blue-eyed, English-speaking Caucasian to infiltrate the low-wage workforce, no questions asked”. While working at a maid service company, she experiences many issues relating to the health of the women she worked with. For starters, many, if not all, were in pain. She noted that one person’s weakness ended up being a burden on the rest of the team. Women work with ill-fitting shoes, arthritis and the effects of old injuries acquired by working. She explains that their world is one of pain, “managed by Excedrin and Advil, compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases and then only on weekends, with booze”. When one homeowner lightly implies that the cleaning they are doing is “quite the workout”, the authors reflects that “this form of exercise is totally asymmetrical, brutally repetitive and as likely to destroy the musculoskeletal structure as to strengthen it”. One passage that I found to be very poignant is when the author writes:
Barbara Ehrenreich’s use of logos in order to gain the reader’s support and approval was prevalent throughout this section. She clearly outlines her credibility and aptitude in the introduction of her novel - she mentions her education as well as statistical facts about hourly wages in the United States and how they will relate to her experiment. She points out her “…PhD in biology, (which she) didn’t get by sitting at a desk and fiddling with numbers” and how “According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, in 1998 it took an hourly wage of $8.89 to afford a one-bedroom apartment…the odds against a typical welfare recipient’s landing a job at such a ‘living wage’ were about 97 to 1.”
The research excerpt, “Nickel-and-Dimed” conducted by Barbara Ehrenreich, explained the day-to-day of the low-wage workforce in America. Ehrenreich conducted the experiment by immersing herself in the” world that welfare mothers are entering”, as she recalls. To commence her journey, she finds a place to live for $500 in Key West, Florida. After she is acclimated in her “sweet little place” she runs through the ads to find work. Ehrenreich finally, lands a job at Hearthside Hotel for $2.43 an hour plus tips. On the first day, she follows Gail, a waitress, to learn the tricks of the trade. She quickly feels overwhelmed by the work and learns that she is incompetent. The first problem she encounters at Hearthside Hotel are the managers she has
In her unforgettable memoir, Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to explore the lives of the working poor under the proposed welfare reforms in her hometown, Key West, Florida. Temporarily discarding her middle class status, she resides in a small cheap cabin located in a swampy background that is forty-five minutes from work, dines at fast food restaurants, and searches all over the city for a job. This heart-wrenching yet infuriating account of hers reveals the struggles that the low-income workers have to face just to survive. In the except from Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich uses many rhetorical strategies to illustrate the conditions of the low wage workers including personal anecdotes of humiliation at interviews, lists of restrictions due to limited
Going and living the life of a poor/middle class person is what Barbara Ehrenreich did in the story “Serving in Florida”. She illustrates her working conditions at the Hearthside ad Jerry’s. Where she faces many barriers. Ehrenreich suffers from low wages, poor working environments and, long stressful hours. She came from a higher paying job, living in a nice house, to a low wage job, living in a trailer park working two jobs.
Millions of Americans work full-time, day in and day out, making near and sometimes just minimum wage. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them in part by the welfare claim, which promises that any job equals a better life. Barbara wondered how anyone can survive, let alone prosper, on $6-$7 an hour. Barbara moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, working in the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon realizes that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts and in most cases more than one job was needed to make ends meet. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all of its glory, consisting of
In Florida she almost develops a hate for managment, one being that managers can sit around hours on end and get away with it and secondly because the showed no passion for the job they had. One job wasnt good enough at that time for her, given that she couldn’t pay her rent. She tries working two jobs for one day but gives up because she felt it would be to much of a toll on her. With plentiful job opportunities, Maine was next on her list. Jobs there were no better than in the Key West because they payed the same. Barbra started out living in Motel 6 but it got to expensive so she accepted a c...
Workers in the Lowell Mills were required to live in the boardinghouses while working at Lowell. These boardinghouses were in clean, neat, and well painted. Although sometimes the boarders were sometimes crowded, conditions in the Lowell boardinghouses were often better than the women’s homes in other towns. While living at Lowell, boarders had many strict rules and regulations to follow. This primary source of the rules and regulations was most likely written by the management at Lowell to ensure residents in the boardinghouses knew what was expected of them. Overseers were responsible for holding boarders accountable for the rules and making sure that they are abiding by the policies. As we study the lives of women at Lowell, it is
The thought of her brothers still being in her former home environment in Maine hurt her. She tried to think of a way to get at least one of her brothers, the sickly one, to come and be with her. She knew that her extended family was financially able to take in another child, and if she showed responsibility, there would be no problem (Wilson, 40). She found a vacant store, furnished it, and turned it into a school for children (Thinkquest, 5). At the age of seventeen, her grandmother sent her a correspondence, and requested her to come back to Boston with her brother (Thinkquest, 6).
She decides if she could earn $7 an hour, then she could afford $500 rent. She found a place to rent 45 minutes away from work. In order to deal with the financial responsibilities, Ehrenreich took to the streets in search for another unskilled job since she did not want to use her car as a place of residence. She continues her experiment in a new environment which took her to Maine since the area is mostly a Caucasian community. When she realized that Portland was just another $6-$7 an hour town, she picked up two jobs to be practical. She began her quest for lodging at Motel 6. After several disappointments searching for a place to lie; she found a cottage for $120 a week and determined to poor cannot compete with the rich in the housing market. Ehrenreich moved to Minnesota to finish her experiment, where she hoped there would be a satisfying harmony between rent and wages. She locates an apartment from a friend lasting a short period until she finds a place to stay on her own. She found housing to be a struggle as there seems to be a shortage of houses; as a result she transitioned herself into a hotel. Her stay at the hotel proved to surpass her estimated expenses despite the fact this was her only safe
The first few nights Barbra stays at Motel 6, which had questionable hygiene (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 53). Barbra tried many places for housing first being Glenwood Apartment which was $65 a week with a shared bathroom and kitchen, with someone described as a “character, but clean” (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 55) but during the tour Barbra could not even see the kitchen because there was a man sleeping in it and the room she would be staying in had no window (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 56). While cheap the place was a bust. Barbra looks at another place for $150 a week and one for $110 a week but had very little privacy while being ground floor on a busy street (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 56). Which left her with Blue Haven Motel, which offered a cottage for $120 a week a $100 deposit including a bedroom, living area, with TV and linens included (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 56). Barbra in this city again is doing better than some of the people she is working with. One of the young girls at her cleaning job can only afford to have a small bag of Doritos for lunch even though she is living with her boyfriend and mother (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 78). Most of the people Barbra worked with were living with extended family while Pauline one of the older women owned her own house but all the bedrooms were full with her kids and grandkids so she slept on the couch in the living room (Ehrenreich, 2011, p.
Nellie was not your average housewife. She made observations: women were abused, uneducated, and robbed of their rights. Subsequently, women became the subject of her writing. Many years later, she moved to Winnipeg and became a public speaker and advocate of women’s r...
On January 25, 1959, the daily newspaper in Oakland, California, ran a profile of one of the city’s well-known residents, a fifty-six-year-old French woman who had been living there, off and on, since 1940. Appearing under the headline “She Also Cooks,” the article began:
Clavers found it a bit harder to befriend her neighbors in Michigan. Being from Boston, the Clavers family were used to a specific way of living that opposed that of the western frontier. Not only did Mrs. Cavers have pre made assumptions of westerners, but her neighbors have also believed that because the Clavers family were from eastern civilization that they thought of themselves too good for the simple frontier life. On one occasion Mrs. Clavers found herself immensely ill and unable to care for the rest of her family who was also beginning to fall of illness. She expected her neighbors to come and help relieve her of some household duties but they never came. She wrote that “my neighbors showed but little sympathy on the occasion. They had imbibed the idea that we held ourselves above them, and chose to take it for granted, that we did not need their aid,” (175). Instead of her neighbors Mrs. Clavers relied on the service of a nurse who aided the family in household duties and nursed them back to
From an outside perspective ABCs organizational structure is lacking many key elements; such as, a communication system, leadership that can be trusted, involved middle managers and an overall culture of pride, ownership and accountability. I would recommend a two pronged approach to validating these observations. First, I would administer an anonymous survey to the entire company as this will provide the clearest picture of where the company stands. This survey would be a quantitative approach in which the results could be numerically scored. Second, would be to randomly interview employees at various levels of the company and document the results in paragraph form. During the interviews, I would also be