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Barbara Eherenreich’s Nickel and Dimed
Nickel and dimed barbara ehrenreich thesis statement
Role of social policies
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Recommended: Barbara Eherenreich’s Nickel and Dimed
Many low paid workers can thrive in society and get through their struggles to survive in society, but they lack the respect that they deserve for what they do. Barbara Ehrenreich and Mike Rose share their professional observations on this matter. Ehrenreich shares her research from a chapter in her book “Nickles and Dimes”, “Serving in Florida.” She focuses largely on how low wage workers are oppressed. How little voice worker gets, how difficult it is to survive month to month on low wages, and what sorts of problems the worker gets into because of this lifestyle. Rose shares his experience in his article “The intelligence of the Waitress in motion.” In his article he focuses on how little credit low wage workers receive for utilizing high …show more content…
She decides to take on an experiment and goes undercover to begin her research. At the beginning of June 1998, leaving everything that normally soothes her ego, she takes on her first task. She needed to find her a place to live. A bit terrified and fearful she sets out to explore the world where welfare mothers are entering, at a rate of approximately 50,000 a month, which matches her undercover identity, a divorced homemaker whose sole work experience consists of housekeeping in a few private homes. She eventually finds a place, a cute cabin in a swampy back yard. Shocked that “trailer trash” is what her results turned too. She claims, she is not doing her research for the anthropology or to experience poverty or how it “really feels” to be a long term low wage worker, she already understands it’s not a place to visit. She then says her reason and taking on an experiment as such is approaching this at a “scientific sort of mission.” With this question in mind, is it really possible to make a living on the kinds of jobs currently available to unskilled people? Ehrenreich say the answer is no. On average nation-wide hourly wage of $8.89 is an estimated amount to afford a one bedroom apartment, this is according the National Coalition of the homeless. However such “living wage” is not the solution. Ehrenreich continues her scientific experiment and plunged straight in to it, thinking maybe she will …show more content…
Noticing most job available are in “hospitality industry.” She sets 2 rules for herself. One she can’t use any of her skills derived from her education or usual work and two she had to take the best paid job that is offered and hold it. She then gets out fills out applications and to her amusement, the process to getting a job is as just as exhausting as finding a place to live. At a supermarket she applied too features a fifteen minute interview by a computer and the interview is multiple choice and apparently the most amusing interview question is “ are you an honest person?” Days go by and not one of the 20 places called her for a person to person interview. She found out to get a job is just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. She finally lands a job at a “family restaurant,” Taking on a waitress position at Hearth Side Restaurant. Her co-worker Gail a middle age woman trained Ehrenreich for the next eight
The invisible workforce consists of the low-wage workers that face harsh working conditions, a few or no benefits, and long hours of labor that exceed the regular business week. Barbara Ehrenreich, narrates her experience of entering the service workforce, in the book Nickel and Dimed. She proves that getting by in America working a minimum wage job is impossible. Although, the book was written in the 1990’s, the conditions in which minimum wage workers lived still prevail today. Minimum wage no longer serves its original purpose of providing a living wage for the invisible workforce.
...Even with the pitfalls in Ehrenreich's research, she managed to shine a light on the everyday plight of the low wage worker. She achieved employment at several different low wage service jobs and she also achieved friendliness with the coworkers there. Unfortunately, she could not achieve her goal of making enough money to pay the following month's rent at her accommodations, as she dictated to be her sign of success at the beginning of the project. Without this success, she can truly say that the plight of the low wage worker and the women leaving welfare is an extremely difficult one with great hardship and lack of fulfillment as these participants of the lower class work day to day to keep their chins up and make do with what, even if little, they have.
Barbara Ehrenreich, started her socioeconomic experiment in Key West, Florida. Her initial effort is to secure a place to live and a job that will support her. In the beginning, Ehrenreich finds that applying for low wage jobs can be a daunting task. Eventually, she finds work as a waitress at a local restaurant. The author discovers that the work is physically and mentally challenging. Ehrenreich develops a distaste for management while working at the establishment. She watches management sit around and treat employees poorly. Management does not value their workforce and routinely show a lack of compassion for their employees. Additionally, Ehrenreich uncovers an economic condition that the working poor face. The dilemma is if the working poor cannot make enough money for a security deposit for an apartment, then they are forced to live in crappy hotels. This enlightens another socioeconomic issue, nutritious food. Most hotel rooms do not have kitchenettes in which food can be prepared. This perpetuates many working poor going to fast food establishments to eat. Without health insurance, this can provide more health issues for low wage workers.
She knows she will never truly experience poverty because this is nothing more than a project but she leaves behind her old life and becomes known as a divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after many years. Her main goal is to get enough income to be able to pay for all her expenses and have enough money to pay next months rent.
She sets out to explore the world that welfare mothers are entered. The point was not so much to become poor as to get a sense of the spectrum of low-wage work that existed-from waitressing to housekeeping. She felt mistreated when it was announced that there has been a report on “drug activity”, as a result, the new employees will be required to be tested, as will the current employees on a random basis. She explained feeling mistreated, “I haven 't been treated this way-lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations-since junior high school” (Ehrenreich,286). The other problem is that this job shows no sign of being financially viable. Ehrenreich states that there is no secret economies that nourish the poor, “If you can 't put up the two months’ rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week” (286). On the first day of housekeeping, she is yelled and given nineteen rooms to clean. For four hours without a break she striped and remake the beds. At the end of the experience she explained that she couldn 't hold two jobs and couldn 't make enough money to live on with one as where single mothers with children. She has clarified that she has advantages compare to the long-term
Although every one are employed, at least some of the time, any one may often find it difficult to save enough money for a deposit on a rental property. As a consequence, some minimum-wage workers end up in living situations that are actually more pricey than a month-to-month rental. For instance, some minimum-wage workers rent rooms in week-to-week motels. According to Ehrenreich, “Given a few days or weeks more to look, maybe I could have done better. But the meter is running at the rate of $59 a day for my digs at the 6, which are resembling a Ballard creation more every day.” (Ehrenreich, 57) In other words, Ehrenreich knows these motel rooms tend to cost a much more than a traditional rental, but are accessible to the minimum-wage workers since a large deposit is not a requirement. If a person is unable or unwilling to pay for a room in a motel, some might live in his or her car, in a homeless shelter, or even on the street. Or as Morgan and his fiancee Alex, who settled on a $325 dollars a month in a renovated crack den (literally) that allowed them to pay the deposit over a few months, only with $300 dollars in savings, this was their best option. Minimum-wage workers who cannot afford a stable home, but might be able to afford a car, or vise versa, cannot afford a car, but be able to afford a house, adopt
In today’s society you either have to work hard to live a good life, or just inherit a lump sum of cash, which is probably never going to happen. So instead a person has to work a usual nine to five just to put food on the table for their families, and in many cases that is not even enough. In the article, “Why We Work” by Andrew Curry, Curry examines the complexities of work and touches on the reasons why many workers feel unsatisfied with their jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich writes an essay called, “Serving in Florida” which is about the overlooked life of being a server and the struggles of working off low minimum wages. Curry’s standpoint on jobs is that workers are not satisfied, the job takes control of their whole life, and workers spend
Since the Industrial Revolution in the United States of America, working conditions for women and minorities have not been given equal pay or top positions in the work place. Women being degraded by the men in charge, and minorities constantly at odds with one another so they will not form a Union. Such things keep those with low-status in the job in line, and not feel they are equal to the ones in charge. People from other countries are in search for a better life elsewhere, and take the risk of going to the United States illegally to seek out the American Dream. The articles Working at Bazooms by Meika Loe and At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die by Charlie LeDuff deal with the working conditions for women and minorities. Workers in both articles have to deal with having terrible working conditions, harassment in the workplace, low-status within the job, and the constant fear of job loss.
Barbara Ehrenreich conducts an experience about people in poverty. Barbara could not imagine how these people survive off $6-$7 per hour paying jobs. She wonders how anyone could survive off a low wage job. Her main focus is to see if she could handle all her expenses just as the poor do day to day. So Barbara goes out her way to perform an experience using her Ph.D. in Biology. She created three rules for her experiment. 1). Accept the cheapest housing or place she could find, 2). She must also try her best to keep a job; especially the job that pays the most and 3). She cannot use her degree or anything from her professional/regular life to get by if something happens to fail. As hard as she tried to follow the rules, she broke them anyhow
However, she never really experienced the actual life of living in poverty as the majority of people living in poverty experience. Barbara, an educated white women had just that on other people living in poverty, because of the color of her skin and education level that is more often than not restricted from people living in poverty. She was able and more qualified for jobs than other people living amongst the status she was playing. She also was able to more readily seek better benefits than people living in poverty. When she first start her journey in Florida she had a car, a car that in most cases people living in poverty do not have. She was also able to use the internet to find local jobs and available housing in the area that many people living in poverty are restricted from. Another great benefit she had was the luxury of affording a drug detox cleansing her of drugs deemed bad. Many people living in poverty do not have much extra cash laying around much less fifty dollars to afford a detox for prescription drugs. She also had the luxury to afford her prescription drugs, another option that many people living in poverty do not have. Another element that made Barbara’s experience not that genuine was the fact that she was not providing for anybody other than herself. Twenty-two percent of kids under the age of 18 are living below the poverty line (http://npc.umich.edu/poverty/#5) , Barbara did not have to provide for pets or kids which would of changed her experience altogether of living in poverty. Not to belittle Barbara’s experience, but many factors of what life is like living in poverty were not taken into consideration during her
Ehrenreich’s use of statistical information also proves to her audience that she in fact has done her research on this topic. She admits that poverty is a social topic that she frequently talks about. She researched that in 1998 the National Coalition for the Homeless reported that nationwide on average it would take about a wage of $8.89 to afford a one bedroom apartment and that the odds of common welfare recipients landing a job that pays such a “living wage” were about 97 to 1. Ehrenreich experiences this statistic in first person when she set out job hunting in Key West, Florida when she applied to 20 different jobs, ranging from wait tables to housekeeping, and of those applications, zero were responded to.
“To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else”.(221) Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Nickel and Dimed explored life as a low wage earner by working several “unskilled” jobs in different areas of the country and attempted to live off the wages she earned. She undertakes many noble trades, working in low wage and underappreciated jobs while trying to figure out how the people of this country do it every day. She also looks to examine the functional and conflict theories of stratification as they relate to the low wage jobs she pursues. The goal of Barbara was to find if she would be able to live off the money
At the beginning of story, she describes how difficult it was to find balance between two jobs. Although the author quit one of her jobbed, she was very quickly to start looking for another job at Jerry’s. When she was on her shift, one of the employees states “Well, it’s good to see you again,” (269) and “Hardly anyone comes back after the first day.” (269). Although, her coworker talks to her in sarcastic way, we can see from the quote that the author use tone vividly expressed her feeling and she felt proud and powerful. However, in my opinion this quote is going to be elaborating another plot as the story continues.
In today’s society, the question of minimum wage is a large political topic. Many people argue that it is impossible to live on a minimum wage lifestyle. In her novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich looks into this issue. In an experiment in which she mimics the life of a single woman, she moves into the low-wage workforce in three different cities in America. Within these cities, she attempts to make a living off of low-wage work and records her experiences, as well as the experiences of the true low-wage workers around her. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich utilizes both vivid imagery and data in order to persuade the audience to agree that the low-wage lifestyle is truly un-livable.
Also Ehrenreich makes it extremely clear that her work was not designed to make her “experience poverty. ”(6) After completing the assignment, given to her by an editor, she had planned to write an article about her experience. Her article is intended to reach the community that is financially well off and give them an idea of how minimum wage workers deal with everyday life. It also illustrated to the Economist the harsh reality in the ultra-competitive job environment and how someone in a low paying career cannot survive.