Analysis Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

In her narrative, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the world of the low-wage working class. An upper-middle class biology Ph.D. and journalist, Ehrenreich temporarily uproots her life in a two year social and economic experiment to join the laborers of America. Her purpose is to get firsthand knowledge and answer the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” (Ehrenreich 1) Beginning her journey in Key West, Florida, Ehrenreich finds employment as a waitress at a restaurant she names the “Hearthside”, working 8 hours a day for $2.48 per hour plus tips. She must pick up a second job in order to pay her $500 a month rent at an inn, and does so, waitressing at busier restaurant (“Jerry’s) for $2.15
an hour. Between the two jobs, she works 14 hours a day, getting little time to sit down and rest. While employed at Hearthside for only two weeks, Ehrenreich remains at Jerry’s and decides to cut the costs of transportation down and move into a trailer park closer to Key West. As her final job in Florida, she lands a housekeeping position, though she only works one day, quitting simply by walking out at Jerry’s and ending her time in the Sunshine State. Choosing Maine for its predominantly white population, Ehrenreich moves into a cheap motel and eventually finds two jobs; One on the weekends as a nursing home dietary aid for $7 an hour, and the other during the week as a maid for a housekeeping service paying $6.65 an hour.
A few weeks in, she finds a better motel, though priced at $200 a week as opposed to its $120 listing. Her job at the nursing home is to take orders during mealtime and clean up afterwards, which she learns is more challenging than she thought dishwashing would be. Working for The Maids, she finds the work physically demanding and, in a sense, degrading. She comes to the understanding that “low-wage work in general has the effect of making you feel like a pariah” (Ehrenreich 117) Relocating to her final destination – Minneapolis, Minnesota – Ehrenreich stays temporarily at a friend’s friend place for three days while they are away, then moves into a dingy motel priced at $245 a week. She works through personality and drug tests, picking up a position at Wal-Mart where she puts away and folds clothes for $7 an hour. There, nine-hour shifts test her stamina, and her rent tests her wages. She eventually leaves Wal-Mart, along with one of her coworkers who decides that seven dollars is not enough for all that they
do. In reflection, Barbara Ehrenreich resolves that, of her six jobs, all required ability.
For each, she had to master new skills, learn the social environment of each job, and work laboriously for hours on end. She further analyzes and evaluates the rising problem of poverty. A single, educated woman – with the ability to rely on conveniences such as emergency cash, a car, and a credit card; a woman who was without children or a family to support – struggled to make ends meet working one or more jobs demonstrates the inadequacy of the minimum wage and its fail to sufficiently supply an individual or family with the means necessary to support the “working poor.” Companies are reluctant to raise the pay of their employees and can punish and/or fire employees who step out of line. “When you enter the low-wage workplace, you check your civil liberties at the door…We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy if large numbers of citizens spend half of their waking hours in what amounts to a dictatorship.” (Ehrenreich 210) The calculated $30,000 “living wage” for a family of three comes to $14 an hour, and 60 percent of Americans earns less than that. The lifestyles of the poor are tainted with low self-esteem and the need to “work through” fatigue, injury, illness, etc. “They are [the lifestyles] emergency situations. And that is how we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans – as a state of emergency.” (Ehrenreich
214)