Barbara Ehrenreich Analysis

When people work in horrible conditions, a person must also consider that some of these people might also be looking for ways to survive on their own or with their children. It may come in the form of saving money and buying cheaper food or receiving help from the government for a small amount of time. People in these conditions struggle each day to feed and shelter themselves. Ehrenreich has a Ph.D. in biology and is an experienced writer. This would cause her to earn more than the average person on the street. She would not automatically know the struggles of the people around her, but she would have an insight on it. She does not witness it until she begins to work at Jerry’s. While at Jerry’s, she meets different people: other waitresses,
Some stay in their cars and sleep there overnight, while others stay with people that they know. If they have a house, then they are living paycheck to paycheck there; consequently, they eat very little food and try to save their food as much as possible. Ehrenreich describes these surviving conditions by describing some of the struggles that her coworkers go through. The specific one that she uses in her quote would be talking about how the minimum wage workers provide food for themselves. She states, “If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can’t save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved in a convenience store” (Ehrenreich 27). Ehrenreich uses this quote to show the reader how some people must survive on the bare minimum for food. In this case, someone was talking to her about how they try to survive on very few food items because they must pay the apartment that they live in. For this person, it is more important that they have a shelter as opposed to being well nourished. Both are very important items that are needed to survive; however, in this case, the person is prioritizing shelter over
A person that is living paycheck to paycheck should buy the least expensive option because it would allow them to still save a little bit of what they have. If they would not do this, then it would be harder for them to save the bare minimum to survive the following week. She also gave some examples like eating hot dogs or ramen noodles. These two food items would provide the person with some nutrition; it would also save them a lot of money. Doing these personal, simple tasks helps people, but some people also find other ways to help themselves. The U.S. government has multiple programs that are directed towards helping the working poor. One that is widely known by several people are food stamps. Food stamps are given to low-income people to provide them with money to buy only fresh food from supermarkets or other places where the stamps are accepted. Dylan Matthews, a writer for The Washington Post, wrote an article where he investigated how the working poor survive on the small amount of money that they are