Preview

Barbara Erenriech Aurgumentative essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
596 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Barbara Erenriech Aurgumentative essay
Barbara is convinced that low-wage workers will not put up with their condition any longer. I agree that the low-wage lifestyle is unfair and impractical due to laborious work for small pay, high cost of living and little pay and long processing applications.

In chapter one of the book Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich she moved to Florida where she started her new life as a waitress making two dollars and forty-three cents. A waitress works eight to more hours a day constantly moving on their feet doing their best to please customers for greater tip. Not to mention the rudeness of customers and the extra hard work they do in the background like cleaning dishes, the repetition of mopping same areas, and on occasion in some circumstances co-worker tension. Waitresses also deal with not getting tips. Tips are the main things waiter and waitresses rely on sense their paycheck is only about one-hundred and ninety-eight dollars. Although those one-hundred and ninety-eight dollars turns to four dollars due to the tax take out. Therefore they really don’t have much and basically rely on tips more than anybody and that’s why they work extra hard. So getting paid approximately three dollars for extreme labor is very unfair.

I like chapter two which was much unexpected for the simple fact some people believe a certain race would be the best. Ehrenreich choose Maine for its whiteness and the fact that their cost of living is high you would think they pay for low-wage jobs would be high but its not. Life in Maine from which I read, being a low-wage worker it’s hard to find a place to live with everything being so high. Even staying in a hotel called for more money. There are many job

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Whereas, In Nickel and Dimed on (not) getting by in America, which was our third book review an experiment of living the life of an average person on minimum wage conducted by Barbara Enrenreich. The reason as stated in the initial review was to see if Enrenreich,”could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day “(Nickel and Dimed, 6). In chapter eight of the Doob text labeled under “Poor People Work” one of the factors listed that affected employment opportunities were minimum wage. It basically discussed how the minimum wage is not very beneficial for people living in poverty. (You hear in the news and constantly displayed through different forms of the media that the American Dream is the golden ticket) Well how…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Reading Barbara Ehrenreich interview was very interesting and made me actually think about how others feel or how others are living, who appears to be joyful and look like their living good. I agree with just about everything Ehrenreich said. As far as well established businesses that make a plethora amount of money but only pay their employees minimum wage. I personally can't relate to her interview, unfortunately i know a few people who can. Growing up i had a really close friend who parents were a waiter at The Cheese cake factory and her mother was a maid at the Embassy suite hotel. Being so young with not so much knowledge i always thought her mother and father made so much money due to them working at top notch businesses until i went…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Barbara Ehrenreich is an author of article called “Nickel and Dimed”. Barbara Ehrenreich is a down-to-earth, skilled journalist with a Ph.D. in biology. Barbara is someone does not try to be what she is. She is the kind of woman that leaves everything aside and going to experience different life in America. . In the article Barbara tells about herself as a journalism going thru a low-wage job from her normal life, and she show how her life is different from what she was before. By her experience she shares what it is like for unskilled women to be in low-wage job. Barbara uses many rhetoric techniques explaining about her lifestyle, poverty, and American dream.…

    • 711 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich takes a break from her real life and lives as a low wage-worker takes a low wage job in order to understand and find out what wage workers really go through everyday not knowing what's next for them, and how they live off of minimum wage. In everyday life low-income people do many things in order to survive on a daily basis. There are people who work multiple jobs, or live in a shelter, live in their cars, house/apartments housed by various amounts of people, even if they don't know them, and in the book Barbara talks about many of these examples.…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed did an investigation about living conditions of workers who were regarded as unskilled and low-wage employees. Ehrenreich also wanted to figure out how millions of women are able to survive on $6 or $7 an hour after welfare reform (Ehrenreich 1). The article The Limits of Policy by David Brooks discusses the importance of government policy and how government policy will affect people's lives. Basically, Ehrenreich and Brooks are concerned with the same issue; however, they yield different conclusions about the issue. For example, Ehrenreich states that low income people need more help from the American government and government…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist who posed as an unskilled worker in 1998 to highlight the struggles encountered every day by Americans attempting to live on minimum wage. Ms Ehrenreich had always been interested in poverty. As the result of the new law, people would be expected to leave welfare and get jobs, sounds good. Unfortunately, the jobs they were able to get really didn’t pay enough to live on. Serving in Florida is about her experience as waitress trying to make ends meet just like millions of Americans do everyday. The overall message of the story is that wages in America are too low and rents are too high.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    -In addition to small wages...servers must give a percentage of their tips to bartenders, busboys, hostesses, and back of the house employees. This is also something to take into consideration. The commonly average tip in the U.S. is 15%; Fair Tip.org suggest that tipping 5% over that would minimize the impact of tipping out such employees, and thus send the server home with a fair and decent salary.…

    • 670 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich takes some time out of her normal life and tries to experience life working as a low-wage worker. Ehrenreich begins with the goal, “to see whether she could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day.” (Ehrenreich 6) Ehrenreich salary is always low, and a few times along the way she has to ask for help. At the end of her journey, she has discovered that no job, no matter how lowly, is truly “unskilled.” (Ehrenreich 193)…

    • 1812 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Barbara Ehrenreich began her research to explore how people attempting to move from welfare to work are managing—if at all. This exploration also extended to those who are apart of the working class and having not been on welfare. Attempting to place herself in the position of her subjects, Ehrenreich strived to see if she were able to survive on the minimal income provided by a series of low level and low paying jobs. In was her foreknowledge of laws and the inclusion of these laws in Nickel and Dimed that brought about exposing historical and present-day 21st century contradictory practices, laws, and regulations that exploit the poor working class (if not through her experiment but by the subjects’ honest experience). In addition to exposing this existing institutionalized discrimination, whether unconsciously or consciously, Ehrenreich demonstrates with her approach the severe state of class and racial segregation as it pertains to what jobs are available and to whom and what kind of lives are produced in such a class divided American society.…

    • 1730 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    After Key West she headed to Maine because of its “whiteness”, and became a maid making $6.65 as well a working in a nursing home, and making $7 an hour working more, and harder for a pay that’s not enough to support yourself or even your family (51). As no matter how hard you worked the pay would never be enough you would live by check, and in the beginning of her project you see that she has a plan on what her money goes to showing a sense of what it was like. Going on into Ehrenreich journey she finds herself beginning to strike up a friendship with the cook, and connecting more with him from sharing a cigarette with him and thinking more about it. I believe that both the readers, and Ehrenreich has build a comfortability to share emotion, and for us as readers to understand and relate.…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nickel And Dimed

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It's a well known fact that everything in America is over priced, so with everything being over priced and citizens being under paid how are we supposed to expect citizens to survive in this rigged economy? Our economy is set up to benefit the middle-upper class and to take away from the lower class. As we stand by and say to the lower class citizens “get a job”, “work harder and longer”. In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich proves that minimum wage cannot sustain the quality of life that is perceived as the American Dream let alone provide for a livable life at all. No matter how hard you work or how determined you are it just isn't possible to live and prosper off of minimum wage.…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Current Event Economics

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages

    those individuals who also earn tips in addition to their regular paychecks and that can help as well. In a few states however some local governments have raised their minimum wage prices above the federal level. 4.) Reason I picked this article because I felt it pertained to a lot of adolescent kids my age. I used to work in a restaurant and received minimum wage and if I were supporting myself there would be no way for me to live on my own. I know a lot…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Race and Douglass Massey

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Katherine Newman thinks that if people work hard they should be rewarded. This also doesn't mean that people in poverty deserves their low standard of living. This…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Young employees struggle to an extent, facing limited issues when they get into their workplace. Some struggle with anxiety while others from balancing their social lives, however for those which were ready and building towards this part of their life, this is not always the case. Alice Tam has written an article titled “On-the Job Training” and she states how the workplace is a cruel and difficult place to fit in. During this article she becomes extremely defensive and even states that her peers are all trying to protect themselves. I disagree that the workplace is naturally a stressful place because your superiors do not always have unspoken expectations, being judged by peers is natural in society, and she is feeling intimidated because…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    "Serving in Florida" is extremely effective because Ehrenreich places the reader in the shoes of poor Americans, by narrating her personal experience about the subject. The fact that Ehrenreich left her "privileged" lifestyle to conduct this experiment, connects with the reader on a personal level. In essence, Ehrenreich's experience proves that this situation can happen to anyone. It brings a sense of reality to the subject, and has a far greater effect then if Ehrenreich had used statistics alone to prove her point. In addition, first hand experience gives Ehrenreich undisputable credibility on the subject. The author paints a realistic picture of the conditions through her use of colorful and straight forward language. The reader is instantly submerged into the environment and is given the opportunity to experience the conditions with a sympathetic point of…

    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays