Low Wage Workers In Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed
Nickel & Dimed
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. The first example I want to discuss is when Barbara was working as a waitress at Hearthside. She and a few of her co-workers were talking about their housing situations, and her Gail was telling her about sharing a room. "Gail is sharing a room, and her friends roommate is flirting with her, making her go crazy, but she says if she didn't have a roommate the rent would be impossible alone" (Pg.25). Then there is the Haitian cook who lives with his girlfriend, and two other unrelated people" (pg. 25). Tina and her husband pay $60 per night to stay at a Day's Inn, and Joan who lives in her van (pg. 26). All of these individuals mostly live in these types of situations because they cannot afford to pay …show more content…
One of the maids tripped and fell, and sprained her ankle and she was afraid to go to the hospital, feeling she has already missed to many days of work she feels if she tells her boss that she will get fired (pg 110). Another example is if you have no health insurance you have to go without paying full price like Gail (pg 27) who needed estrogen pills but has to spend $9 a pill to control her migraines. Also when Marianne's boyfriend lost his job as a roofer because he missed time after getting a cut and couldn't afford the prescribed antibiotic so that it could heal (pg
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. The first example I want to discuss is when Barbara was working as a waitress at Hearthside. She and a few of her co-workers were talking about their housing situations, and her Gail was telling her about sharing a room. "Gail is sharing a room, and her friends roommate is flirting with her, making her go crazy, but she says if she didn't have a roommate the rent would be impossible alone" (Pg.25). Then there is the Haitian cook who lives with his girlfriend, and two other unrelated people" (pg. 25). Tina and her husband pay $60 per night to stay at a Day's Inn, and Joan who lives in her van (pg. 26). All of these individuals mostly live in these types of situations because they cannot afford to pay …show more content…
One of the maids tripped and fell, and sprained her ankle and she was afraid to go to the hospital, feeling she has already missed to many days of work she feels if she tells her boss that she will get fired (pg 110). Another example is if you have no health insurance you have to go without paying full price like Gail (pg 27) who needed estrogen pills but has to spend $9 a pill to control her migraines. Also when Marianne's boyfriend lost his job as a roofer because he missed time after getting a cut and couldn't afford the prescribed antibiotic so that it could heal (pg