Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America: Amazon.ca: Barbara Ehrenreich: Books

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Book Description

Publication Date: May 1 2002 | Series: Spare Change?

The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Nickel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage.

Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

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Product Details

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; First Edition edition (May 1 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805063897
ISBN-13: 978-0805063899
Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.7 x 2 cm
Shipping Weight: 340 g

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (706 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #151,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #72 in Books > Business & Investing > Popular Economics > Labour Policy

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Product Description

From Amazon

Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.

As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.

So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In contrast to recent books by Michael Lewis and Dinesh D'Souza that explore the lives and psyches of the New Economy's millionares, Ehrenreich (Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, etc.) turns her gimlet eye on the view from the workforce's bottom rung. Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an hour, she left behind her middle class life as a journalist except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop computer to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a time. In 1999 and 2000, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress in Key West, Fla., as a cleaning woman and a nursing home aide in Portland, Maine, and in a Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, Minn. During the application process, she faced routine drug tests and spurious "personality tests"; once on the job, she endured constant surveillance and numbing harangues over infractions like serving a second roll and butter. Beset by transportation costs and high rents, she learned the tricks of the trade from her co-workers, some of whom sleep in their cars, and many of whom work when they're vexed by arthritis, back pain or worse, yet still manage small gestures of kindness. Despite the advantages of her race, education, good health and lack of children, Ehrenreich's income barely covered her month's expenses in only one instance, when she worked seven days a week at two jobs (one of which provided free meals) during the off-season in a vacation town. Delivering a fast read that's both sobering and sassy, she gives readers pause about those caught in the economy's undertow, even in good times.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An eye-opener Dec 28 2012

By J. Lord

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I buy copies for other people because I think we all need to what life is like for some working poor in our society. It altered my thinking.

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5.0 out of 5 stars eye-opening, strikes a chord May 31 2001

By momazon

Format:Hardcover

As someone who has been a supermarket cashier, waitress and K-Martian, the title of this book caused me to immediately buy it and not stop reading till I was through. What an eye-opener about what I always suspected -- how am I ever supposed to survive on this money? Thank goodness I live with my parents -- but what about my co-worker with her 2 kids? It would be impolite to ask ..... Ehrenreich did the work, asked the questions, tried to make the budget, and kept the buoyancy that I see in real-life people at these very real jobs. Her notes on the interview process (I remember those Accutrac tests well) and research of laws (I often worked overtime without compensation, thinking I had to if I didn't want to be fired) round out this book, and the conclusion is an excellent wrap-up to make you think about what is going on in America if the people who work the jobs necessary to make our economy run can not get by. This book both angered and saddened me, and inspired me to start looking for ways to advocate a raise in minimum wage.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars More self-serving than anything else Jun 26 2004

By Charity Forrester

Format:Paperback

When I read the premise of this book- a foray into the world of low-wage workers in an attempt to discover if one can live off of so little- I thought it sounded like an interesting investigation with a great motive. Unfortunately, the book was as much an expose of the prejudices of the so-called liberal upper class as it was about the working and living conditions of the poor. Ehrenreich writes with the same holier than thou attitude she condemns, made all the worse by her pride in herself for (she thinks) overcoming such prejudices. Ehrenreich is hardly willing to throw herself into the project- she isn't even willing to go without a car, a luxury hardly essential in the large cities she chooses to work in. Worse than her lack of dedication, however, is her lack of perspective. Ehrenreich is too judgemental to get a fair view of her coworkers and too full of pride to bother lowering herself to their standards. Glimpses behind Ehrenreich's mask of concern are shocking and disgusting. At one point, she states that a black couple unsatisfied with her service "looks ready to summon the NAACP," a condescending and horribly offensive remark. Later, she gleefully scolds herself for considering a man in a wheelchair lucky because he gets to sit down.

"Nickel and Dimed" is not a book totally unworth reading. Yes, the author's attitude is sickening and hard to ignore, but there are tidbits of a real story hidden underneath the layers of self-serving drivel. Ehrenreich does, despite her efforts to the contrary, get a glimpse of the difficult conditions of low-wage workers, and some of the information she discovers about the practices of corporations is shocking. Nevertheless, you may be better off sticking to newspapers for reporting, because Ehrenreich's primary interest is her own image and book sales.

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Listmania!

3.7 out of 5 stars