Nickeled and Dimed

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Rating: 5/5
Reason for Reading: Recommendation by Eva, In Their Shoes Reading Challenge

Poverty, especially in relation to Welfare is an uncomfortable topic. Get two people with different viewpoints going on the subject, and your carefully planned dinner party could quickly end in disaster.

Barbara Ehrenreich, who in normal life spends her time as a writer, decided to spend 3 months as a blue-collar worker to see what it was like to live on the wages offered by the likes of Walmart and other low-paying jobs of similar ilk.

The result is a fascinating first-hand account of the struggle to make ends meet on meager wages. Ehrenreich started as a waitress in Key West, then a maid and dishwasher in Maine, and finally as a Walmart employee in Minnesota.

She reports in the introduction that "The first thing I discovered is that no job, no matter how lowly, is truly "unskilled". Every one of the six jobs I entered into in the course of this project required concentration, and most demanded that I master new terms, new tools, and new skills."

Ehrenreich reports on the exhaustion of standing on her feet for 8 or more hours in a row, the humiliation of mandatory drug tests, having her first paycheck held (as is the custom in many low-paying jobs), the managers who spend all their time looking over everyone's shoulder to yell at the smallest mistake, the seedy rent by the week motels she stayed at, and the complete and utter inadequacy of $7 an hour to pay for all of the lodging, food, clothing, and payphone expenses.

Among her coworkers, those who are not lucky enough to have a boyfriend, parent or child to split housing costs with have found solutions such as sleeping in their cars or staying at cheap motels. While working as a maid, Ehrenreich reports a particularly harrowing story about a coworker who apparently eats next to nothing. When she trips in a hole and hears something snap, she refuses medical attention because there are no sick days, and besides, she doesn't have any insurance. Ehrenreich recalls reaming out their boss over the phone to let her coworker have the day off. The next day, she went to work, uncertain if she would still have a job.

At the maid company, most of her coworkers had injuries of some kind or another from the hard work, even though the pay is sparse. Reflecting on the toll exacted on the maids, Ehrenreich states:

So ours is a world of pain-managed by Excedrin and Tylenol, compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases and then only on weekends, with booze. Do the owners have any idea of the misery that goes into rendering their homes motel-perfect? Would they be bothered if they did know, or would they take a sadistic pride in what they have purchased-boasting to dinner guests, for example, that their floors are cleaned only with the purest of human tears?

This book like this was a glimspse into a world I've never been a part of, not really. Personally, my closest brush with poverty came when I returned from a semester abroad and spent a desperate month with no money in reserve and grocery and rent to pay. But even then, I had advantages most poor do not. My fiancee (now husband) bought me groceries and an extra student loan came in just enough time to keep me from overdraft fees. The memory of how humiliated I felt at having to ask someone else to buy me groceries (even though it was my fiancee!) has made me very determined in life not to wind up in the same situation. But to be forced into that position not for a month, but for years and years, with little possibility of change.... it is truly beyond my power of imagination. Ehrenreich's story brings a much needed human element to the discussion on welfare reform and poverty. She is an excellent writer, and she weaves her own stories along with that of her coworkers into a compelling and moving read.