Nickle And Dimed

"The Rich Get Richer, While the Poor Get Poorer"

Now more than ever do I understand the phrase, "the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer." In "Nickel and Dimed," author Barbara Ehrenreich decides to take on one of her most challenging projects as a journalist and writer. Using the old fashioned method, she will go undercover as a minimum wage worker to see how these people survive. As for her own background, she considers herself to be a member of the middle class, living near Key West, Florida. Barbara's family growing up had endured its own struggles to stay away from the poverty line. Therefore, she feels very lucky to have a desktop job, where she makes a good living. She really wants to know what it's like just trying to make meat ends day by day.

Barbara decides to begin her journey of low-paid jobs in Key West, mostly because of laziness she admits. She finds an efficiency to live in for $500 a month. Her first job is a waitress at a family restaurant attached to a hotel. The hours Barbara works are from 2 until 10 P.M. and the rate of pay is $2.43 plus tips. Being a waitress, however, turns out to be quite exhausting. Waiting constantly on customers' wants and needs seemingly takes every ounce of her energy, both physical and mental. Customers will complain and complain, and then will hardly tip. As time goes on, Barbara learns more and more about what her co-workers do to make it on such a low income. First of all, they barely eat. Most of them live in tiny one bedroom apartments or trailers with other family members or roommates. Some even live out of

their car or van night after night. A lot of the employees have more than one job to survive. Barbara is amazed at how they can do this day after day, and not be completely exhausted of it

all. When asked this, one employee just said that it was what she was used to. Barbara then attempts this two job way of living for one day. She gets a job as a housekeeper in the hotel, hustling from one room to another. Once she is done with this, she rushes over to her other restaurant job, where she ends up walking out because she can not handle it anymore.

Barbara chooses Maine next, mostly because of population living there. Most people are white, and she figures it will be much easier for a Caucasian woman like herself to be part of the low-paid workforce. Here she works as a maid and a nursing home aid. Both require the hardest of work effort, which many people would never even think of doing. While at the maid job, she comes in contact with the most gruesome of tasks, including cleaning rich peoples' toilets, and pulling hair out of sinks. She is told to "just get through it" by her employer, who could care less about the wellbeing of his employees. However, he puts on a different show, pretending to care more about them than his profits. The work as a maid is pretty much unbearable and they are timed on everything. Just as Barbara learned doing her past experiences, most of the maids can barely afford food. Therefore they eat mainly slim sandwiches brought from home, or a small bag of chips for lunch. Their employer promises them a thirty minute lunch break, however, it was much more like a five minute trip to the convenient store on the way to another house. At one point in the book, a fellow maid injures herself and is in great pain, but refuses to stop working because she knows that is not an option. At the nursing home, Barbara works to feed old people, who throw things at her, and make messes constantly. Realizing that she cannot

earn a living off of these jobs, even working seven days a week, she calls it quits, and heads to her next and last place of employment.

Minnesota is Barbara's last destination. Here she sets out to apply for numerous jobs. She thinks retailing might be a good one. After personality and drug tests, she

...