Customer Reviews:
 Just Plain Bad June 18, 2008
4 out of 17 found this review helpful
This book was required summer reading before my freshman year at the University of Missouri. I was appalled to find after the first chapter or so a political undertone of liberals masquerading as journalists yet again.
Now I am a middle of the road individual, but my biggest pet peeve is when people are NOT UPFRONT with there intentions. It was the most hypocritical book I have ever read.
She does her best to point out how hard it is to get by on minimum wage with minimal education. She stays in these personas long enough to learn about her coworkers and show us how hopeless it is. Our lives are what we make of them not our jobs or money-I certainly hope I can not be reduced to a $ sign. Maybe if she lays off the drugs long enough she will stop blaming society for our problems and realize that it boils down to individual responsibility.
 Politics aside--a book every upper income person should read June 14, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Author Barbara Ehrenreich spends a year as an experiment living on minimum wage and writing about it as a journalist. The book chronicles her year working in 3 states (Florida, Maine, and Minnesota) as, among other things, a waitress, maid, and Walmart employee. From the beginning she makes two caveats: that she has her own car (many minimum wage workers don't) and she won't go hungry (e.g. she will dip into her ATM before she will starve).
I thoughourly enjoyed this book. It was fascinating to see, fully see, another side of life that I thought I knew but really didn't. These people work hard, very hard, are good people, honest people and watch out for each other as best they can with what little they have.
Every dollar counts. I remember the Merry Maid who ate hot dog rolls brought from home for lunch because not only did she have no money, but no time since the work schedule was so tight. Decent housing is nearly impossible to find. All this and the author didn't even have to worry about chilcare costs. Everyone on minimum wage has to work at least two jobs to survive at even a subsistence level and live with friends, relatives, share a couch, a trailer. It's bad.
This book has changed my outlook toward minimum wage workers, made me a better tipper, and a much kinder and more thoughtful customer. I recommend it to anyone just as an aid to your humanity.
Nickel and Dimed June 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
In my spare time, I enjoy reading about American problems and issues not directly known to the general audience. I found myself reading Nickel and Dimed, an intriguing story about an adventurous journalist going undercover, into the minimum wage world. Ehrenreich explores the working life of a maid, housekeeper, waitress, and Wal-Mart associate. Barbara shows how even in the best case scenario of being childless and healthy can create many obstacles and challenges. The main idea of this book is that every job requires a skill, no matter how low the wages are. Regardless of your specific field of work, you will be sure to encounter unreasonable management, difficult physical and mental labor, as well as pushy consumers or costumers. The bottom line is that rent and transportation is too expensive and minimum wage jobs simply will not support a person in the long run.
Maid and Wal-Martian June 2, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
While Nickel and Dimed is not exactly the kind of book I can say that I enjoyed, it's definitely the kind of book I find informative and consciousness-raising. As a consequence of reading it, I will never see a Wal-Mart employee, hotel maid, house cleaner, or restaurant server in the same light as before. Ehrenreich's clear, direct writing pulls no punches as she gives the reader a realistic view of her under cover experiences working in a variety of minimum wage jobs.
Ehrenreich, who has a Ph.D. in biology, approached her year of trying to live as a minimum wage employee the way that a scientist would. She even set up certain rules, two of which were that she would not fall back on any of her skills derived from education and that she would take the highest-paying job offered to her and do her best to hold it. By the way, the fact that she mentions her Ph.D. on more than one occasion evidently bothers some other reviewers and readers, but to me it added more credibility to her work. She not only had the credentials to carry out the research, but she actually did so. Another point that Ehrenreich makes is that regardless of education or intellect, there's still a learning curve for every job. Many times she felt inadequate, overwhelmed, and even disappointed in her ability (or inability) to do a job.
There are far too many situations that Ehrenreich described to enumerate them all, so I'll just mention a couple. Living conditions were horrendous for her (once there was sewage backed up and all over her floor), and yet many of her co-workers lived in cars, motel rooms, and flophouses. All of her jobs were eye-opening, but her stint as a maid in Maine was the most enlightening. One of my favorite passages in the book is when the owner of a million-dollar condo takes her into the bathroom and asks her to scrub the grout extra hard since the marble walls have been "bleeding" onto the brass fixtures. Ehrenreich restrains herself from telling the owner that it's the world-wide working class that's been bleeding as they quarried the marble, wove the Persian rugs until they went blind, smelted the steel for the nails, etc. I hope and pray (really) that conditions for Wal-Mart employees have improved since Ehrenreich's time there in 1998.
Read this book if you dare. I can guarantee that you'll never take your Chili's lunch, your automobile, your air conditioned home, your career, the nicely stocked shelves at Wal-Mart, or the fluffy towels in your hotel room for granted again.
Depressing look at the land of opportunity May 31, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Typically I'm skeptical of broad extrapolations based on anecdotal evidence, but Ehrenreich made that technique work in this book by supporting her observations with well-done research often dropped in as footnotes. The sense of desperation of the working poor is palpable. This book makes a statement about increasing class disparity in the US which is truly shameful.
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