Ehrenreich, a woman who has a Ph.D., goes "undercover" working low-paying jobs to see if one can earn a living with such work in America.One can't.She tries to make ends meet on the following jobs: waitressing, hotel housekeeping, Maid Service, nursing-home attendant, and Wal-Mart employee, often working two jobs at a time.This shocking exposé reveals the horrific conditions that the "working poor" toil under. Well, at least they're shocking to someone who's never had to struggle to make ends me...

Okay, I suddenly got a Like on my non-review of this book, so I'm going to say a few words about it, which I've thought off and on for a while.I've seen very put-downish reviews here on GR about the book, and more so about the author.It's held that Ehrenreich was a fake, had no idea what the working poor face, was just trying to make a buck off them, the book totally discredited because she had money and could just walk away when she was finished, or if she got in trouble, yada yada. This sort o...

Very quick explanation of the premise of this one: a woman, who is a writer/journalist, is talking to her publisher about what she wants to write about next and says, “someone ought to write a book about how hard it is to get by on the minimum wage in America.” The publisher says, “Okey-dokey (the book is set in the US so I’m trying to give you a feeling of verisimilitude) you’ve hired.” (High fives all around)Before I started this book I really worried. I mean, I’m a bit of a worrier anyway – b...

Dear Barbara Ehrenreich, How do I resent thee? Let me count the ways:1. You are a wealthy, highly educated person who went on a half-assed, anthropological slumming vacation.2. When said vacation was over, you told your coworkers: "Surprise! I'm not a poor person after all! I'm going back now to my comfortable life!"...and then you were surprised that those coworkers were mostly worried about the fact that they'd have to work the next shift with one less person.3. You also were surprised that th...

I'm going to step on some toes here and I apologize if I do. I AM one of the working poor that she talks about here and I DO believe in pulling myself up and making a better life for myself. But what I want to know is this. Unless you have been where I am, how can you comment? How can you also call her a bleeding heart? Is this a country for the haves only? And the have nots just have not? uhh uhh, I just don't understand. We got an election coming up and some folks are fussing about this countr...

I wanted to like this book. I thought the premise was fantastic. But overall, as someone who actually has lived on minimum wage (even supporting a child on minimum wage back when minimum wage was scary low), this book comes up short in several ways.First of all, Barbara Ehrenreich has a horribly privileged, ivory tower view of how poor people must live. While she does talk to some people who are scraping by, she assumes the majority of poor people make the same crummy decisions as the few to who...

When this book came out, I was working in a busy bookstore in a fairly small town. We had a stack of them at the counter, and I read bits on my breaks. While I was glad to see a popular book addressing the problems of the working poor, I couldn't help but feel like she'd taken a vacation in my life and then made a bunch of money writing a book about it, something she could only have achieved because she had already been in a position of privilege. Your average house cleaner, lacking an advanced ...

Here's a down and dirty assessment of Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich:First the positive:- Interesting premise: writer decides to try to live on the wages that unskilled workers (waitresses, home/hotel cleaners, department store [Walmart, for instance] clerks) earn to see if she can do it and see if she learns anything in the process.- She exposes some very unethical (even illegal) employer practices such as withholding a worker’s first paycheck until the second pay period.- She notes so...

(warning, a nerve has been touched!)I have experience working with and researching programs that aid the poor and working poor. I hated this book. The only role it could play is as a weak talking piece for starting up serious discussion about the struggles and needs of the poor.Barbara Ehrenreich may have stepped outside her comfort zone and into the world of the working poor, but she did it with an educated background, with money "just in case", with a pompous attitude, and with the requirement...

The two sentence summary of this book is: PhD and respected writer decides to find out how the other two-thirds live. To this end she goes undercover as an unskilled laborer at three minimum wage jobs (waitress, Wal-mart employee and Merry-Maid) each in a different city, each for one month.Things I liked:The premise. Things I hated:1. Her shocked tone of discovery. Newsflash! Living on minimum wage is hard/nigh on impossible! Educated people have it pretty easy comparatively! Entry level minimum...