Nickel and Dimed
Nickel and Dimed, a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a about a middle aged woman, who is a writer, trying an experiment to see how minimum wage workers live on the verge of poverty. The experiment started when the author of the book went out for lunch with her boss. They were talking about the themes she usually writes about, and they drifted into talking about poverty. When Barbara asked the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” Then Barbara said someone should do some “old fashioned journalism”, as a result her boss said that she would do the “old fashioned journalism”. However Barbara set rules for herself and she had certain advantages going in to the experiment. Her rules were to find the cheapest accommodations, the cheapest place to live (without giving up personal privacy and safety), she would not use any prior writing skills, or education to her advantage to get a job, and she would take the highest paying job available. The advantages she had were that she had a bank account, access to an ATM card and credit card, health insurance, access to a car, she speaks English, is White, (not stated but she also had nicer clothes) and she gave herself money to start out with. The goal of the experiment is to see if Barbara can live on minimum wage and pay rent on her living space, afford food and the other basic necessities of life.
In the first chapter of the book she starts out in Key West, Florida, where she applies for many housekeeping jobs, for hotels that are not hiring, the hotels steer her into waitressing because she is White and speaks English; most of the housekeeping employees are African Americans, or Hispanics. Barbara finds out that the best way to find a job is to be in the right place at the right time. Her first job is at Hearthside, where she works as a waitress. A typical thing with waitressing is to share your tips with the bus boys and sometimes the dish washers and cooks. She begins to bond with the workers: Gail, Claude, Annette, Billy, Marianne, Andy, Tina, Joan. All of these workers are in tight living conditions, which they cannot get out of, because they cannot afford it. Claude is a Haitian cook; he lives in a very cramped condition where he is forced to be with people he does not know very well. Barbara soon finds out that she cannot afford to pay rent, so she must get another job. She decided to get a job at Jerry’s another restaurants with a hotel chain attached to it. Frustrated with management she quits her job at Hearthside, gets a job at Jerry’s, and then applies for a housekeeping job in the hotel chain attached to Jerry’s. She gets the job. At Jerry’s there is a cook like Claude, his name is George, he is an immigrant, and is also forced to live with people he does not know and he does not get very much sleep. Eventually Barbara gets fed up with working at Jerry’s, so she just leaves. She is set off one night when George is caught “stealing” and is going to fired; and then when she is working one night and all the tables are full and her manager starts to yell at her because; some of the customers ( who were British) would not eat their food. These two things led to Barbara quitting and deciding to move on to a new place. When she left she gave her key to number 46 to Gail, and arranged for her deposit to be transferred to Gail.
Some of the common themes she touches on are the stress put on workers, the health coverage most workers do not have, and the relationships between employees and employers; the relationship between herself and employers and fellow co-workers. She also touches on living conditions of most her co-workers. She also talks about the awful working conditions of the two places where she lives.
