Assignment 9 – Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich
The benefit author Barbara Ehrenreich obtains as described in her book Nickel and Dimed is not one that is measured by charts and graphs, but by experiencing the relationship and struggle people have with low wage earnings and how they maintain their everyday lives. In her book, Ehrenreich decides to shed her current “work life” as a writer and scholar, and become one of the low wage working class. The author sets to obtain low paying jobs with little to no experience and obtain housing throughout her experiment. She has also set some guidelines for herself in which she strips down her skills and experience, she must take the highest paying low wage jobs and take the cheapest rent option when seeking where to live. Ehrenreich states that she does go into this experiment with some advantage, but she is not dismissing the disadvantages the majority of low wage workers in America experience. While she provides herself some necessities such as a car and not subjecting herself to homelessness or hunger, her journey to experience life as a low wage earner in this society presents itself to be a difficult one.
In the second chapter Scrubbing in Maine, Ehrenreich decides to conduct her experiment in an environment where her “whiteness” is common among the masses. She, who is a white woman, argues that she chooses this environment so that she can get into the low wage workforce with very little involvement of race and prejudices. She stays at a motel while she secures employment and simultaneously tries to find a place to live. She obtains two jobs in Maine; one as a dietary aide in a nursing home on weekends and one as a house cleaner at a home cleaning service. She also obtains housing that can be sustained with her earning wage, but we quickly discover that making ends meet becomes a challenge. We also quickly discover that her relationship to work is one that subjects her to adjust things such as what she eats, her health and how she relates with her co-workers. It is an environment that ultimately tells the tale of how low wage earnings and high stress jobs do not fulfill even the basics of living everyday life.
I truly believe that the goal of Ehrenreich immersing herself into this experiment is one that was necessary. While we can easily use numbers and others stories to measure results easily, the overall experience she demonstrates in the pieces shows the human connection along with the difficulties and sacrifices one has to go through on a day to day when earning low wages. It is within those experiences that we tend to discover the relationship one has to work and life. Where human beings struggle to make ends meet in a society that asks so much in return as far as wages are concerned, it is proof positive that the value one equates to the level of work one does is not balanced in any way.
