Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America

This author is completely insufferable at every point however I do think this had a good look at the working class and especially at the time it was written was important for how others viewed these jobs and income brackets and I think people who have never had to work low income jobs or grow up poor could benefit from reading this.

Just....just don't act like this insufferable author. That's my take away. Holier than thou, naive, judgmental, vain. Did you guys know that Barbara Ehrenreich is COLLEGE EDUCATED folks?!?!?!?!?!! Step back, we have a college education strolling through. The worst part is when she takes a job as a waitress in Key West but is worried that PEOPLE ARE GOING TO RECOGNIZE HER NAME AND OUT HER. Are you really suggesting that in between all of the scrounging around to put food on the table and find appropriate housing and get through a shift with a little bit of sanity intact, that these people are going to be falling over themselves to recognize a journalist's name/picture and then think to themselves, “this is a trick! A scam! A dirty scallywag, exposing the seedy underside of my lifestyle! Away with you, tramp!”? The sheer GALL of this woman

Anyways can confirm that being poor sucks

It is a crime that this book is (now) so dated and absolutely nothing has changed.

Although the author mentioned it often, it was still easy to see how her privilege affected some of the outcomes. However, even with that disclaimer, it was a compelling read and a must read for all who complain about the poor.

Did you know it was on the top 10 banned book lists in 2010 https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10/archive

I really don't consider this a radical book. This is everyday life to work paycheck to paycheck. The author is a tourist of this world, in the way that there is no danger from missing a meal or not having some place to stay. In this experiment she can quit any time she wants! I'm glad she stuck out as long as she did. I think she did her best and was well aware of her station and blessings in life ESPECIALLY at the end. She learned a lot and good for her! This book isn't written for me, it's for those who are at her social class level (and higher), social studies classes in the 90s, or perhaps workers looking for validation. Although, looking at some reviews this book still seems to strike a nerve with some BIG TIME. Hit dogs holler.

That being said -here's my holler. The author is still a tourist. The tone comes off completely snobbish and it makes it harder to connect with her. If she could only just save us working poor people with her phd!!!!! BUT would we shun her for being so smart????

Anyway...

How did it age? This book was in the 90s - it address a lot of the frequent stereotypes and inaccuracies i heard as a kid. It is good to see that current discussion is progressing away from them. (IMO) I think this part won't hold up as well, and maybe that's in part of this book being part of that discussion. - Good news!

The bad news are the parts that still hold up! (2025) Like, the cost of living, no adequate wages, anti-union actions, lack of or bad welfare programs, the housing crisis is on-going, and rents eat up a majority of a paycheck. So, you can still read this book and get something from it - modern day.

RIP

The basic premise of this book is well founded. Ehrenreich decided that she wanted to conduct hands-on research on what it is like to be a lower-class American making ends meet. There's only one issue with this, and it's incredibly significant. She's an upper-class “bleeding heart socialist” living in Key West, Florida. While that's not inherently a non-starter, her biases consistently affect her descision-making. She says herself that she was unwilling to sacrifice any comforts of her wealthy lifestyle. She constantly allows herself to “cheat, as she puts it, by giving herself allowances and simply going back home whenever she feels like it. In my opinion, if she was really willing to actually conduct a worthwhile study, she should have gone all-in. As it stands, this is useless to me as it is a half-baked attempt geared towards out-of-touch upper class individuals.

The most positive thing I have to say was that this was an easy read, which was vaguely enlightening on what it's like to work minimum wage. And it's well annotated with multiple scholarly citations.

On the other hand, I'm a resident. It's like the trump card in all pity poker games forever. Which makes pity poker no fun at all. Oh, normal people whine about not getting paid time and a half to work 11 hours in a row? I've worked 34 hours in a row for less than $10.00/hour. You stand for four hours in a row? I've stood for 30 hours in a row, in an operating room. You had to clean up peoples pubic hairs? I've had to put my hands in people's orifices, including orifices that someone just created with a scalpel and hold their spleen in the air so that the stool that accidentally just entered the peritoneal cavity doesn't get on it. And I've had almost every bodily fluid imaginable on my hands, feet, and occasionally face. When I was a med student, I paid for such privileges. Cry me a freaking river. I just can't be bothered to feel sorry for someone working 60 hours/week or 7 days/week with some of them being part time.

Also, while I agree that the amount of money spent on the criminalization and prosecution of marijuana (in this case, evidenced by drug testing) is nothing short of inane, you lose your moral high-ground if you actually were using marijuana just proximal to the time you knew you were applying for a job. Like seriously, ideals are all well and good if you serve them with a side of common sense.

And there's just no answers offered here, either. You think the minimum wage isn't a living wage? You do realize that if you pay everyone more, prices will just go up, right? And as much as I'd love to live in the socialist wonderland that she proposes in her afterword - with government-subsidised school and healthcare and housing, I'd rather read a book about how she's trying to get there or stop-gap measures we can employ, rather than “I worked at Walmart and it was awful, but the people who worked there full time didn't seem to mind so much.”

The book that makes you happy to have gone to college.

It's been a number of years since this book was first published, and I still think it is excellent. Just as relevant now as ever (if not more so), and a very straightforward, sharply written, illuminating (and even very entertaining) first-person essay on trying to live like most Americans do: as unskilled laborers in the lower rungs of America's service industries. A decent amount of research footnotes the story to better inform readers. Most pleasing is that the author avoided writing this book as an anthem or a guilt-trip: she's never self-righteous about her assignment and she claims up front that she's not going “all the way” – in other words, she knows that temporarily acting like she has to live on minimum wage is a far cry from truly having to your whole life. Overall there's a lot to like here, and at about 200 pages, it's a quick, satisfying read.

It's easy to dismiss Barbara Ehrenreich as being merely a tourist. Sort of a ghetto Elizabeth Gilbert who enjoys the type of lifestyle where she can just “drop out” for a couple months for the sake of the written word. She comes from the decidedly white collar world where “sweat is a metaphor for hard work, but seldom its consequence.” Nonetheless I've held variations of the jobs she explores, in my late teens and early 20s but always came home to the comforts of my middle class upbringing. She's 50 and slogging through the work week to sleep in some barely hospitable living conditions. Let's cut her some slack.

“Take away the career and the higher education, and maybe what you're left with is this original Barb, the one who might have ended up working at Wal-Mart for real if her father hadn't managed to climb out of the mines. So it's interesting, and more than a little disturbing, to see how Barb turned out – that she's meaner and slyer than I am, more cherishing of grudges, and not quite as smart as I'd hoped.”