Nickel and Dimed
 First edition | |
| Author | Barbara Ehrenreich |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Metropolitan Books |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 224 pp |
| Awards | Christopher Award |
| ISBN | 0-8050-8838-5 |
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich. Written from her perspective as an undercover journalist, it sets out to investigate the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on the working poor in the United States.
The events related in the book took place between spring 1998 and summer 2000. The book was first published in 2001 by Metropolitan Books. An earlier version appeared as an article in the January 1999 issue of Harper's magazine. Ehrenreich later wrote a companion book, Bait and Switch (published September 2005), which discusses her attempt to find a white-collar job.
In 2019, the book was ranked 13th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[1]
Social issues[edit source]
Ehrenreich investigates many of the difficulties low wage workers face, including the hidden costs involved in such necessities as shelter (the poor often have to spend much more on daily hotel costs than they would pay to rent an apartment if they could afford the security deposit and first-and-last month fees) and food (e.g., the poor have to buy food that is both more expensive and less healthy than they would if they had access to refrigeration and appliances needed to cook).
Foremost, Ehrenreich attacks the notion that low-wage jobs require only unskilled labor. A journalist with a Ph.D. in cell biology, she found that manual labor required incredible feats of stamina, focus, memory, quick thinking, and fast learning. Constant and repeated movement creates a risk of repetitive stress injury; pain must often be worked through to hold a job in a market with constant turnover; and the days are filled with degrading and uninteresting tasks (e.g. toilet-cleaning and mopping). She also details several individuals in management roles who served mainly to interfere with worker productivity, to force employees to undertake pointless tasks, and to make the entire low-wage work experience even more miserable. Additionally, she describes her managers changing her shift schedule from week to week without notifying her.
Ehrenreich describes personality tests, questionnaires designed to weed out incompatible potential employees, and urine drug tests, increasingly common in the low wage market, arguing that they deter potential applicants and violate liberties while having little tangible positive effect on work performance. She also comments that she believes they are a way for an employer to relay to an employee what is expected of them conduct wise.
She argues that 'help needed' signs do not necessarily indicate a job opening; more often their purpose is to sustain a pool of applicants in fields that have notorious rapid turnover of employees. She also posits that one low-wage job is often not enough to support one person (let alone a family); with inflating housing prices and stagnant wages, this practice increasingly becomes difficult to maintain. Many of the workers encountered in the book survive by living with relatives or other persons in the same position, or even in their vehicles.
Ehrenreich concludes with the argument that all low-wage workers, recipients of government or charitable services like welfare, food, and health care, are not simply living off the generosity of others. Instead, she suggests, we live off their generosity:
The author concludes that someday, low-wage workers will rise up and demand to be treated fairly, and when that day comes everyone will be better off.
Response and criticism[edit source]
Barbara Ehrenreich states in her book that her goal is to "see whether or not I could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day."[2]
Some critiques contrasted similar projects to Ehrenreich's such as the one described by Adam Shepard in Scratch Beginnings of starting homeless in a new state with only $25 in his pocket. In ten months, Shephard was able to land a job which paid well enough to buy a pickup truck and rent his own apartment.[3] Similarly, Charles Platt, an author and former senior editor at Wired magazine, took an entry-level job at a Wal-Mart store and recounted his experience on the blog Boing Boing. His account reaffirmed some of Ehrenreich's experience, including the low pay and tedious nature of the job, but Platt also reported positive experiences with supervisors, safety training incentives, and employee autonomy and treatment.[4]
Cover controversy[edit source]
The book's cover features a waitress, Kimmie Jo Christianson, giving a worried look over her shoulder. The photo of Christianson was taken in 1986 for an unrelated Fortune cover.[5] After the release of Nickel and Dimed, Christianson filed suit against the book's publishers, arguing that they used her picture without her consent.[5][6] In 2007, a judge ruled that the lawsuit could go ahead, because the cover was not part of Ehrenreich's narrative and was part of the publisher's selling of the book. The case was later dismissed as part of a settlement.[5]
Adaptations[edit source]
Ehrenreich makes an appearance in the documentary The American Ruling Class in 2007. She portrays her life undercover working as a waitress and is accompanied by a musical rendition titled "Nickeled and Dimed".
See also[edit source]
References[edit source]
- ^ "The 100 best books of the 21st century". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
- ^ Ehrenreich, Barbara (2001). Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) getting By in America. p. 6.
- ^ Homeless: Can You Build A Life From $25?, The Christian Science Monitor, February 11, 2008
- ^ Platt, Charles (February 1, 2009). "Life at Wal-Mart". Boing Boing. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
- ^ a b c Judge OKs Ex-Waitress's Suit Over Bestseller's CoverArchived 2014-07-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Lawsuit
External links[edit source]
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America Paperback – 2 August 2011
by Barbara Ehrenreich (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 1,621 ratings
In this now classic work, Barbara Ehrenreich, our sharpest and most original social critic, goes undercover as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job--any job--can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour?
To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly unskilled, that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity--a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how prosperity looks from the bottom. You will never see anything--from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal--in quite the same way again.
Product details
Publisher : Picador USA; 10th Anniversary ed. edition (2 August 2011)
Language : English
Paperback : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 0312626681
Review
"Captivating . . . promise that you will read this explosive little book cover to cover and pass it on to all your friends and relatives." --The New York Times
"Impassioned, fascinating, profoundly significant, and wildly entertaining . . . Nickel and Dimed is not only important but transformative in its insistence that we take a long hard look at the society we live in." --Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine
"Valuable and illuminating . . . Barbara Ehrenreich is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism." --The New York Times Book Review
"Jarring . . . fully of riveting grit . . . this book is already unforgettable." --The New York Times
"Barbara Ehrenreich is smart, provocative, funny, and sane in a world that needs more of all four." --Diane Sawyer
"Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul." --Molly Ivins
"Ehrenreich is passionate, public, hotly lucid, and politically engaged." --Chicago Tribune
"Ehrenreich's scorn withers, her humor stings, and her radical light shines on." --The Boston Globe
"One of today's most original writers." --The New York Times
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From other countries
Janie U
TOP 500 REVIEWER
4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful account of what it is to be "working poor"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2015
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This book is viewed as an undercover expose to most who will read it but is, in fact, just an account of normal life for many, many more who won't even know that the book was ever published.
The author is a writer who decided to live (by working) on minimum wage for a while. She moves state, finds housing, finds a job, settles into a routine then moves on to start again elsewhere.
It's an uncomfortable read with a vague feeling of the author staring at humans from a different species - most readers will never have experienced conditions in which low paid workers live and, whilst it's very difficult to admit to, there is an underlying feeling of looking through the bars into a zoo. As she gets to know her coworkers at each company and the group is humanised the authors approach softens - a major breakthrough being the acknowledgement that we all want to be appreciated regardless of money being earned.
The author appears to be outraged by the conditions suffered by low paid workers and, as this book is intended to stir up some opinions, then this is entirely appropriate but I'm not quite sure that she should be outraged. How does she think people live on $7 an hour? It's not news that life is impossible on these rates of pay but what is the most engaging element of this book is the insight about the individuals she meets during her travels. Many people generalise the "poor" and these book turns the group into people, promoting an urge to thank waitresses more regularly, smile at check out operators and maybe even just notice maids!
I found the authors attitude a little self righteous but have to admire her greatly for going out and finding out what is actually happening rather than just listening to others.
A criticism would be that the book was published in 2001 and has not been updated since. There is little reference to welfare available in the states that she visits and I would have been interested to know what the position was then and is now. I feel more reading coming on!
This book made me think .... a lot.
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Charles
5.0 out of 5 stars Depressing But Importand Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 February 2013
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Both England and America have a phenomena know as the working poor, these are people that work one or more jobs yet still cannot make ends meet.
This book was written by a journalist investigating what's it like to be a low pay worker in America.
The author took various low paying jobs and tried to survive on the wages and had a very tough time.
Jobs such as cleaning turn out to be very demanding physically leaving the workers with permanent damage to their bodys. The cleaning company charged $25 per person hour but only pays the worker $6.65 per hour.
The high cost of housing and low pay means workers cannot just give up their current job and look for another as they will not be able to pay their rent while looking for a job.
Other low pay workers cannot afford health care to fix heath problems, the health problems then cause them to lose their jobs and get even poorer.
Poor public transport in many parts of America means if you cannot afford a car you choice of jobs is limited to your local area only making the choice of work for the poor worse.
It comes obvious that been poor in America actually traps people when vital needs such as health care and transportation are only for people that can afford it. No wonder social mobility in America is so bad and the poor have decreased in wealth in the last 30 years while the rich have gotten even richer.
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RYAN FIENNES
5.0 out of 5 stars Picador Modern Classic edition
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 April 2021
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I purchased the Picador Modern Classic edition; and am very pleased with it.
These editions are compact hardback books - smaller than the average paperback. The print may be too small for some, but I haven't struggled with reading it; and due to the size of these editions, they are easy to carry and read anywhere.
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Mr. Cwp Keyes
5.0 out of 5 stars Down but not yet out
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 December 2012
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This book is full of interesting observations about the underbelly of working America that perhaps we in Britain do not even imagine exists. Novelists like Alison Lurie and Richard Ford have dropped me some literate hints, George Orwell covered similar ground in 'Down and Out in London and Paris' and anyone who has ever worked in catering or been a poor student will go 'uh huh' at some point but 'Nickel and Dimed,' which cost me just one U K penny to buy, really tears the lid off the can marked 'opportunities in the land of opportunity.' China has its problems, privatised higher education for millions with no jobs to go to anyone? Europe seems to have over fattened itself, non-sustainably in some areas and as for everywhere else, well just don't expect America to be any better, unless you have plenty of money of course. I urge you to buy and read this book but for goodness sake don't show it to anyone who works at Wal-Mart, okay?
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Twelfth Monkey
5.0 out of 5 stars How the other half exists.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 July 2018
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A thoughtful account of how it is to try to get by in the low income, multi-job stratum of America. Not pretty, but worth your time and money.
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johnny
5.0 out of 5 stars Great informative read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 March 2014
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Even through is about a decade old, the experiences Im sure are no different if repeated today in the USA or UK to a similar degree.
It opens your mind to something you could always see, always knew was there, but somehow failed to grasp, accept and appreciate.
It resonates in the UK with the Zero hour contract that puts all power into the hands of the employer and appears in most cases to be used to keep the workforce subservient (Im sure in limited cases zero hour contracts are great).
Highly recommended read.
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Giova
5.0 out of 5 stars Great find
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 January 2019
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Son happy as needed for uni
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A shocking document
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 March 2013
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Ehrenreich's writing is fluid and catching, letting every reader to reflect on modern working conditions in the US
It is essential to notice her capability to describe in detail real life tragedies of people among us
People who live and labor unoticed but struggle to get a normal life
Must have
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Paul Roberts
5.0 out of 5 stars Experiential research very helpful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 January 2021
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I bought this for my daughter because I had already read it and found it so enlightening. Her experiential research was particularly helpful.
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Elizabeth
5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 June 2013
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Maybe a bit dated now, but still really interesting. An insight into how people live and how tough it can be
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DC
2.0 out of 5 stars Worst non-fiction book I have ever read
Reviewed in Germany on 12 December 2016
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I had looked forward to reading this book because it deals with an important topic: how the working poor get by on such low wages and how to improve their lot. However, this is the worst non-fiction book I have ever read due to the author's biased and condescending tone of voice throughout the book. Sometimes I got the feeling she was trying to be funny in her storytelling, but the effect was sarcastic and insulting to her readers and to the subjects of her book. Furthermore, pretending to be a member of the working poor for three months is simply not convincing. It is too short a period and therefore her observations and conclusions are too superficial in my view. This story would be better told by someone who was truly trying to make ends meet on a minimum wage.
As said, what really bothered me about this book was the author's negativity, which became more irritating as the book progressed. To give one example, when she was working as a salesperson in the ladies department at Wal-mart, she writes: 'She (a manager) sets me to work 'zoning' the Bobbie Brooks knit summer dresses, a task that could serve as an IQ test for the severely cognitively challenged. First the dresses must be grouped by color - olive, peach or lavender in this case - then by decorative - the leafy design on the bodice, the single flower or the grouped flowers - and within each pattern by size." Clearly the author does not realize that 'retail is detail' and that such details actually matter to many customers - they don't want to walk into a shop and see a cluttered group of clothing. Later in the chapter she is even chastised by a co-worker because she did NOT sort shirts with a similar pattern together in the right away- so the author is not even able to fulfill that simple task herself. Or maybe she didn't want to.
The author reveals that she is an atheist, so it is puzzling why she spends one evening, when she is bored, attending a church service near her hotel. She then ridicules the entire church service, the churchgoers and the pastor. Yet she is actually insulting the subjects of her book because some of her co-workers, as she reveals later, are devout Christians.
Every employer in her view is bad and never to be trusted, from the restaurant managers in Florida where she was a waitress, to the manager of the maid service in Maine (even the people who hire maids to clean their homes are awful) to Wal-Mart in Minnesota. Of course you will always find bad managers, but her assessments are grossly exaggerated and unfair. She considers it disturbing that Wal-Mart puts new employees through a day-long orientation program (which the employees get paid for, by the way). What's wrong with that? What's wrong with companies investing in their new staff and giving them a sense for the corporate culture and setting expectations for behavior on the job and how to deal with customers?
The author also makes sweeping conclusions based on hasty observations. Seeking signs of poverty among her co-workers in the restaurant where she was a waitress in Florida, she notices that one person saves half-smoked cigarettes instead of throwing them out. To me, that is just a sign of being frugal (especially if cigarettes are expensive). Or, when one of her fellow maids, a young woman, says her shoulder hurts, the author concludes she has an occupational disability because she is told the young woman picked blueberries as a child.
The real heroes in this book are the men and women who work often have to work 2 full-time jobs on a minimum wage to make ends meet, but hardly every complain (unlike the author). Instead, most of them try to do good work and even take pride in their work- such as the co-worker who wants to make sure that the shirts in her department are all sorted properly.
One of the most revealing passages for me was when the author revealed her real identity to her fellow maids - told them that she was undercover and was going to write a book about her experiences. At first, they didn't even notice. "Didn't you hear me?" persists the author. But when she repeated herself, they didn't even really care.
I am giving this book 2 stars instead of 1 because I found it interesting to learn about some of the different management approaches described by Ms. Ehrenreich, which could be interesting if you like business and are interested in people management (especially differences between US and European management techniques). These management practices are not at immoral in my view, as the author would have us believe. I also learned about some of the living conditions of the working poor in America, such as living for extended periods in motels because they don't have the cash for the up-front costs of rental, such as the initial deposit.
If you are considering to buy this book, I recommend that you read the numerous reviews on amazon.com before making a decision.
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Woolco
2.0 out of 5 stars Two-bit
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 February 2016
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It’s a strangely unsatisfactory read. I found Ehrenreich rather got in the way of the real story. On two counts. One, because she’s turned this cod-journalistic piece into a self-indulgent account of her own private challenge to live a half-baked breadline existence, rather than actually focus on the people genuinely experiencing the poverty trap. Finishing her Florida segment, for instance, with the glib acknowledgement, “I never found out what happened to George.”
Secondly, surprisingly, her actual prose. She’ll throw in jarringly inappropriate words just for the sheer fun (cleverness?) of it: “I pretend to study my check for a clue, but entropy has been up to its tricks, not only on the plate but in my head…” Entropy is a complicated concept - it’s meaning: 1.(communication theory) a numerical measure of the uncertainty of an outcome; 2.(thermodynamics) a thermodynamic quantity representing the amount of energy in a system that is no longer available for doing mechanical work. It’s clearly not the right word for that sentence. Food on a plate cannot suffer from entropy. It’s a lazy stab at sounding articulate.
Another example: “I was struck by what appeared to be an extreme case of demographic albinism”. She means there were a high proportion of white people in the area - not sufferers of the pigmentation disorder, albinism. They’re not the same thing.
And: “Then Holly starts up on one of those pornographic late-afternoon food conversations…” Pornographic? We’re not talking food-related sexual fetishes - we’re talking common culinary fantasies. Why ‘pornographic’?
Next let’s briefly unpick Ehrenreich’s casual meditation on the soul: “Is the soul that lives forever the one we possess at the moment of death, in which case heaven must look like the Woodcrest (an old people’s care home), with plenty of CNAs (?) and dietary aides to take care of those who died in a state of mental decomposition? Or is it our personally best soul- say, the one that dwells in us at the height of our cognitive powers…?” Now I’m no theosophical expert but isn’t Ehrenreich simply getting the mind and the soul fundamentally confused here?
I won’t dwell further on the littering of clumsy weaknesses in the prose, you get my drift. Returning to ‘count one’ - the content: it’s flimsy, lazy, repetitive and hardly investigative. It’s actually a conceited, self-serving account just as exploitative of the low waged as the malign employers she exposes. Throw away remarks such as these illustrate my point:
“If some enterprising journalist wants to test the low-wage way of life in darkest Idaho or Louisiana, more power to her. Call me gutless, but what I was looking for this time around was a comfortable correspondence between income and rent, a few mild adventures, a soft landing.”
“How did I do as a low-wage worker? If I may begin with a brief round of applause: I didn’t do half bad at the work itself (until you quit after a month or two?) , and I claim this as a considerable achievement. You might think that unskilled jobs would be a snap for someone with a Ph.D…” I’ll stop quoting at this umpteenth mention of her completely irrelevant Ph.D. I’m surprised Ehrenreich didn’t carry the scroll round with her to save her breath…
I am slightly maddened by this book, as well as hugely disappointed. Not my recommendation.
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F. Richard Wemmers, Jr
1.0 out of 5 stars Title Misleading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 July 2016
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Not what I expected....just one person's story of finding work. Also a bit 'dated' and not inclusive of other options.
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M3isme
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a likeable author, condescending tone.
Reviewed in the United States on 2 March 2018
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This is an older book, which my book club picked as the February book. I was familiar with it, but hadn't read it . Honestly, it is an intriguing idea, but this author was condescending and patronizing throughout. Her tone was offensive to me through most of the book, making it very clear that she truly felt "better" or "above" the minimum wage workers she was trying to understand. As someone who worked minimum wage as a teenager and cobbled together multiple to jobs to make it through college and into adulthood, I felt she really had no concept about prioritizing, etc. It became very clear she'd never done a service job as a teen or struggled during college. As a result, her "experiment" fell short and she always felt the people she was working with were "other". Finally, one month for each job with trips back to her upper middle class life in between meant she really didn't get what it was like to "live" in these circumstances. Not a likeable woman and not enough time in the trenches for her opinion to hold power to me. Having said that, the afterward raised some good points.
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EDL
1.0 out of 5 stars I hated this book
Reviewed in the United States on 30 September 2019
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I listened to the audio recording of this book. It is incredibly outdated at this point, but I could excuse that. The real issue is the writer's condescending attitude. She seemed profoundly self-focused throughout the book. I would have liked to hear more about the struggles of the real minimum-wage workers as opposed to hearing about the trials of an upper-class educated person who tries to play the part of a low-wage worker for a handful of months. The repeated references to her educational credentials were annoying.
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J. Golovich III
1.0 out of 5 stars How was this a best seller?
Reviewed in the United States on 28 January 2020
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I was hoping to read an educated novel about an experience and the authors thoughts on what could be done to ease the burdens of the people she was meeting through her experience. Instead I was given a book that pushed a narrative about class warfare. The best part about the book was the end where the author discussed those who wrote rebuttals to her novel. This pointed me into the direction of other books that I would probably get more from.
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MM
1.0 out of 5 stars Can I have my $10 back?
Reviewed in the United States on 30 October 2019
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If I hadn’t spent $10 on this book, I would have abandoned it in a garbage can where it belongs. As others have said, it’s apparent within the first few pages that the author’s attitude is condescending, patronizing, and holier than thou. And did you know she has a PhD, is an atheist and is solidly upper middle class? If not, don’t worry. She will remind you at every opportunity. This book is a joke. Zero stars.
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Katy the Book Lady
3.0 out of 5 stars but I would like to see this experiment attempted again
Reviewed in the United States on 7 September 2017
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This is an interesting read, but I would like to see this experiment attempted again. Ms. Ehrenreich did not completely live as a low income worker with no resources. She allowed herself money to rent a car, as well as other "luxuries" many American workers do not have. When a situation got rough, the author simply moved. A lot of Americans do not even have the resources to do that. Nevertheless, it was an interesting study and a great way to introduce readers to the immense difficulties minimum wage earners must face.
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Brit
1.0 out of 5 stars Ehrenreich fails at her own experiment.
Reviewed in the United States on 30 June 2017
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I read this book with my 11th grade English class because a colleague suggested it, and I regretted choosing this book almost instantly. The idea is good, but Ehrenreich's tone is extremely judgey, unauthentic, rude, and sometimes racist. There are 3 parts to this book that break up into the 3 locations where Ehrenreich tries to make a living on minimum wage. Ehrenreich faces troubles finding housing, transportation, healthcare, employment, and there are tricky social situations she navigates poorly. I thought this book would show the real struggles a hard-working person faces as living as a member of the lower class, but Ehrenreich mocks and judges her own peers, cheats in actually fulfilling the challenge (she starts out with startup money for rent- no one living in the lower class has 1,000 gifted to them upon entering the adult world), gives up completely in one location she tried, and looks down on the very people she is trying to relate to.
I only assigned 1/3 of the book to my students (3 groups and each group read 1 section of the book), and almost all of my students hated this book. I thought this book would teach my students how difficult it is to move out of poverty even if a person is hardworking and motivated to do it, but instead, the message completely backfired because Ehrenreich failed at her own experiment.Besides my students hating the book, I also hated the book too; I often found myself rolling my eyes and feeling shocked with the way Ehrenreich approached this delicate situation. Overall, I will not be reading this book next year with my students, and I will never recommend this book.
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Veronica K. Tidd
3.0 out of 5 stars I was disappointed in this book
Reviewed in the United States on 5 September 2014
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I was disappointed in this book.It describes the trials and tribulations of a minimum wage earner and the fight for these low paying jobs and the difficulty they encounter finding accomodation that they can afford and are safe. Part of it seems to be a rant against Walmart which is the only business given it's true identity. the authors observations may be true but the reader has no way of verifying that. It would have been nice to have seen more background on the authors co-workers. Just naming someone and sying they are sleeping in their car does not tell us what she does for healthcare etc and how she ended up in that situation and what alternatives are available.
It was an experiement for the author for others it is a lifestyle at all levels of society and this was missing.
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