Throughout the book, Nickled and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich displays several examples of modern muckraking as a direct result of her personal experiences while living off of minimum wage. Ehrenreich gives insight to the many complications one must overcome as a result of living off of small amounts of money that can often be disregarded by people of middle and upper class. During her time living off of minimum wage, Ehrenreich explains the many difficulties of finding affordable yet comfortable housing, jobs, and her troubles getting everyday necessities that one needs to survive.
One of the most difficult tasks for Ehrenreich was to find a livable yet affordable apartment. This was often a difficult undertaking for her because she had to…show more content… This was no easy task for Ehrenreich as she quickly learns that she had to take many factors into account when accepting jobs. She worked as a waiter, a maid, and in a nursery home. During her time as a maid, Ehrenreich truly experienced injustice on several occasions. The physical aspect of house cleaning, as Ehrenreich describes it, is exhausting and brutal. She explains it like, “...a form of exercise that is totally asymmetrical, brutally repetitive, and as likely to destroy the musculoskeletal as to strengthen it. At the company that she works at, called Merry Maids, she is told that she is only to clean the floors on her hands and knees. On one occasion the owner of one of the houses saw her gasping for air and sweating and said, “That’s a real workout isn’t it?” (page 89) On this rare occasion, the owner offered her water which almost never happens due to the rule against the ingestion of anything while inside a house. The low wages and exhausting hours of labor that caused physical injury goes to show just some of the many examples of modern muckraking throughout the novel along with the inability to access nice living spaces and difficult time affording basic
