Nickel And Dimed Analysis

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In the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author undergoes a year plus long period in which she attempts to live as a minimum wage earner. She effectively is muckraking, going undercover as someone she isn’t to investigate the lives of the working poor throughout America. She travels from Key West to Maine and then finally ends her journey in Minnesota. Her investigation uncovers many hardships and injustices that the lower class encounters such as the demanding application process, the low wages, and the complications of affordable housing. In the end, she makes the stark realization that living on minimum wage is not only bleak for single people, but all but impossible for single mothers that must care for themselves and children, …show more content…
She works at jobs with very backbreaking labor, yet doesn’t see money that represents her struggles. Initially, her first job she takes is at the Hearthside where she is a waitress. She hates her managers for sitting back and doing nothing but being rude to the employees and making sure they never take breaks/always doing busy work. She makes a mere $2.43 plus tips in addition for work that makes her rely on pain medicine because it is so tough on her. Later in her time in Key West, she takes a job with similar pay at Jerry’s. The only thing different here is that there are three to four times as many customers at Jerry’s than there are at the Hearthside. She wants this because it means more tips, but it also means more fast paced hard labor. In Maine, Ehrenreich becomes a maid at a cleaning service. Merry Maids offers her $6.65 an hour for several hours of cleaning, which typically goes over her actual working hours. The worst part about this job she says is the way they make them clean. Instead of regular efficient methods, they use traditional ones that are much harder on the body, leading some of her coworkers to even get hurt. She says, “I have to go down on my hands and knees practically at her feet. No, we don't have sponge mops like the one I use in my own house.” This is just another awful working experience she suffers through (P49). Finally, in Minnesota she has a choice …show more content…
This problem is the lack of sufficient affordable housing. More times than not, Ehrenreich is worried about the price of her rent. She not only struggles to pay the rent, but is also sent in a financial freefall with what little money she has when she is forced to stay at hotels. She struggles to find housing that is affordable in general. In Key West she stays in somewhat poor conditions, but not nearly as atrocious as some options she faced later in her journey. “I decide to make the common trade-off between affordability and convenience and go for a $500-a-month "efficiency."” Key West is the only one of her destinations where she pays monthly rent. Her other places do weekly pay because the low wage workers living in them are frequently evicted much quicker for not paying the rent (p 14). In Maine, she ends up taking a place for $120.00 a week. She notes how if she had looked harder she would have found a better deal, but this one had some perks. “For $120 a week I can have a bed/living area with a kitchen growing off of it, linens included, and a TV.” She is in a hurry to pick a house because she is spending $59.00 a night for a hotel, an expense she cannot afford to keep up (p 36). Before she took this deal, Ehrenreich found a $65.00 a week housing situation but declined because it wasn’t proper or
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