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

I get it. I'm living it. I got this book on the advice of my pastor after I lost my newspaper job. I have a part-time job cleaning offices and couldn't believe how physically hard and mentally challenging it is, and he recommended Ehrenreich's story. All I can say is she's right on. People who criticize her method are missing the larger point; Ehrenreich shows how hard it is to make it -- let alone get ahead -- on low wages. This should be the wake-up call for people who think a job, any job, is the answer to getting out of poverty or financial insecurity. This is the only job I have while I await word on my unemployment compensation; my cl. fun game said Brought out some ideas. I'd like to start out by saying I did like and appreciate this book. That being said I had problems with it. This could be that reading this book in "Brought out some ideas" according to fun game. I'd like to start out by saying I did like and appreciate this book. That being said I had problems with it. This could be that reading this book in 201Brought out some ideas fun game I'd like to start out by saying I did like and appreciate this book. That being said I had problems with it. This could be that reading this book in 2014 we actually are in a recession, or as I constantly hear on the news "emerging" from a recession. Having worked in many a low income job myself, I did find myself a bit annoyed with the with the writer at times. One thing that I disliked was that she only seemed to spend a short time working the said jobs she had. I understand that she was trying to get a feel for the general country, but I think had she spent say a year in only one job this book could have lived up. we actually are in a recession, or as I constantly hear on the news "emerging" from a recession. Having worked in many a low income job myself, I did find myself a bit annoyed with the with the writer at times. One thing that I disliked was that she only seemed to spend a short time working the said jobs she had. I understand that she was trying to get a feel for the general country, but I think had she spent say a year in only one job this book could have lived up. 01Brought out some ideas fun game I'd like to start out by saying I did like and appreciate this book. That being said I had problems with it. This could be that reading this book in 2014 we actually are in a recession, or as I constantly hear on the news "emerging" from a recession. Having worked in many a low income job myself, I did find myself a bit annoyed with the with the writer at times. One thing that I disliked was that she only seemed to spend a short time working the said jobs she had. I understand that she was trying to get a feel for the general country, but I think had she spent say a year in only one job this book could have lived up. we actually are in a recession, or as I constantly hear on the news "emerging" from a recession. Having worked in many a low income job myself, I did find myself a bit annoyed with the with the writer at times. One thing that I disliked was that she only seemed to spend a short time working the said jobs she had. I understand that she was trying to get a feel for the general country, but I think had she spent say a year in only one job this book could have lived up. "I recommend this book to anyone who who wants a better" according to diane. What an eye opener! Very well written, with the verbiage of someone who's "been there" to expose what the blue collar worker has to deal with every day. (I know my sentence structure is sketchy in itself). This expose has truly defined what the "should be" middle class, hard working, dedicated employee's struggle is to make a living. I will never again look at an employee at Walmart or server at X chain restaurant the same way again. That person could be me, you or anyone with a college degree that hasn't a chance to achieve the so-called American Dream. Unfortunately, our society has turned into that symptomatic cl

With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test. --Lesley Reed. So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and st

You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. 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. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. 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. 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. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minn