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Title: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich ISBN: 0-8050-6389-7 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.69 (668 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: the real deal
Comment: Enrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" is an eyeopening book. She pries open doors that some never see, and exposes how things really happen in the working world. "Nickel and Dimed" presents a fresh and raw look at the lower level jobs, illustrates what it is like to be in such a situation...the struggles, the aspirations. Overall, this is an enlightening book, and gave me a richer feel for the working world, and opened my eyes and mind to what others deal with throughout a lifetime.
Rating: 1
Summary: Sloppy, contradictory and demeaning...to the workers.
Comment: I was prepared to read this as a fact-finding book. What I discovered was an author who invariably found exactly what she expected to find, and, in the rush to foreordained conclusions, never noticed that her observations contradict one another.
The last sentence of the book exemplifies Ehrenreich's soggy thinking: "I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief." In fact, as she tells it, she met at least two thieves (a worker who stole from a storeroom and a disliked boss who was perhaps also an addict) and two slackers -- the worker who went AWOL from a nursing home job and left her to a grueling day, and Ehrenreich herself, when she "called in sick" at the nursing home because she wanted a day off, leaving someone else to have a grueling day. Secondly, she stayed in no job long enough to truly know her coworkers. Thirdly, and in any case, not meeting slackers, addicts, or thieves would not prove they don't exist.
Other examples: Ehrenreich exults when the aforementioned boss is fired for stealing money for drugs but concludes that urine tests for drugs are meant only to intimidate workers. Employed as a waitress, she is advised not to let her customers run her ragged and views this as the Corporation preventing her from caring for them; later she quits because a table of customers has run her ragged -- so why was the advice Corporate malice and not Corporate protectiveness?
Ehrenreich sympathizes with and condescends to her coworkers simultaneously. Because she finds certain jobs degrading, she believes the jobholder to be degraded, and never mind what the jobholder thinks. Because some people -- at both ends of the economic spectrum -- treat her differently when she is in a maid uniform, she thinks she is demeaned. Thus, when her fellow maids value their work and want praise for doing it well, she pities them and believes them to be brainwashed. The fault, of course, is with those who treat maids differently -- that is, with people who don't confer dignity on all honest work. Unfortunately, Ehrenreich appears to be among them.
In some cases, such as that of the storeroom thief, she comes dangerously close to arguing that business causes both poverty and misbehavior. Has Ehrenreich thought this through? Are human beings so weak and malleable that certain pay levels and job conditions provoke involuntary thievery, laziness, etc.? Or are "the oppressed" a special category, of whom society shouldn't expect good character and good sense? In short, does Ehrenreich think ill of humanity in general or merely those for whom she claims to speak?
Buy this book if you want propaganda to confirm what you think you already know. Don't buy it if you want logical thinking on an important topic.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Minimum Look at Minimum Wage
Comment: I could not put this book down, reading it one evening. While reading, I was entertained, enlightened, horrified, and educated. After having finished the book, though, I was a little disappointed. My expectation going in (and perhaps this was my mistake) was that I would get a glimpse into the lives of the working poor. In hindsight, I think the biggest glimpse I got was into Barbara Ehrenreich's charmed life. The way she carries on about her short-term travails makes the distinct impression that she is far more the problem than the solution. Her social circle appears to be the detached and insulated elite that needs the sweat of the working class in order to allow them the leisure to smoke weed and complain about the government's labor policies. This book would have been well-served if it had focused more on the stories of her co-workers, and less on the complaints of an aging hipster trying to deal with a fresh foray into physical labor.
On the plus side, I add this book to the growing pile of data that I'm archiving in case I'm ever tempted to shop at Wal-Mart. Furthermore, her final chapter provides some very clear insights, possibly developed after her experiences! I was particularly fascinated by the 'suspension' of the law of supply and demand, namely that tight labor markets don't necessarily translate into higher wages. The list of causes she offers are open to debate, but it is an issue that deserves our careful attention.
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Title: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser ISBN: 0060938455 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd ISBN: 0142001740 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Working Poor : Invisible in America by DAVID K. SHIPLER ISBN: 0375408908 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0156027321 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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