Nickel and Dimed: On not getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich is a nonfiction novel which I read for pleasure over the summer. Ehrenreich is a journalist who goes undercover as a member of the working class poor. She discovered if one really can get by on minimum wage. So many times people have said, "why don't they just get a job?" when they do not know how hard it is for these people. She shows how hard it can be working a minimum wage not only financially but also physically and emotionally. .
Ehrenreich takes the reader through the whole process from searching for a safe place to live, interviews, testing, and the jobs themselves. She works in different geographic areas such as Florida, Minnesota, and Maine. She tries various types of jobs from waitressing and nursing home aide to Wal-Mart and Merry Maids. Each is accompanied by its own set of challenges. .
In each area Ehrenreich finds it difficult to find a safe place to live that will actually accommodate her budget. Sometimes she has to stay in motels because her job does not provide her with enough money for anything else. With everything she does she has to be very frugal with her money because it never seems to go very far. The highest amount she ever gets paid is eight dollars an hour with the Maids in Maine. With this job Ehrenreich experiences so much physical pain. The company makes her scrub the floors by hand everyday. This has her popping six Advil by the end of the day. That medicine was generic by the way. One of her coworkers in Maine breaks her ankle but she continues to work. This shows the emotional side of the story when we learn that the coworker is scared to stop working for fear that her husband may actually beat her.
Ehrenreich has statistics to share all throughout the book but for me the most important lesson was not in the numbers. She writes about what happened to her spirit and her feeling of self-worth.