Product Review
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is a book that shows the life of the minimum wage working class. The author, Barbara Ehrenreich, discovered first hand what life each month is like with an hourly wage thats from $6 to $7 only by posing as an unskilled woman and hunting for a job.
With only $1000 as startup money Ehrenreich, applied and landed her first job in Florida as a waitress where her name is suddenly transposed to girl and where trailer trash becomes a category that is to be aspired to at the rent of $675 per month. In Maine, she worked two jobs, one as a cleaning woman and the other as a nursing home assistant then in Minnesota as one of the Wal-Mart associates. During her stint as a minimum wage worker, she has to undergo pre-employment processes like routine drug tests and spurious personality tests and even once have to endure the constant surveillance and numbing harangues over small infractions.
This book narrates experiences that are both informative and eye-opening. Delivered in Ehrenreichs usual witty and sassy style, this gives readers pause about those caught in the economys undertow, even in good times.
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