Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed has been on and off my to-be-read list since it was first published in 2001. She's the writer who went undercover to work at minimum wage jobs and prove whether those wages were livable or not. The book is her answer, said answer being, "No!"
I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would. (Actually it only made it off the to-be-read list and onto the to-be-read shelf when a friend of a friend who hadn't liked the book forced her copy on me.) I think I'd seen the author on a talk show and not been terribly impressed. I did, however, like the book. I think the reason for my continuing dislike of her is pretty much exemplified by her actions at the end of her stint working as a maid for one of the national housecleaning outfits like Mini Maid or Merry Maid. She finishes that segment of research and tells her fellow workers that she'd not one of them, that she's a writer doing research. Then she's surprised at the lukewarm response her announcement receives. Eventually her co-workers become friendly again when they interpret what she's been doing as a plot against their immediate supervisor. The whole thing mystifies Ms Ehrenreich. And that annoys me. Why? Truth is I'd like a writer to have a little more sensitivity. She joins a group of women, works with them, then announces that she doesn't really need this kind of work, that she's actually a professional just dropping by to see what the lives of underpaid, struggling women would be like? I think she's lucky a co-workers didn't dump a bucket of dirty water on her head.
Specifics:
1) Her charade has allowed her insights into aspects of our society we don't want to think about. "… what we do is an outcast's work, invisible and even disgusting. Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditch diggers, changers of adult diapers—these are the untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society." (page 117) Yep. Insight.
2) In a Wal-Mart her job is to re-hang and neatly fold clothes that have been tried on and left in the dressing rooms. The author's view of her job: "No one will go hungry or die or be hurt if I screw up; in fact, how could anyone ever know if I screwed up, given the customers constant depredations?" (page 156) Interesting, but I'm sensing elitist airs on her part that show up way too frequently, IMHO.
3) Laughed in spite of myself: "Once I stand and watch helplessly while some rug rat pulls everything he can reach off the racks, and the thought that abortion is wasted on the unborn must show on my face, because the mother finally tells him to stop. (page 163)
All in all, I'm glad I read it—and I eagerly await her newest book on the fallacy of positive thinking to be released in paperback.
