Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141550 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
In an attempt to understand the lives of Americans earning near-minimum wages, Ehrenreich works as a waitress in Florida, a cleaning woman in Maine, and a sales clerk in Minnesota.

Customer Reviews

The US version of Down and Out in Paris and London
If you have read, and liked, George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London then this is a book for you. The author writes engagingly and informatively on what it is like to part of America's "working poor" and, in the process, punctures a number of middle-class prescriptions for, and misconceptions about, the poor. Why do the poor eat junk food? Because they don't have the facilities - kitchen, pots, cooker - to make lentil soup. Why do the poor live in hotel rooms paying $60 per night? Because they don't have the money for the deposit on the rent of an apartment. Housing always emerges as the single biggest obstacle in the lives of low-paid employees. Did you know that many low-paid employees ($6-$7 per hour) live in their cars and vans? That a perk of a waitress' job with a hotel was permission to park her van-cum-home in the hotel car park? This book is in the best tradition of writing with a social conscience -it does not beatify the poor, nor does it regard them as unter-menschen. Indeed, the messsage that I, surrounded by my bourgeois comforts, took away was: "There but for the grace of God.." If you are not averse to this genre, then you should read this book - it is among the best of this type of writing.

How the Working Poor Are Abused
"How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?" That's the fundamental question that Dr. Ehrenreich set out to answer by living as an unskilled person in Key West, Portland Maine, and Minneapolis. Basically, she couldn't make it work very well at all, despite having many advantages over the typical worker in these jobs. Along the way, she meets many people who make it work better, but are still being ground down by their fragile economic and work status.

This book reminds me of the classic sociological exposes where the author set out to try the role of the downtrodden on for size. Her conclusion is that "no job, no matter how lowly, is truly unskilled." These are hard jobs. Despite her association with wanting to be a pleasant, helpful person, Dr. Ehrenreich soon begins to see customers as the enemy in her service jobs. Interestingly, her co-workers can keep a friendly, cooperative attitude better than she can.

Although there is anger in her report, there is also much humor (often aimed at herself and the managements of the companies involved) and praise for her "unskilled" colleagues as they cope with housing and medical costs that soar much more rapidly than their wages in an America where income and wealth are growing best for the richest and most well educated.

Her rules for this experiment were simple. She would not use her educational skills, she would take the highest paying job offered to her, and find the cheapest place to live. Unlike many poor people, she started off with enough cash to make down payments and place security deposits on apartments. She also could rent a car, so she had more choices of places to live and work. She did not have children with her, as many "unskilled" new workers coming off of welfare do. Despite her best intentions, she bent all of these rules. You would have done the same. She lived in some pretty scary places, and probably placed her life more at risk than this book indicates. We should all be grateful for her courage and her willingness to share what she learned in such an accessible and interesting form.

Based on her experiences and what people told her who were her co-workers, it is only possible to succeed with these jobs if you hold at least two of them. You also have to have some way to get between the two jobs, and some method of finding an inexpensive place to live. Your best bet is to share housing with friends or relatives. You won't have access to the time and information to find a better job very easily, and will find yourself worn down by the constant surveillance, high workloads, and physical demands of your work.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is that she raises the question of whether the currently free market for labor is the best approach. There are other costs. Turnover is high in these jobs, and supervisory costs are also high. If people liked the jobs and stayed longer, profits would be higher and costs lower. In some jobs, it was typical for people to leave after only one day. Also, there are social costs in terms of children who don't get help, medical needs that are untreated, and criminal behavior that is encouraged.

The problems described here seem to be typical for restaurant, "unskilled" health care, retailing, cleaning, and lodging workers. The number of these jobs will keep growing.

I hope that people who own or manage businesses will take the time to consider how they can redesign jobs in order to pay better wages to "unskilled" people, so that a living wage is available. I also hope that the same consideration will be provided for these workers as for the scarce technical talent that is so often wooed.

Also, think about how you treat such workers when you are a customer for these services. How can you be more considerate?

Uphold dignity, respect, and opportunity for each person!

One of the BEST Books I’ve Read
I thought this book was absolutely fantastic. I found it an easy, five-hour read of 221 pages. The negative reviews of this book, I believe, are coming from two sorts of people. First are those who wish the book to be something it is not. This book is NOT attempt to be a serious, sociological study. It is only what its author purports it to be—the experiences of ONE reporter, making three reasonable attempts, in three vastly different locales, to live at a minimally acceptable standard on the salaries offered in low-wage service positions.

Other criticisms of this book came from those who felt the author was a left-wing extremist, against the rich, advocating transfer payments from rich to poor. A few people ranted and raved, in their reviews, about what “solutions” she was advocating. I think these people didn’t read very carefully. I did not find her advocating any solutions at ALL, only bringing up the dilemmas, and posing questions that we should ALL be posing. But to accuse the author of advocating things which she did not say, is akin to putting words in her mouth, by some people who literally feel threatened by anyone who asks the questions she poses!

The most overwhelming feeling I got from reading her book was of HOW RICH I AM (and I’m an American living in a third-world country)! Anyone who is feeling the least bit sorry for themselves in this life should read this book, and they will IMMEDIATELY feel better. Mainly, just having good food to eat every day, and being able to pay for medical, or dental, care whenever I need it is a true luxury that we all forget about, as well as having a comfortable roof over my head. We are all guilty of taking these things so much for granted, when we have them.

The most important conclusion the author draws in this book is that low-wage jobs are so far out-of-whack with the costs of housing, and that this is what is just killing people, and keeping them barely surviving. She shows how this situation has gotten worse in recent years. It is certainly true that most people in low-wage jobs are working two jobs to make ends meet. I know this from personal experience. My husband, a foreign immigrant to America for a time, worked in a hotel cleaning rooms. He was the ONLY person who did not go to a second job at the end of an 8-hour shift (as we fortunately didn’t NEED him to do that). What this author, and most Americans, may not realize however, is that this is NOT just an AMERICAN problem. It is true that the more socialistic countries in Europe “distribute the wealth” to lower-income persons. But they are about the ONLY countries in the world that do (Canada may also). In MOST countries of the world, salaries are FAR out-of-whack with housing costs. And the disparity if FAR worse than in America. But there is one difference in America. America has a lot of laws making it illegal to have too many people living in an apartment, for example. You aren’t allowed to have more people that two in an apartment for each bedroom. In third-world countries, these restrictions don’t exist. So you could have ten people crowding into a one-bedroom apartment. And believe me, they sometimes do. It’s the only way to make ends meet, for a lot of people. This is a problem that has been with us since the world began, and will continue. I don’t have a solution. I am not rich. But I FELT SO RICH reading this book. This book will help any person to really freshly appreciate what they do have. I HIGHLY recommend it to EVERYONE.