Nickel and Dimed:
On (Not) Getting By in America
By Barbara Ehrenreich
2001

My Mom has been a low-wage cashier in various local grocery stores for her whole adult life. Since childhood I have pondered why she didn't change jobs or seek a higher wage.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote "Nickel and Dimed" to expose the foray of the low-wage working poor in today's America. She did this by leaving her comfy upper-middle class life as a well educated (PhD in Biology) writer and joined the low-wage workforce for a sojourn of many months.

Ehrenreich first worked as a waitress in Key West, then as a housekeeper with the corporate "Merry Maids" franchise in Maine and finally as a Wal-Mart employee in my very own Minneapolis (she turned down a higher payng job selling plumbing supplies at Menard's).

Because my Mom has been a cashier for so long and I know what it means to live week-to-week, I already go out of my way to be gacious and kind to even the most forlorn cashier. Ehrenreich depicts the working poor from inside the workplace, where they are starved, tired and emotionally battered automatons for our modern corporate slavedrivers.

A most troubling scene was Ehrenreich's account of a co-worker at Merry Maid's who has fallen and twisted her ankle while leaving a jobsite. The woman refused to go to the hospital because she feared her boss and feared the cost of not having health insurance. Worst of all was missing a days work, which probably meant going without food. This is the "team" of maids who literally couldn't scrape together two dollars amongst each other.

Everyone should take the time to read "Nickel and Dimed" especially every elected official of every federal, state and local municipal government, along with the management of every large corporation in America and abroad.


Upton Sinclair

I would recommend reading this book alongside Upton Sinclair's great American novel, "The Jungle."