Real Life Experiment
The timeless struggle between the cost of living and the income for low-wage work has made millions of working families unable to meet their basic needs. Barbara Ehrenreich investigates this struggle in her book, Nickel and Dimed. Working low-wage jobs in Florida, Maine and Minnesota as an undercover journalist, Ehrenreich gives a lively and interesting account of a low-wage worker’s life. She used first hand experiences, the lives of her co-workers, and added in facts (as footnotes). The research she did for this book was extensive. She collected the data and materials like a scientist and carefully compiled a book that shows the reader the unflattering realities that low-wage workers are faced with. She also struggled with some areas of the project and allowed her own opinions and choices to cloud her objective mind set.
This project began during a lunch meeting between Ehrenreich and Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s Magazine. After being told that she should be the one to go into the field and research whether it is possible to sustain a living on little to no income, she thinks about it and then reluctantly says she will. (5) She explains in the first section that she was aware of the advantages she would have over the real people in her project. She had numerous advantages over her co-workers including a completed education, a car, good health, health insurance, and money to get her started. (7) This had to be the first step that she took before starting in on her project and making it a success. By acknowledging the subculture she was part of and the “cultural baggage” she would be taking into her research allowed her to be more receptive of the information that she learned. (Sunstien 6)Since she also wanted the reader to understand the facts about the environment she was dropped into Ehrenreich used footnotes to credit her experience in many cases. In most instances where she discovered something interesting or worthy of background information she provided footnotes at the bottom of the page, which included interesting information and a dependable source. This helped make Ehrenreich’s claims more credible. She provides the reader with shocking statistics at the bottom of the page to validate what she is experiencing at that time during her project. For example, in Minnesota when she struggles to enter the housing market because of lack of affordable places, she supplies interesting and relevant information about the national decline in affordable housing, and the amount of people who qualify as poor renters who end up living in motels because of this. This note supplies more evidence that the odds are stacked against the low income earners. We see this from the start of her project.
Ehrenreich started this journey close to her home in Key West, Florida. Her first job was as a waitress at a restaurant she calls the Hearthside. She made $2.43 an hour plus tips at this restaurant, but after two weeks she found working one job was not enough to pay the $500 rent for the cabin she was living in. So, she went in search for another a second job. (28) She uses this example to show how hard the low income worker has to work just to keep a place to live. She makes it clear from her first job that her suspicions were right about the unlikelihood of being able to sustain a living on these low wages. Her co-workers don’t have the option of walking out like she did at the end of the first month in Key West. They would be putting their families and themselves at risk of becoming homeless. Ehrenreich makes sure to describe the real lives of the people she works with.
She describes the lives of her co-workers to help the reader understand real life struggles and inconveniences of the low-wage worker. At the Hearthside, she makes an easy to follow compilation of research about her co-workers. She starts by describes her friend Gail who lives in a crappy room in the city with a man who has started to beat her. (25) This information is strategically placed in the book to make clear that many of the living arrangements of the poor are horrific compared to the average readers standards.
Like in other sections of the book she attempts to describe her coworkers in Maine. In this instance however she fails to provide a little more needed information to the reader. She described a coworker, Pete, at the nursing home but left out information that would have made her more credible and would have been easily obtained. She described Pete as, “probably ten years my junior” (65). Would it have been so hard to find out how old he was? Even if it was not an appropriate question to ask at the time, Ehrenreich could have called afterwards for some follow up research and maybe she would have gained more material for her book as well. She also does this at her other job as a maid. During one day at work, one of her co-workers, Holly, discovered she was pregnant. However, Holly chose to continue working with equipment and cleaning materials potentially harmful to her pregnancy to avoid missing any work and, therefore, paychecks. (97) Here, it would have benefited the reader to understand Holly’s story. How many children did she already have? How was she planning to provide for her growing family? This was much more of a touchy subject, so I understand the omission of such information. However, even after this encounter Ehrenreich does not mention any available help offered by the government for single mothers with children. This could have been a beneficial footnote for the reader to understand what options are available, if any.
Next stop was Portland, Maine. She claims she chose to go to Maine for its “demographic albinism.” She is white, which already makes her not the average low-wage worker. Just by her race, Ehrenreich is automatically not subject to as much discrimination as the rest of the low-wage work force. However, she fit into the albino demographic just fine in Maine and wasn’t subject to any more or less discrimination than anybody else based on race, thus giving her a fair chance to experience the average life of a low-wage worker. (51) This material and data was used in her book to show that she was trying to use her “cultural baggage” to the benefit of her project and make it as fair as possible. She does run into some situations where her bias gets in the way of her overall project.
While she is living in Maine she examines her funds and because of a check delay she realizes she is out of money. Ehrenreich finds help through a Recourse Center however, she struggles to answer reasonable questions regarding why she needed the help. The person working for the center asked “Ehrenreich why she needed money if she was employed and she told him because she used it up on housing, since it was more expensive than she had expected it to be. Then, the man on the line asked her why she didn’t check out the rents before she moved.” (101) She commented aggressively to the question, probably because she was tired and didn’t want to have to explain her situation anymore. This phone call referred her to a food pantry in Biddeford. Ehrenreich took the suggested offer as if she were insulted. (102) Most people in her position would be thankful for any help they can get. But, because she had a comfy couch to go back to when her little experiment was done, she came off as if she is “too good” for this kind of help. If I were in her position, I would feel very grateful that I am being offered options for dinner to begin with. This was a time in her project where I think her bias got in the way of seeing her situation for what it was and taking the help that was given to her.
Next, Ehrenreich was off to Minneapolis, Minnesota where she worked at Wal-Mart for $7 an hour. This decision to work at Wal-Mart made Ehrenreich, as the author more relatable, since the industry is so well known and no matter where you go, it is “close to home.” Ehrenreich, who makes the point to say she was nervous about being too overqualified, was concerned about getting a job at Wal-Mart. Her concern is valid, because she was unsure if she could pass a drug test. (128). This part of the book, in some ways, makes sense of previous events. From the very beginning she complains about drug testing. In fact, she even turned down a job offer because the amount of money offered wasn’t enough “to compensate for this indignity” (14) of a drug test. She continues to claim drug tests are dehumanizing throughout the book, but it isn’t until the last segment that the reader discovers she has been messing around with marijuana. This is one more occasion where her own baggage gets in the way of the task at hand. She has struggled through the book to sustain a living and she is spending money she doesn’t have on marijuana. This situation for me took away some credibility she had as a journalist. This was a three year process however and no one can go that long and be completely objective.
Overall all Ehrenreich painted a very vivid picture of the below par environment of low income workers. Most of the time the materials used in her book was the lives of her co-workers who have to struggle every day, but she shed some light on their fight. Though there were times where I thought she let her own opinions into the situation she can use that has her own “human error” in the experiment and still get the same result. The data that was obtained by her research is now part of her own life experiences and she now knows first-hand that it is very hard, even with advantages, to live off of minimum wage.

Works Cited Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America. New York: Henry Holt, 2002. Print. Sunstein, Bonnie, and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater. FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research. Ch. 1. Third ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007. Print.