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Nickel and Dimed

industry. Sinclair’s work eventually led to legislation that sought
INTR
INTRODUCTION
ODUCTION to put an end to such conditions. More recently, “investigative”
or “watchdog journalism” have been the terms used in
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF BARBARA EHRENREICH describing the kind of activist-related writing that Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich’s childhood was spent moving frequently around pursues and achieves in her book.
the country, as her father worked his way up from mining into
middle-class status. She attended Reed College in Oregon, and KEY FACTS
received her Ph.D. in cell biology at Rockefeller University.
After the birth of her first child, she became involved in the • Full Title: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
fight for better women’s health care. She ultimately became a • When Written: 1998-2000
full-time writer, breaking into the field with articles on women’s • Where Written: United States (Florida, Maine, Minnesota)
rights and social justice issues. She continues to balance her
• When Published: 2001 (with an afterword from 2008)
journalism and book-length projects on social and inequality
issues with her activism in health care, women’s rights, and • Literary Period: Contemporary
economic justice. • Genre: Reportage/Memoir
• Setting: Key West, Florida; Portland, Maine; Minneapolis,
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Minnesota
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the “Personal • Climax: Each chapter has its own climax, but one scene in
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” a Maine is particularly climactic. After growing increasingly
piece of welfare-reform legislation that drastically reshaped frustrated with the way her team leader at The Maids, Holly,
must stoically work through dizziness, pain, and stress,
welfare programs, reduced federal spending on welfare, and
Barbara screams into the phone at her boss, Ted, fuming at
required many to work in exchange for receiving social benefits. his willingness to put profits above the well-being of his
As Ehrenreich was beginning her experiment, this law was workers.
beginning to kick in, meaning that millions of Americans
• Antagonist: In general, Barbara’s antagonist is economic
formerly on welfare were now about to join the workforce (in
culture in America, which accepts the acute distress of low-
most cases the low-wage workforce). This was also a time of wage work as a given. She recognizes that such an antagonist
economic growth and near-full employment for the United is intangible and difficult to pin down, so she constructs more
States, which many today—especially after the 2008 economic material antagonists in her bosses, including Ted and
crisis—remember as a time of relative wealth and abundance. Howard, as well as the more faceless corporations for which
In fact, part of Ehrenreich’s goal was to show that this time, she works.
perceived by the mainstream as prosperous, was not a period of • Point of View: First person
prosperity for everyone, and that most low-wage workers were
entirely left out of the economic growth benefiting many other EXTRA CREDIT
Americans. Her book also sought to counter the idea that
Seeing Things? Though Ehrenreich calls herself an atheist in
economic growth and full employment would do away with
Nickel and Dimed, she describes her experiences of mysticism
desperate poverty, since both were in evidence at the time she
and “seeing God” as an adolescent in her most recent book,
was writing.
Living With a Wild God.

RELATED LITERARY WORKS

Nickel and Dimed taps into a long American tradition of PL
PLO
OT SUMMARY
“muckraking” journalism, in which writers investigate abject
social conditions and corrupt corporations in order to promote Nickel and Dimed opens with Barbara Ehrenreich, a writer and
reform. The Progressive Era, around the turn of the 20th journalist from Key West, Florida, at a lunch with her editor
century, was witness to multiple muckraking exposés. One of discussing pitches and article ideas. She’s often written about
the most famous was Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Liv
Lives
es, poverty, and at the moment the book opens, millions of
published in 1890, which revealed the awful conditions of New Americans are about to leave welfare as the 1996 welfare
York City’s immigrant slums through a photojournalism exposé. reform legislation kicks in. She speculates what it would be like
Another was Upton Sinclair’s 1906 The Jungle
Jungle, in which he to actually try to live on the minimum wage, and says that some
exposed shocking conditions in the Chicago meatpacking enterprising journalist should try to do it—not thinking that the

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editor will say it should be her. highly demanding tables, and at one point Joy corners her to
As her book project takes shape, she plans to spend a month in yell at her. She storms out—and her time in Key West ends.
each of three places—Key West, Portland, Maine, and Next, Barbara chooses Maine, since it’s white enough that she
Minneapolis—intending to see if she can reach the end of the doesn’t think she’ll stick out as a low-wage worker. Though
month with enough money to pay the next month’s rent. If she Portland seems to have a tight labor market, Barbara finds that
can’t, she’ll quit and start over in the next place. Barbara grew it’s still a $6-7 an hour town. In addition, there are few rent
up in a relatively comfortable environment, but all the previous options for less than $1,000 a month, and even the low-rent
generations of her family were working-class miners, and options are far out of town. She ends up staying in the Blue
poverty has been close enough to her that she clings gratefully Haven Motel, which has low-cost apartments to rent by the
to her comfortable, flexible writing job. She recognizes that her week in the off-season. Barbara applies for multiple jobs, filling
task will hardly approximate the real-life experience of a poor out a personality test for a housecleaning service called The
person, since she is healthy, has no children in tow, and is only Maids that seems to be meant to weed out anyone who’s
doing this experiment temporarily. She is trying merely to see if freethinking and curious, though it’s an easy test to “psych out.”
she can achieve an equilibrium between income and expenses. She accepts the first two jobs she gets. One is as a dietary aide
Barbara starts in Key West. Her first goal is to find a place to at a nursing home, where she’s assigned to serve meals at the
live, no easy task given that she’ll have to stay close to a budget Alzheimer’s unit, which she finds far easier than Jerry’s. The
of $500 a month. She finally finds a decent-seeming trailer, other is at The Maids, where she has an orientation that
though it’s a 45-minute commute on the highway from the city. consists of a video showing the exact cleaning methods to be
Barbara is hoping to apply for hotel housekeeping jobs, since used. She’s sent off with a team to clean houses, which turns
she remembers how tired waitressing made her as a teenager, out to be highly aerobic work, especially since they’re only
and she figures she’s been “housekeeping” at home for years. allotted a certain amount of time per house. Most of the
She fills out dozens of applications from the help wanted ads, women still don’t seem to have enough money to eat more than
though soon realizes that these ads don’t necessarily mean snacks.
there’s an opening—they’re how employers account for high Barbara prides herself on her ability to keep up with the
turnover in the low-wage workforce. She also seems to be younger women, though she realizes that she’s had the benefit
pushed towards the service jobs rather than housekeeping of good health care and diet for decades. She also finds that
jobs, most likely since she is a white, native English speaker. housecleaning work creates unwanted intimacy with owners
At one hotel, she is sent over to work at the accompanying and a troublesome, highly unequal relationship between the
restaurant, which she calls the “Hearthside.” It’s a sad-looking owners and the cleaners. At the same time, her more mundane
place, ruled over by a red-faced, snarling cook named Billy. concerns include her own money issues. She tries to call around
Even with tips, she’s not making much more than minimum for food aid, but most places are only open during working
wage. Barbara quickly befriends Joan, the feminist hostess, and hours—inconvenient for the working poor—and she finally gets
Gail, her coworker. She feels under-qualified and unskilled, a hardly nutritious dinner for $7.02. Her time at The Maids
slowly realizing that she’s only average in this world. She also comes to a climax when Holly, a team leader, grows dizzy and
learns more about the difficulties faced by her fellow faint and injures herself at one of the houses, but refuses to
employees, especially in housing—there are no secret rest, since she doesn’t want to waste the manager Ted’s time
economies for the poor, she realizes, and instead everyone is and is afraid of losing her job. Ted seems to care for little other
scrounging by in a near-emergency state, with some even than money, but Barbara can tell how much his approval means
sleeping in vans. As the tourist season ends, Barbara calculates to the others—probably because they get so little validation
that she won’t make it to the end of the month with her wages elsewhere.
as they are, so she finds a second job at Jerry’s, a national fast- Barbara’s final part of the experiment is in Minneapolis, where
food chain. It’s a hectic environment with a moody manager, she interviews for a job at Wal-Mart, which has a similarly
Joy, and she only lasts two days holding down both jobs—she demeaning personality test and also requires a drug
then has to quit the Hearthside, since Jerry’s pays more. There, test—requiring Barbara to detox since she’s smoked marijuana
she befriends a teenaged Czech dishwasher named George. recently, but also prompting her to think about how low-wage
Meanwhile, she encounters constant suspicion and surveillance workers are viewed with suspicion and distrust. She also
that she experiences from management. She also discovers that applies for a job at Menards, a hardware store, but declines it
everyone at Jerry’s only manages to get by through having a when it turns out she’ll have to work eleven hours straight on
second job. Finally, she begs the woman at the hotel attached to her feet. Barbara also struggles, once again, to find cheap
Jerry’s to give her housekeeping work. This, however, only lasts housing—no affordable apartments have availability, so her
one day before she has a catastrophic shift at Jerry’s that night: only option is to stay at a motel in the city for an exorbitant
George has been accused of stealing, she’s dealing with four $295 a week.

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At Wal-Mart orientation, Barbara feels that she is meant to be
inculcated into a kind of cult of Sam Walton, in which CHARA
CHARACTERS
CTERS
employees are “associates” and their bosses “servant leaders.”
Nevertheless, her interviewer, Roberta, is careful not to
MAJOR CHARACTERS
mention wages until after assigning Barbara straightaway to Barbar
Barbaraa Ehrenreich – The narrator and protagonist of the
orientation, meaning that there’s no time for a prospective book, Barbara Ehrenreich is a middle-aged writer and journalist
employee to bargain or compare options. At Wal-Mart, she’s from Key West, Florida. Relatively well-off, though from a
assigned to the ladies’ section, where she and her new friend family of humble beginnings, she often uses her personal
and coworker Melissa measure their work in terms of carts experience to compare and contrast with life as a low-wage
filled and returned. She has to be careful about what the worker. Barbara is energetic, funny, and wry: she often deals
company calls “time theft,” and she jealously guards her two with the difficulties of her experiment by joking with others or
15-minute breaks, since she’s exhausted by being on her feet all using dry humor in the text. Barbara is an activist, clearly left-
day. wing and firmly on the side of low-wage workers. She takes a
dim view of corporate power—and also often uses her ironic
She grows increasingly cranky and bitter and wonders how
humor to critique the self-centeredness and greed of upper-
much such a job would change her personality. Barbara ends up
class people, even while acknowledging that she herself can be
moving into a Comfort Inn for $49.95 a night, a bit cheaper but
considered one of them.
still far from affordable, which means she’ll have to end her
experiment early since she’ll never manage to equal income
with expenses. She finally tries to stir up union feeling among MINOR CHARACTERS
her coworkers, though this is mainly a halfhearted effort that Ruthie – A patient at the Alzheimer's ward in Maine.
only has the effect of making her see how other employees are Gail – Barbara’s friend and coworker at the Hearthside, who
also struggling to survive on their Wal-Mart wages. struggles with health issues due to her lack of health insurance.
In the “Evaluation” section of the book, Barbara details the
Joan – The hostess at the Hearthside, whom Barbara especially
lessons she’s learned through her experiment. She’s realized
likes since she’s a feminist.
how no job is truly “unskilled,” though low-wage workers are
rarely, if ever, rewarded or congratulated for their effort. She Phillip – Barbara’s boss and the manager at the Hearthside.
goes through the cities she’s lived, showing that Portland was Stu – Barbara’s assistant manager at the Hearthside.
the only place where she was able to stay ahead of Billy – The red-faced, bad-tempered cook at the Hearthside,
expenses—and there she was only able to do that by working who at $10 an hour makes the most of the other workers and
seven days a week. lives in his own trailer.
Barbara argues that society fails to see the desperation of low- Lionel – The teenaged busboy at the Hearthside from Haiti,
wage workers because we’re used to thinking of poverty as whom Barbara likes.
linked to unemployment. The working poor, however, have to
deal with rising rents and costs, even as the “labor shortage” George – The 19-year-old Czech dishwasher at Jerry’s, who
taking place in all the cities where she lived put little upward has recently immigrated to the United States, and is
pressure on wages. Barbara argues that employers have fought accused—probably unfairly—of stealing.
endlessly to prevent wage increases from happening. In the Jo
Joyy – Barbara’s moody and unpleasant manager at Jerry’s.
meantime, low-wage workers are made to feel shame and are Vic – The assistant manager at Jerry’s.
constant targets of suspicion, while at the same time are
Lucy – Barbara’s coworker at Jerry’s.
becoming increasingly invisible to upper-class people, who
share few of their spaces and so rarely interact with them. Carlotta ((Carlie
Carlie)) – Barbara’s coworker during her brief stint as
a housekeeper.
In the Afterword, Barbara briefly explains what has changed
since the book’s publication, six years earlier—there’s been a Karen – A woman whom Barbara speaks to in her attempt to
living wage campaign, but at the same time costs have risen and get food vouchers or aid in Portland.
public services have been cut. Barbara ends by detailing a few Gloria – Another woman whom Barbara calls as she tries to
things readers can do to help, from volunteering to supporting obtain food aid in Portland.
government candidates, but argues that changing the economic Pete – Barbara’s coworker at the Woodcrest Residential
culture of the United States will take far longer. Center.
Gr
Grace
ace – One of the Alzheimer’s patients at Woodcrest.
Letty – Another Alzheimer’s patient at Woodcrest.
Ted – Barbara’s boss and the franchise owner at The Maids,

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who is obsessed with the bottom line. a color printer, you can still use the icons to track themes in
Pauline – Barbara’s coworker at The Maids, who has been black and white.
working there for two years and is crushed when Ted doesn’t
acknowledge her work on her last day. THE ECONOMICS OF POVERTY
Helen – One of Barbara’s team leaders at The Maids, who has a When Barbara Ehrenreich set out to write the book
bad foot. that would become Nickel and Dimed, her stated
Holly – Barbara’s coworker at The Maids, who often grows goal was pretty straightforward: to see if she could
faint from hunger, but who doesn’t seem to appreciate pay for rent, food, and other bills as a low-wage worker. As
Barbara’s attempts to help her. Barbara came to learn, and explains throughout her book, such
a goal is far from simple. Barbara reveals the complications that
Maddy – One of Barbara’s team leaders at The Maids, who is arise from trying to survive on a minimum-age
struggling with childcare issues. job—complications often hidden to those who aren’t working as
Rosalie – One of Barbara’s coworkers at The Maids, a recent low-wage workers—to make the case that such labor is
high school grad who only eats half a bag of chips for lunch. ultimately unsustainable. One major economic lesson from this
Lori – Barbara’s coworker at The Maids. experiment is how wildly inefficient living and working in
poverty can become. Without savings, Barbara cannot afford
Marge – Another coworker at The Maids.
the deposit for an apartment, and so ends up having to pay far
Colleen – Another coworker at The Maids. more for a motel room—a situation that, she learns, is far from
Hildy – An apartment manager at the Hopkins Park Plaza in uncommon. Without a full kitchen, she cannot cook and freeze
Minneapolis. large quantities of food, and so ends up having to eat both more
Roberta – The woman who hired Barbara for a job at Wal- expensively and very unhealthily at fast-food restaurants and
Mart, who is careful not to mention wages unless she’s forced convenience stores. Even organizations meant to assist low-
to so as to eliminate prospective employees opportunity to wage workers only complicate things even more: food banks
compare wages against other options before they start work. are often only open 9-5, when most people are at work, and the
food they offer is similarly made up of unhealthy, empty
Paul – Barbara’s prospective boss at Menards in Minneapolis. calories.
Ste
Stevve – Another prospective supervisor at Menards. Without savings to rely on, and often without financial help
Melissa – Barbara’s coworker at Wal-Mart, and the one she’s from parents or other family members, low-wage workers are
closest to. in a constant state of emergency. One illness or other
Howard – The assistant manager at Wal-Mart. unforeseen event can mean that they are immediately facing
destitution. It doesn’t help that companies often withhold the
Ellie – Another manager at Wal-Mart.
first week’s payment, which means both that a low-wage
Stan – A Wal-Mart employee who initially had dreams of going worker will be desperate even while working, and that changing
to school while working. jobs is far less easy or attractive than one might assume. In
Marlene – Another Wal-Mart employee, who believes Wal- addition to drawing on these examples, Barbara constantly
Mart doesn’t treat its employees well. refers to prices, costs, and calculations in her own experiment.
Work is not a way out of poverty, she argues, but rather a
Isabelle – A Wal-Mart employee whose salary has gone slightly
physically and emotionally damaging state in which the
up after working there for two years.
economic laws of supply and demand often simply don’t apply.
Alyssa – A Wal-Mart employee who is in the same orientation She thus seeks to prove that low-wage workers are forced to
as Barbara. fight an uphill, or even impossible, battle: that their problems
Caroline – The aunt of Barbara’s New York friend. She had stem not from individual weaknesses or laziness but from
moved from New York to Florida to completely start over; she entrenched structural issues that make working your way out
now lives in Minneapolis and offers help and friendship to of poverty excruciatingly difficult.
Barbara.
LABOR
In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara sets out to experience
THEMES
the working life of low-wage laborers first-hand.
In LitCharts literature guides, each theme gets its own color- She is, of course, interested in poverty in
coded icon. These icons make it easy to track where the themes general—as a journalist, Barbara had covered the topic
occur most prominently throughout the work. If you don't have extensively before writing this book—but here she is
particularly concerned with the plight of the working poor.

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Labor is defined in economic terms throughout the book, as of worldview that understands poverty as the fault of the poor.
work performed in exchange for payment. But the term also She shows, for instance, how difficult it is to eat healthfully
serves to encapsulate the notion of physical, emotional, and while poor, even as many look disapprovingly on the obesity of
mental toil faced by the country’s lowest class of workers. the working poor.
Low-wage labor is often directly linked to physical pain: from Partly as a result of this shame, Barbara shows, low-wage
eight-hour shifts without a bathroom or sit-down break at a workers often band together and support each other. Barbara’s
restaurant, to the physical exertion required to clean a home, coworkers cover each other for bathroom breaks, offer each
hourly-wage workers must often exhaust themselves physically other a place to stay, and swap tips for how to deal with chronic
in order to earn their income. This physical labor can pain stemming from their jobs without health insurance. These
sometimes lead to medical problems—often compounded by a kinds of relationships reveal a solidarity that helps to combat
lack of insurance, which many of these workers cannot the social and personal disapproval placed on such workers
afford—which endanger their ability to work, leading to a from outside.
devastating cycle. Over the course of the book, Barbara
realizes that this physical exhaustion is mirrored by mental and INDIVIDUALS AND CORPORATE
emotional exhaustion as well. In her experiment as a low-wage RHETORIC
worker, her energy is constantly directed towards the well-
being of others, usually at the expense of her own. With little Nickel and Dimed makes an explicit contrast
time to relax and no extra money to pay for even small luxuries between the experience of individual workers and
like a movie or a dinner out, there is no respite to be found from the corporations for which they work. Indeed, the “corporation”
a grueling daily schedule—especially when it becomes is portrayed as a shadowy, distant entity that initially seems to
necessary to work up to seven days a week in order to survive. have little impact on the daily working life of Barbara and her
colleagues. However, Barbara soon comes to understand how
Ultimately, low-wage labor is portrayed not as a proper
much of low-wage work is dictated by both the needs and the
exchange for income but as an arduous, unsustainable system
rhetoric of corporations. Corporate rules are, in some cases,
whose victims are the low-wage workers themselves. By
tied to the culture of surveillance and suspicion that is also
explicitly describing the physical and emotional toil of low-wage
linked to shame. At Jerry’s, the Key West restaurant,
labor, Barbara argues against the prevailing social rhetoric of
headquarters decides to reduce break time to squeeze out
work as noble and meaningful, showing that many Americans
more productivity from the staff. And at Wal-Mart, employees
simply can’t afford to subscribe to this notion of labor.
are constantly warned against “time theft,” or spending any
time chatting or otherwise failing to make money for the
SHAME AND SOLIDARITY company—which in the employers’ view is a dire crime. For the
Compounding the taxing nature of their work, low- corporation, Barbara argues, profits are what ultimately
wage laborers are often forced to feel like low-class matters, and workers are little more than drones rather than
citizens both by their employers and by society at human beings, meant to work in pursuit of profits.
large. Though Barbara is only temporarily inhabiting this world, Nevertheless, the corporations for which Barbara works also
she too is unable to escape the sense of shame she comes to employ a whole language and rhetoric around how they
feel from the way she is treated as a low-wage laborer. This is support and enrich individual workers’ experiences. Videos
especially the case for occupations in which the economic gap produced by Wal-Mart and The Maids are meant to make
between employers and employees is highly visible, such as workers develop a sense of loyalty and belonging to the
housekeeping. Barbara describes how demeaning it feels to be corporation, while still stressing the possibilities of individual
scrutinized by a homeowner while scrubbing the floor on her growth. Barbara shows how effective this marketing can be as
hands and knees. At these homes as well as at places like Wal- she describes the guilt of her coworkers at the possibility of
Mart, videocameras and other tools—including the ubiquitous failing to achieve their employers’ standards. But she argues
drug test—serve as means of surveillance, making workers feel that corporate rhetoric is deeply disingenuous, no more than a
that they are under constant suspicion and are not to be myth that hides how little corporations care for individual
trusted. development. Instead, this rhetoric serves to strengthen a
In a broader sense, Barbara shows how low-wage workers are system in which corporations benefit far more than the
made to feel both invisible and unwanted, a shameful individuals they employ.
underclass, by the rest of society—even as society is in vital
need of their labor. Customers at restaurants pay little
attention to the fact that their waiters and waitresses are SYMBOLS
overworked and underpaid, failing to tip and making
Symbols appear in teal text throughout the Summary and
unreasonable demands. Barbara also seeks to disprove the kind

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Analysis sections of this LitChart.
system.
Of course, part of the reason why Barbara says she wrote
DRUG TESTS
the book is because those battles are, to another part of the
At nearly all of Barbara’s jobs, from waitressing to American population, largely invisible. Barbara will stress
sorting ladies’ wear at Wal-Mart, drug testing is throughout the book how little she, along with the audience
either threatened or required. At one point, Barbara cites she presumes to speak for—that is, educated, middle- to
research showing that in one study, out of hundreds of upper-class Americans—fully comprehend the struggles of
thousands of drug tests and millions of dollars spent, less than a the working poor. Part of her goal will therefore be to
hundred prospective employees failed the test. She argues that educate the public about the quantifiable facts behind
rather than a true safety or security measure, drug testing trying to make ends meet.
symbolizes and underlines the deep suspicion and sense of
distrust that many employers have for their employees. They
fail to consider low-wage workers as human beings deserving Chapter 1 Quotes
of the same kind of dignity as anyone else. To complete a drug
test, a prospective employee has to drive to a hospital or Cooks want to prepare tasty meals, servers want to serve
them graciously, but managers are there for only one
doctor’s office and usually pee into a cup without the benefit of
reason—to make sure that money is made for some theoretical
much privacy. The process is meant to remind the prospective
entity, the corporation, which exists far away in Chicago or New
worker that he or she is in a position of dependency on the
York, if a corporation can be said to have a physical existence at
employer and lower-class status.
all.

QUO
QUOTES
TES Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
Note: all page numbers for the quotes below refer to the Henry Related Themes:
Holt & Company edition of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting
by in America published in 2008. Page Number: 22

Explanation and Analysis

Introduction Quotes
As Barbara begins her job at Hearthside, the restaurant, she
So this is not a story of some death-defying “undercover” begins to witness a disconnect between the lowest-rung
adventure. Almost anyone could do what I did—look for jobs, employees, the servers and busboys, for instance, and the
work those jobs, try to make ends meet. In fact, millions of management. Even though managers are often former
Americans do it every day, and with a lot less fanfare and cooks, Barbara argues that once they are promoted they
dithering. are no longer as interested in keeping employees and
customers happy, but rather become more concerned with
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) following the instructions from a far-away corporation. For
a place like Hearthside (not the restaurant's real name)
Related Themes: there may be thousands of franchises across the country, all
accountable to this corporation, often at the expense of
Page Number: 6 those on the ground in each location. Indeed, Barbara claims
that often these two groups have competing, even opposite
Explanation and Analysis
interests—that making money and preparing and serving
As Barbara lays out the source of her decision to "go well-made meals are often at odds with each other. Still,
undercover" and attempt to live like the working poor, she is Barbara shows how this is hardly a well-matched fight, since
eager to point out that her story is not a heroic tale of the disembodied, abstract nature of a corporation can be
adventure—she does not want to be seen as particularly difficult to understand when one is working on the ground.
exceptional or clever for doing what she did. Instead, she Furthermore, all the money comes from the corporation,
attempts to make clear that for many Americans, the battle and when one is living hand-to-mouth, one often has to
to make income equal expenses takes place each day. sacrifice quality for cash.
Furthermore, rather than complain or protest about
it—although that can and does happen—the working poor
are often silent, if not willing, participants in this unfair

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There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on
the contrary, there are a host of special costs. had laid out her careful, well-reasoned plan for how she
would go about her experiment. But the scientific spirit she
had embraced now finds itself clashing with the harsh
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
realities of actually living out this job and this economic level
of society. The acute stress of the job has prevented
Related Themes:
Barbara from acting rationally, instead forcing her to give in
Page Number: 27 to her feelings of helplessness. In addition, Barbara seems
to see this failure not just as one of science but as a failure
Explanation and Analysis of her own character, or her ability to face difficulty and to
Barbara has learned that her coworker Gail is thinking see it through. Confronted with the facts of her reactions,
about leaving a horrendous roommate situation and moving and with a great sense of shame, Barbara has to reconsider
into the Days Inn. She is shocked that Gail would consider the proper or even possible attitude that one can have in
spending $40-60 per night, but she has not taken in to such a situation.
account how difficult it can be to find the money for a
month's rent plus a deposit, which are almost always
necessary to move into an apartment. As a result, Barbara Chapter 2 Quotes
begins to realize, the poor end up paying a huge premium What these tests tell employers about potential
simply because they lack the necessary savings. employees is hard to imagine, since the “right” answers should
Barbara had assumed, like many of her readers, that things be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle
always somehow "work out," that the poor find ways to of hierarchy and subordination.
support themselves and live off a small income. Here, she
begins to understand just how impossible poverty can make Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
any kind of economic choice. Not only are the working poor
unable to make enough of an income to live comfortably, Related Themes:
they are actively punished for doing so, as they are made to
pay premiums and special costs that simply do not exist for Page Number: 59
those who are better off. Barbara's claim is part of her
general desire to counter those who would critique the Explanation and Analysis
poor for taking advantage of welfare or other economic Barbara has gone to a job fair put on by Wal-Mart, where
breaks. she is handed an opinion survey. She's told that there are no
wrong or right answers: she just has to state how much she
agrees with certain statements, such as the ethics of
denouncing a coworker or whether management is to blame
I had gone into this venture in the spirit of science, to test a
when something goes wrong. Barbara immediately sees
mathematical proposition, but somewhere along the line,
that the apparent lack of right or wrong answers is a
in the tunnel vision imposed by long shifts and relentless
sham—there is clearly only one "right" way to perceive the
concentration, it became a test of myself, and clearly I have
situations given, at least from the perspective of the
failed..
potential employer. By hewing closely to the assumptions of
"hierarchy and subordination," Barbara can be sure to tell
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) the prospective employers what they want to hear.
As a result, she cannot really understand why such surveys
Related Themes:
are at all helpful to the employer, since it is so easy to fake a
Page Number: 48 meek and subordinate attitude. As she will conclude at
other moments, these kinds of requirements seem more
Explanation and Analysis directed towards ensuring that employees know their
In the midst of the most hectic, stressful shift she has faced proper place.
thus far, Barbara leaves Hearthside and takes off her apron,
resolving not to return. She has been yelled at by customers
and managers and is on the verge of tears, something to
which she is not accustomed. In the introduction, Barbara

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How poor are they, my coworkers? The fact that anyone is
working this job at all can be taken as prima facie evidence
Related Themes:
of some kind of desperation or at least a history of mistakes and
disappointments […] Almost everyone is embedded in extended Page Number: 83
families or families artificially extended with housemates.
People talk about visiting grandparents in the hospital or Explanation and Analysis
sending birthday cards to a niece’s husband; single mothers live It is a 95-degree day as Barbara participates in the cleaning
with their own mothers or share apartments with a coworker of Mrs. W's house, and as she moves, sweating, from room
or boyfriend. to room, she muses on the nature of the task at hand, and
the disconnect between the service she is really supposed
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) to provide—a cleaned home—and the rhetoric and
appearances around the job. By getting on her "hands and
Related Themes: knees," Barbara is supposed to show just how hard she is
working: the management of The Maids therefore can
Page Number: 78-79 "prove" to their customers that the money they spend is
worth it for the labor they get in return.
Explanation and Analysis
Barbara recognizes that the posture is much more about
Barbara has begun to notice some signs of acute economic
symbolism than about competence: she could clean the
distress among her coworkers: even though they are
floor much better with a soapy mop standing up, but she
working a strenuous, labor-intensive job, some of them
realizes that the hands-and-knees approach is not about
barely eat lunch. She resolves to stay quiet and listen as
providing as good a service as possible. Instead, it places the
much as she can in order to better understand the situation
employees in a position of subordination, echoing the
of each one of them. Barbara has already been struck by the
hierarchical relationship between customer and employee
grueling, difficult nature of the job and by the relentless
by the very space that each takes up, one standing over the
corporate-speak of the management, such that she
other bent over. The posture is not just painful but also lacks
recognizes that this job would not be a first choice for
dignity, Barbara shows, serving only the purpose of
anyone.
gratifying both management and customer.
However, what Barbara learns here has less to do with her
coworkers' view of the job itself than with the ways in which
they all, however precariously, are making things work. Each
So ours is a world of pain—managed by Excedrin and Advil,
woman relies upon a network of family members, friends, or
compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases
housemates, even as each often also serves as a support for
and then only on weekends, with booze. Do the owners have
other people in her own network. There seems to be little
any idea of the misery that goes into rendering their homes
space for solitude or independence in their lives, and much
motel-perfect? Would they be bothered if they did know, or
of what they discuss here reflects the duties that they have
would they take a sadistic pride in what they have
in visiting or taking care of members of their networks.
purchased—boasting to dinner guests, for example, that their
However, there also seems to be an added layer of safety
floors are cleaned only with the purest of fresh human tears?
and continuity in the very size and extent of such networks
as well.
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)

Related Themes:
The hands-and-knees approach is a definite selling point
for corporate cleaning services like The Maids. […] A mop Page Number: 89
and a full bucket of hot soapy water would not only get a floor
cleaner but would be a lot more dignified for the person who Explanation and Analysis
does the cleaning. But it is this primal posture of Barbara has been congratulating herself on her ability to
submission—and of what is ultimately anal accessibility—that keep up with women who are often much younger than her.
seems to gratify the consumers of maid services. However, she recognizes that the main quality they do
share is their various physical ailments and the ways they
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) find to treat and medicate them. Barbara's interest in work

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throughout the book is, in this section, described explicitly appreciated by other people. As a maid, she understands,
in terms of physical labor, the aches and pains that such she has entered a group that is not only invisible and
work can wreak on the body. Such pains cannot be done unacknowledged but often actively looked down upon. As a
away with for her coworkers, who can't afford real result, it becomes more appealing to look for any way to
treatment nor the time to rest, but can only be "managed" regain some of that social recognition, even in the smallest
by medication, cigarettes, or alcohol. of ways.
Barbara once again ponders the relationship between such
pain and the customers that are the indirect cause of these
troubles—a relationship that so often remains theoretical, I am wondering what the two-job way of life would do to a
since each group can seem abstract to the other. Barbara person after a few months with zero days off. In my writing
seems undecided as to whether the customers' knowledge life I normally work seven days a week, but writing is ego food,
of that suffering would really horrify them, or whether they totally self-supervised and intermittently productive of praise.
would take it in stride. She certainly uses hyperbole in Here, no one will notice my heroism on that Saturday’s shift. (I
imagining the homeowners bragging to their dinner guess will later make a point of telling Linda about it and receive only
about the "fresh human tears" that result in their gleaming a distracted nod.) If you hump away at menial jobs 360-plus
floors, but the exaggeration is meant to underline the days a year, does some kind of repetitive injury of the spirit set
disconnect between the painful reality of the workers and in?
the sparkling result that is all that the wealthy customers
notice.
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)

Related Themes:
Yes, I want to help Holly and everyone else in need, on a
worldwide basis if possible. I am a “good person,” as my Page Number: 106
demented charges at the nursing home agree, but maybe I’m
Explanation and Analysis
also just sick of my suddenly acquired insignificance. Maybe I
want to “be somebody,” as Jesse Jackson likes to say, somebody Barbara has just finished her shift at Woodcrest, which was
generous, competent, brave, and perhaps, above all, noticeable. more stressful than usual, and has gone to a state park to
Maids, as an occupational group, are not visible, and when we rest and to think over her past few weeks working two jobs,
are seen we are often sorry for it. with no days off. Once again, Barbara brings up the topic of
validation and recognition for one's work. This is something
that she is used to having regularly as a result of working as
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker), Holly a writer, since her work is published and responded to by
many. It is this kind of validation that gives her the strength
Related Themes:
and motivation to work hard and to refrain from becoming
Page Number: 99 exhausted or disillusioned. Such positivity is entirely absent
in Barbara's work as a maid and as an aide at a home for
Explanation and Analysis Alzheimer's patients. Even when she seeks out praise, it is
Barbara had noticed her coworker Holly feeling faint and barely given to her.
nauseous at one of the houses. Holly thinks she is pregnant Barbara has previously discussed the physical and bodily
but doesn't want to tell Ted until she's sure, so that she harm that can stem from grueling menial labor. Here, she
doesn't risk losing her job. Barbara has convinced Holly to wonders about other kinds of harm—emotional, even
eat one of her sports bars and has taken on some of Holly's spiritual—that can stem from such jobs, with no rest or days
responsibilities: she feels strong, in control, and benevolent off to break up the monotony and recover.
until she makes a mistake and drops a pan onto a fishbowl in
another home.
Now Barbara wonders whether her desire to "help" Holly is “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person,
truly motivated by her essential goodness, or whether her and I don’t want what they have. I mean, it’s nothing to me.
desire is more selfish than that. By helping out and "being But what I would like is to be able tot ake a day off now and
good," she realizes, she is more likely to be noticed and then…if I had to…and still be able to buy groceries the next day.”

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Related Characters: Colleen (speaker) two places, Menards and Wal-Mart, and now she realizes
that she's technically been hired at both, almost without
Related Themes: realizing it, and without the chance to negotiate her salary
or work hours. Barbara argues that corporations string
Page Number: 119 potential employees along, making them feel like
contingent, replaceable figures, until they can benevolently
Explanation and Analysis
extend a job offer that one can only gratefully accept. Drug
At the end of her time with The Maids, as she does at each tests, for Barbara, are a clear example of how corporations
place where she works, Barbara shares with a few of her subject individuals to embarrassing, undignified procedures
coworkers that she is actually a reporter and has been in order to underline the true balance of power between
investigating working conditions at places like The Maids. them.
She asks Lori and Colleen what they think about the owners
By describing her experience in a place like Minneapolis,
of the houses that they clean. While Lori says she's inspired
which at the time Barbara was there was in great need of
to get to the level of these owners, Colleen has a different
labor, Barbara argues that it's impossible to explain this
reaction. She is not envious of the wealthy customers, nor
hierarchical process as a result of high supply and low
angry about the obvious disparity between her wealth and
demand. Instead, she claims, the purpose of such processes
theirs. Instead, her goals are more limited, confined to the
is to put the potential employee in his or her "proper place."
level of her own expectations. Colleen doesn't expect or
Part of the motivation for this might stem from the need to
hope for an entirely new way of life, but rather wistfully
keep workers feeling lucky to have a job and less likely to
imagines a world in which she could work hard but also take
pose problems or leave for another place. In addition,
days off, without that decision affecting her very ability to
Barbara believes that another result is to cut off the
eat and to feed those she supports. In essence, what she
possibility for salary negotiation, so that companies can get
expresses to Barbara is a desire to find a way out of the
away with paying their employees as little as possible.
precariousness that characterizes the lives of so many of
the working poor.

Today [Melissa] seems embarrassed when she sees me: “I

Chapter 3 Quotes probably shouldn’t have done this and you’re going to
think it’s really silly…” but she’s brought me a sandwich for
There’s no intermediate point in the process in which you
lunch. This is because I’d told her I was living in a motel almost
confront the potential employer as a free agent, entitled to cut
entirely on fast food, and she felt sorry for me. Now I’m
her own deal. The intercalation of the drug test between
embarrassed, and beyond that overwhelmed to discover a
application and hiring tilts the playing field even further,
covert stream of generosity running counter to the dominant
establishing that you, and not the employer, are the one who
corporate miserliness.
has something to prove. Even in the tightest labor market—and
it doesn’t get any tighter than Minneapolis, where I would
probably have been welcome to apply at any commercial Related Characters: Melissa (speaker), Barbara Ehrenreich
establishment I entered—the person who has precious labor to
sell can be made to feel one down, way down, like a supplicant Related Themes:
with her hand stretched out.
Page Number: 163

Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) Explanation and Analysis

Melissa is a coworker of Barbara's who began at Wal-Mart
Related Themes: around the same time that Barbara did, and the two have
forged a friendship around the hectic, stressful pace of the
Related Symbols: working day. Part of Barbara's reaction to Melissa's
generosity in bringing her a sandwich stems from the
Page Number: 149 embarrassment that comes from knowing that Melissa,
Explanation and Analysis unlike her, is probably living in truly precarious conditions.
But she is also touched by this action. Barbara has spent
Barbara has gone through the job application process at much of the book realizing that the corporations for which

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she works care little about their employees and are eager to Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker),
wring as much out of them as they can in pursuit of profits Howard, Alyssa
above all. But here she recognizes that an alternative
economic mindset does exist, one in which a kind and Related Themes:
generous act is not considered a liability, even though the
working poor are among the least able to afford such Page Number: 181
generosity.
Explanation and Analysis
Alyssa has been paying close attention to a clearanced
seven-dollar polo shirt, and has found a stain on it. As she
But now I know something else. In orientation, we learned tries to ask the fitting-room lady to lower the cost for her,
that the store’s success depends entirely on us, the the manager Howard appears and says that there is no
associate; in fact, our bright blue vests bear the statement “At employee discount on clearanced items. Alyssa is frustrated
Wal-Mart, our people make the difference.” Underneath those and upset, and Barbara's words are meant less to cheer her
vests, though, there are real-life charity cases, maybe even up than to confirm her frustration with the unfairness. At
shelter dwellers. the very least, Barbara claims, Wal-Mart employees should
be able to afford the items that they sell, especially when
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) Wal-Mart champions its reasonable prices. In addition,
Howard seems far more concerned with keeping a hawkish
Related Themes: eye on his employees, preventing them from straying at all
from the company regulations, than with the potential
Page Number: 175 contradiction with which Alyssa is faced—that of struggling
to afford a shirt that would most likely just be used as part
Explanation and Analysis
of her uniform.
Barbara is driving back from the Community Emergency
Assistance Program, where a woman has given her non-
perishable and other food items that will be able to fit in the Evaluation Quotes
hotel room where she is now living. Barbara is thinking over
The first thing I discovered is that no job, no matter how
what the woman admitted to her: that she had mixed
lowly, is truly “unskilled.”
Barbara up with another employee from Wal-Mart who had
come in a few days earlier. Barbara has proof, then, that she
is not alone in struggling to make ends meet even with a full- Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
time job. And she recognizes that the bright blue vests that
all Wal-Mart employees wear unite them outside the Related Themes:
workplace as well, as emblematic members of the working
poor. Page Number: 193
For Barbara, these vests are also a cruel reminder of the gap Explanation and Analysis
between the cheery, employee-first language that Wal-Mart
As Barbara looks back over what her experience as part of
strikes as a corporation, and the reality of those individual
the working poor has taught her, she first draws several
employees. Wal-Mart may claim that their employees "make
conclusions on the personal level before going on to make
the difference," but ultimately they are not interested in
broader, more sociological claims. Here she echoes
what it takes for the employees to arrive at work each day
something that she had mentioned at the beginning of the
and even to achieve the basic necessities of food and
book, when friends had asked if people could "tell" that
shelter. Barbara's point is that the blue vests create an
Barbara was undercover. That attitude presumes, she had
abstract, homogeneous group of "employees" that denies
claimed, that the relatively educated and wealthy are
the lived experience of each one.
smarter and more clever than others, mapping onto the
distinction often made between "skilled" and "unskilled"
labor.
Alyssa looks crushed, and I tell her, when Howard’s out of Barbara concludes from her time at the various low-paying
sight, that there’s something wrong when you’re not paid jobs that this distinction doesn't mean much. A job may be
enough to buy a Wal-Mart shirt, a clearanced Wal-Mart shirt
with a stain on it.

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The money taboo is one thing that employers can always
paid little and may have little dignity or prestige associated count on. I suspect that this “taboo” operates most
with it, but it involves its own challenges and its own skill effectively among the lowest-paid people, because, in a society
set. Indeed, at several points in the book, Barbara had that endlessly celebrates its dot-com billionaires and
grown frustrated at her inability to keep up with others, centimillionaire athletes, $7 or even $10 an hour can feel like a
such as at the moment when she quit Hearthside. It is easy, mark of innate inferiority.
she shows, for more educated people to consider that they
earn what they should relative to the skills they provide,
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
which implies that those who aren't earning as much simply
have less valuable skills. Barbara is seeking to challenge
Related Themes:
such an attitude.
Page Number: 206

Explanation and Analysis

Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in
good health, a person who in addition possesses a working Barbara attempts to apply the laws of economics to the
car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You realities that she's experienced, and identifies several ways
don’t need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low in which these laws fail to be confirmed. One is in the
and rents too high. assumption that workers are well-informed and well-
educated enough to choose rationally between a number of
options, such that they are always maximizing their self-
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
interest. Barbara argues that in practice this doesn't
happen, in large part because of what other social scientists
Related Themes:
have labeled the "money taboo." In a society that celebrates
Page Number: 199 wealth but looks down on sharing one's own salary or
financial information in public, such a disconnect virtually
Explanation and Analysis ensures that low-wage workers keep quiet about their own
Barbara goes back through her budget for each of the situations, both out of shame that their wages are so low,
places she lived, asking herself how she could have made and out of a socially prescribed norm that disapproves of
better choices or been more strategic in order to create a their discussing such wages. As a result, companies benefit,
more sustainable lifestyle. However, she concludes that few since they don't need to keep up with other companies in
of those mistakes ultimately made a difference. Instead, order to ensure that they have enough employees or are
what remains striking to her is how precarious her life was paying reasonable wages.
in each of these places, despite the fact that she is healthy
and mobile, with a car that has allowed her to seek a much
greater variety of jobs. What surprised and offended me most about the low-
Barbara had gone into this project at the historical moment wage workplace (and yes, here all my middle-class
of welfare reform, which was characterized in part by the privilege is on full display) was the extent to which one is
assumption that incentivizing people to work would reduce required to surrender one’s basic civil rights and—what boils
poverty. Here Barbara argues that this assumption was down to the same thing—self-respect.
flawed, because even working difficult and strenuous jobs
has not been enough for her to support herself. With low- Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
paying jobs as the only avenue for the working poor to
ensure the basic necessities of food and shelter, the Related Themes:
disconnect between rent prices and the wages that such
jobs pay is unsustainable. Related Symbols:

Page Number: 208

Explanation and Analysis

Barbara asks why, if workers are discouraged from seeking
better wages and conditions elsewhere, they don't just

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simply demand better ones at the places where they do their workers from considering themselves as worthy of a
work. She identifies one reason as being the community- higher wage, so it is also in their interests to make
oriented corporate rhetoric that attempts to make employees feel as unworthy as possible.
employees feel like part of a team and invested in the
company. Here, she proposes another possibility: the
routine interruption of basic civil rights. This takes place, as These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle,
we have seen, in the process of drug testing, which is even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-
embarrassing and degrading, as well as in purse searches
level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of
and in the constant monitoring by managers, which creates
subsistence, emergency situations. And that is how we should
an environment of suspicion. see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans—as
Barbara argues that these infringements on civil rights are a state of emergency.
not just shocking to someone from the (white) middle class
who has never had to question her own freedom in a
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)
democratic society. In addition, these procedures create a
fundamental gap between different socioeconomic levels of
Related Themes:
society, ensuring that those who make the least are
constantly reminded of their proper place and making it Page Number: 214
difficult for them to ever question this place. Without the
self-respect that comes from understanding oneself as a Explanation and Analysis
free member of a democracy, it is unlikely for a low-wage At an earlier moment, Barbara had sought to challenge the
worker to consider him- or herself as worthy of better notion that there are "secret economies" on which the poor
wages or conditions. draw—economies that the non-poor assume somehow exist,
but in reality are entirely absent. Here, she once again
challenges the idea that poverty is difficult and unpleasant
My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low- but ultimately sustainable. She has witnessed first-hand
wage workers—the drug tests, the constant surveillance, physical and medical distress stemming from labor, such as
being “reamed out” by managers—are part of what keeps wages Holly's dizziness or coworkers who have been forced to live
low. If you’re made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to in a van when not at their jobs.
think that what you’re paid is what you’re actually worth. Indeed, Barbara argues that if we consider poverty merely
as a difficulty like any others, we fail to realize that the
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker) situations of many low-wage workers are emergency
situations. That they go on for so long, she shows, does not
Related Themes: make them any less of an emergency. By employing the term
"state of emergency," Barbara places poverty on the same
Related Symbols: level as a natural disaster or war. By doing so she makes a
powerful case for the significance of the working poor and
Page Number: 211 their experiences as a battle to be waged in another way
than through military means.
Explanation and Analysis
Here, Barbara explicitly identifies a number of the
procedures that work to keep low-wage workers "in their The “working poor,” as they are appropriately termed, are
place." She calls them "indignities," but they are just a in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They
synonym for what earlier has been labeled infringement on neglect their own children so that the children of others will be
civil liberties. For Barbara, the economics of the working cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes
poor are not to be isolated from the social and ideological will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation
elements of their lives. Indeed, she argues that the shame will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the
workers are made to feel, the degrading nature of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless
procedures to which they are subjected, are directly tied to benefactor, to everyone else.
the absurdly low wages that they are paid. Indeed, as she
has argued elsewhere, it is in companies' interest to prevent
Related Characters: Barbara Ehrenreich (speaker)

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during which she saw how grueling, exhausting labor

Related Themes:
worked to keep the homes of the wealthy spotless while
actively denying the human labor that went into that
Page Number: 221
process.
Explanation and Analysis Barbara broadens that example to make a point about low-
As she concludes the book, Barbara introduces another new wage labor in general. In order for wealth to exist
term that, like "state of emergency," is meant to shock her elsewhere, in order for the economy to be apparently
readers into understanding and ultimately inspire them to thriving and growing, a substantial part of the population
take action against the status quo. We are used to thinking must sacrifice its own security and standards. Barbara thus
of philanthropists as wealthy individuals who give out of argues that the experiences of the working poor are not an
charity and generosity to people like the working poor. aberration from society, but a necessary part of how society
Here, Barbara argues that often the opposite is the case: functions: any solution, therefore, will have to take into
that the working poor are the true philanthropists. She had account this relationship.
seen this reality most explicitly while working at The Maids,

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SUMMARY AND ANAL

ANALYSIS
YSIS
The color-coded icons under each analysis entry make it easy to track where the themes occur most prominently throughout the
work. Each icon corresponds to one of the themes explained in the Themes section of this LitChart.

INTRODUCTION: GETTING READY

Barbara Ehrenreich tells the reader how the idea for this book Barbara situates the reader within a particular historical moment,
came about: at a lunch with her editor from Harper’s magazine at which national economic policy regarding welfare reform is about
discussing future articles she might write, including more to transform the lives of many of the country’s poorest citizens. The
articles about a topic she’d covered previous: poverty. With exchange with her editor also hints at her credentials, provides a bit
welfare reform about to take place, Barbara wondered how of humor, and establishes the task that she’ll seek to accomplish
women could survive on $6 or $7 an hour. She mentioned that over the course of the book.
someone should do old-fashioned journalism and try it herself,
meaning someone younger—but her editor half-smiled and
said, “You.”

Barbara comes from a family familiar with low-wage work: her With this additional background info, Barbara makes clear that low-
father and other relatives were miners, while her husband was wage work is far from alien to her and her family. She knows going
a warehouse worker when they met, and her sister has shuttled into the project how “work” can mean wildly different things
through various low-wage jobs. For her, a writer, sitting at a depending on the kind of labor.
desk is a privilege and an opportunity to be grateful that she
has moved up in the world—now she hesitates to go back.

In addition, Barbara knows she could already figure out the As the project begins, quantitative research has already been
numbers herself, paying herself an entry-level wage and done—and it’s shown that Barbara will be facing an uphill battle in
totaling up her profits and expenses at the end of the month. her attempt to match income to expenses. If she decided simply to
She already knew, also, that a single mother leaving welfare complete the project by adding up wages and expenses on a piece of
would struggle to survive without government assistance: in paper, she already knows that she would fail.
1998, when she started the project, it would take a $8.89
hourly wage to afford a one-bedroom apartment, and the
typical welfare recipient had a 97 to 1 chance of landing such a
job.

Barbara ultimately decided to think of the task as a scientist—in Given the apparent impossibility of living on minimum-wage profits,
fact, she has a Ph.D. in biology, and was trained to do Barbara concludes that her first-hand experience might reveal some
experiments. She thought she might discover some hidden secrets about the economics of poverty that even the economists
tricks that would allow her to get past the basic math—after all, have missed. The rules that she sets for herself underline her
about 30 percent of the workforce got paid $8 an hour or less. insistence on being as authentic as possible in the experiment;
She set certain rules: she could not fall back on her professional however, that she sometimes fails to keep these rules only
skills; she had to take the highest-paying job offered and do her underlines how difficult it is to make a living without educational or
best; and she had to take the cheapest accommodations (while other advantages.
still safe) that she could find. She bent these rules several times,
by convincing an interviewer that she could say Bonjour or
Guten Tag to restaurant guests as a waitress, for instance.

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Barbara would describe herself as a divorced homemaker Here, Barbara sets out in detail the terms of her project. We learn
reentering the workforce after a long break. She listed three that even college—such a cause of anxiety for middle- and upper-
years of college and listed her real-life alma mater, though no class Americans—matters little in the low-wage workforce. Barbara
one seemed to care much. She would also set limits on any writes in a straightforward way about her experiment, which makes
hardship: she would always have a car, and she would rule out sense given her decision to treat it like scientific research rather than
homelessness. She would spend a month in each place and try as a shocking, dramatic “adventure story.”
to see whether she could find a job and earn the money to pay a
second month’s rent—if not, she would quit. She makes the
point that this wasn’t an adventure story: millions of people do
this every day.

Barbara is quick to say that she is in a comfortable financial Barbara reiterates the idea that she is simply doing an experiment
position and could certainly not “experience poverty” in a real and not truly living this lifestyle—making the point that for many
way: instead, she just wanted to see if she could match income people low-wage work is life and not simply a temporary project.
to expenses. She had the added privilege of being white and a She also clearly lists her advantages of language, ethnicity, and
native English speaker, meaning that she was offered certain family situation, all of which can have further negative effects on
kinds of jobs over others—waitressing rather than hotel people’s ability to gain and hold down a job. In other words, Barbara
housekeeping, for instance. She also didn’t have young children, is engaging in this experiment with many built-in advantages.
unlike many women leaving welfare, and was in much better
health than many low-wage workers.

During her jobs, Barbara talked about her real-life husband and Throughout the book, Barbara will use her “real-life” past and
relationships. People later asked her whether her co-workers experience to make comparisons with low-wage work in order to
couldn’t “tell,” as if educated people are different and somehow puncture stereotypes and increase awareness among her
superior than the lesser-educated. Instead, she was only readership, which she assumes to be middle- or upper-class. Here,
different in that she was inexperienced: low-wage workers are she shows how many people from these groups implicitly look down
just as heterogeneous, and just as likely to be funny or smart, as on low-wage workers.
anyone in the educated classes. What did make her different
was that she returned each night to a laptop on which she took
notes, often changing the details to protect the privacy of
people she worked with.

While Barbara notes that her story is far from a typical case, While low-wage work always comes with economic difficulties,
she claims that it is in fact a best-case scenario, in which these can often be compounded by additional factors.
someone with every advantage attempts to survive in the low-
wage economy.

CHAPTER 1: SERVING IN FLORIDA

Barbara begins her project near her real home, in Key West, By beginning her project near her real home, Barbara learns first-
Florida. She first attempts to find a place to live, assuming that hand how one city can hold multiple worlds and realities depending
if she can earn $7 per hour, she can afford to spend $500-600 on one’s economic situation. Key West for the poor is a place where
in rent and still have $400-500 for food and gas. In Key West, even trailer parks are too extravagant for minimum-wage work.
this means she is looking at trailer homes like the one fifteen
minutes from town without air-conditioning or a
television—but at $675 a month, it’s too much.

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Barbara admits Key West is expensive, but notes that like New One of Barbara’s advantages is having a car, but she makes clear
York City, the Bay Area, or Boston, tourists and the wealthy are that low-wage workers must cling to any advantage they have, as
competing with the people who serve them. So she makes a that advantage often serves as compensation for other
choice many low-wage workers must make between disadvantages. One of these is living in a tourist area, where the
affordability and convenience, and chooses a $500-per-month power and resources of the wealthy mean that the poor are
trailer thirty miles up the highway—a forty-five minute drive. relegated by the cost and availability of housing to ever farther and
It’s a depressing drive, but the place is a quaint kind of cabin in unpleasant living quarters.
the backyard of her landlord’s convertible mobile home.

Barbara looks through want ads, hoping to avoid certain jobs, Tests and “interviews” like the one Barbara fills out at Winn-Dixie
like waitressing, because she remembers how tired it made her will turn out to be a key element of applying for any low-wage work.
as an eighteen-year-old. She’s left with supermarket jobs and Questions like those Barbara mentions show how these tests are
housekeeping. She fills out application forms at various looking for employees who are obedient, dutiful, and honest to the
supermarkets and hotels. At Winn-Dixie, she has a twenty- point of putting the company before fellow employees; the question
minute computer “interview” (ensuring that the corporate about stolen goods additionally reveals how companies inherently
point of view is represented) and is left to wait in a room with distrust their potential employees, which Barbara will show is part
posters warning about the ways union organizers will try to of a broader atmosphere of corporate suspicion of low-wage
trick you. The interview asks if she has any problems that might workers.
make it difficult to get to work on time, how many dollars’
worth of stolen goods she’s purchased in the last year, and if
she would turn in a fellow employee caught stealing.

Barbara is told to go to a doctor’s office the next day for a urine At this point, Barbara still feels like she has enough options to be
test: drug testing is a general rule for low-wage work, she able to turn down work in order to conserve her dignity (an idea she
discovers. She thinks the $6-an-hour wage is not enough to will be forced to give up later). Neither of these jobs even reach the
compensate for such an indignity. She has lunch at Wendy’s, an low $7 threshold she had calculated.
unlimited Mexican meal for $4.99, and fills out an application
form to work there, also for around $6 an hour.

At one hotel, Barbara notices that the housekeepers look like The atmosphere Barbara paints here is a generally downtrodden
her, “faded ex-hippie types” with long hair in braids. No one one. High turnover is one major symptom of low-wage work, since
talks to her except to offer an application form. At another Bed such workers are constantly in an economically precarious
& Breakfast a man tells her there are no jobs but to check back situation. The turnover is not because of laziness, but because
soon, since no one lasts more than a few weeks. continuing in a job is impossible.

No one calls Barbara back for three days, and she realizes that Barbara is faced directly with the link between low-wage work and
the want ads do not necessarily mean jobs are available: they high turnover, and begins to understand that this environment
are how employers account for the constant turnover in the means that she cannot be picky with her job—“choosing” a career is
low-wage workforce. She has to simply be flexible enough to a privilege for the wealthier. Though she has negative memories of
take whatever is being offered, which finally happens at a waitressing as a teenager, she ends up having to accept such a job.
discount chain hotel. She goes there for a housekeeping job and
instead is sent to apply for a waitress job at the dingy attached
“family restaurant.”

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The manager, a young West Indian named Phillip, interviews Unlike the corporate computer interview, this one seeks not to weed
Barbara without much interest, mainly wanting to know what out individuality but merely to fill in an empty labor slot on the
shifts she can work. He tells her to show up the next day in calendar. With her uniform provided, Barbara is officially a part of
black pants and black shoes—he’ll provide the polo shirt the low-wage workforce.
embroidered with “Hearthside” (the name she’s made up for
this place).

Barbara works there for two weeks from 2pm until 10pm for Barbara’s footnote suggests that some people may be making even
$2.43 an hour plus tips (a footnote explains that employers are less than minimum wage due to the sneaky evasion of employers.
legally allowed to pay less than minimum wage as long as the Waitressing wages are particularly vulnerable to shifts based on the
wage plus tips equals minimum wage per hour—but Barbara economy, the tourist season, and even things as simple as
never heard this law mentioned or explained to her). customers’ moods.

When Barbara arrives, a red-faced, long-haired man is Immediately, Barbara is thrust into an environment that’s rough
throwing frozen steaks against the wall and cursing: the around the edges, from Gail’s boyfriend’s legal troubles to Billy’s
middle-aged waitress named Gail assigned to train her says wild behavior. Ehrenreich has a talent for making these coworkers
that that’s just Billy, the cook. Gail mixes pieces of instruction come to life, especially when she befriends some of them to make it
with personal confidences, like the fact that she misses her through the days.
boyfriend who was killed in a prison fight a few months ago—he
was only in prison for a few DUIs, she explains.

As she learns about the job, Barbara no longer fears being Transitioning from a desk job to waitressing, Barbara is humbled to
overqualified—instead, she misses being simply competent. find that “unskilled” work is far more difficult that she’d thought, and
While she understands the procedural aspects of writing, as a hardly devoid of skill. By detailing the variety of skills that, in fact,
waitress she simply has to deal with requests from all sides. She she needs to employ, Barbara punctures another stereotype of low-
has to master the touch-screen computer-ordering system, and wage labor.
must take up her non-serving time in invisible “side work,” from
sweeping and scrubbing to restocking in order to be ready for
the 6pm dinner rush.

Barbara is surprised to realize how much she cares about doing As she mentioned in the introduction, Barbara is not entirely a
good work—a philosophy given to her from her father, who stranger to low-wage labor, given her father’s mining history and her
pulled himself up from the copper mines of Butte to the own childhood spent climbing the rungs of the economic ladder. By
Northeastern suburbs. When she wakes up in the middle of the humanizing her customers (even the Europeans who don’t know
night, she thinks not of her missed writing deadlines but of the they’re supposed to tip), Barbara adds a more relationship-oriented
table where she screwed up a kid’s order. She’s had the “service dimension to her job. This is helped by the fact that many of the
ethic” kick in, making her want to serve the customers, who are customers are far from middle- or upper-class themselves, so
working locals like truck drivers, as if they’re in a fine dining Barbara can feel a certain solidarity as she helps them enjoy their
establishment. There’s a sewer repairman who relaxes in the time off.
air-conditioning for a half hour before eating. There are
German tourists who actually tip when Barbara uses her basic
German—Europeans, coming from high-wage “welfare states,”
often do not know they are supposed to tip.

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Barbara and other servers are indulgent to customers, often Barbara is not the only one to lend the job a more human dimension
sneaking on a higher amount of croutons than the amount by flouting the rigid corporate rules that dictate everything up to the
mandated by management (six). Gail uses her own tip money to last detail (number of croutons). Barbara shows that this tendency
buy biscuits and gravy for an out-of-work mechanic. They use is a natural one, probably among many service workers, and adds a
their small pieces of autonomy in assembling the salads and hint of her characteristic humor to make her point.
desserts and giving dollops of sour cream and butter. Barbara
suggests that American obesity is due at least in part to the fact
that waitresses show their humanity, and earn their tips,
through these kinds of covert extras.

Ten days in, it seems like a livable lifestyle. Barbara likes Gail After a week or two on the job, what Barbara most enjoys and
and Lionel, the teenaged busboy from Haiti, as well as the older remembers is her relationship with her coworkers—another example
Haitian dishwashers. She especially likes Joan, the hostess, who of solidarity in a sometimes hostile environment. Nevertheless, her
is a feminist and tells Barbara that they women have to stick hour-by-hour description of her days shows how monotonous such
together. Joan stands up to Billy after he curses the female labor can be, especially given her long commute.
servers. Barbara finishes up by 10pm or 10:30, gets to bed by
1:30 or 2am, is up by 9 or 10am, reads while she waits for her
uniform to be washed, and heads back out.

What makes this lifestyle far less sustainable is the Barbara learns for the first time what will become a common theme:
management: the constant surveillance for signs of laziness, the contrast between the experience of individual workers and the
theft, or drug abuse. In the restaurant business, managers are priorities of the corporation. Corporations, as we’ll see, have certain
often former cooks, and don’t make that much more money, but priorities in common, including efficiency, suspicion of their
are now firmly on the side of making money for the employees, and an emphasis on the bottom line. These priorities
corporation—a theoretical entity which is based far away. trickle down even to managers who used to be on the other side,
Managers try to prevent any downtime, meaning that Barbara leading to unpleasantness for the workers who bear the brunt of
drags out little chores so as not to be exhausted during slow such obsessions.
periods. On one slow day, Stu catches her glancing at a USA
Today and assigns her to vacuum the entire floor with the
broken vacuum cleaner, which can only be done on her hands
and knees.

At her first mandatory employee meeting, Phillip complains Again, these are several concrete examples of the ways in which
about the messiness of the break room, reminds them that corporate rhetoric can demean and embarrass employees, as well
their lockers can be searched at any time, and says that gossip as treat them like potential enemies or even drones. They lack basic
among the employees must stop. Four days later, they are all rights like privacy or free speech, and are subjected to humiliating
brought into the kitchen at 3:30 p.m., and Phillip announces random drug tests. That Barbara hasn’t received such treatment for
that there’s been some “drug activity” on the night shift. Now, years reminds us how different middle- and upper-class workers are
all new hires will be tested, and current employees could be treated.
subject to random drug tests. Barbara finds herself blushing:
she hasn’t been treated with such suspicion and felt so
ashamed since junior high.

Some start to gossip that Stu, who has been in a worse mood There are various levels in the hierarchy of Hearthside, and while
than usual, is to blame. Barbara is ready not to trust him, since Stu exerts control over the waitresses, he can also be subjected to
he doesn’t seem to have a clear role and he has tried to get into the needs and suspicion of the corporation.
Barbara’s good graces by complaining about Haitians taking
over the country.

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Housing is the top source of difficulty in most of her coworkers’ As part of her experiment, Barbara will seek to supplement her own
lives. Barbara learns that Gail is sharing a room in a flophouse experiences with those of the people she works with and sees
(a cheap boarding house) for $250 a week, and though her around her. Here, she concentrates on housing, which is generally
male roommate has started hitting on her, she can’t afford the precarious (trailers, boarding rooms) and usually far from
rent alone. A Haitian cook shares a two-room apartment with ideal—though this often depends, again, on comparative
his girlfriend and two other people. A breakfast server pays advantages like owning a trailer or being a native English speaker
$170 a week for a one-person trailer with her boyfriend. The (the Haitian servers seem to have the most crowded situation).
wealthiest of them is Billy, who makes $10 an hour and pays
the $400 per month lot fee on the trailer that he owns. Joan
lives in a van parked behind a shopping center and showers at a
friend’s.

For Barbara, some of these living arrangements don’t seem to In the introduction, Barbara had made clear that not every aspect
make sense. Gail tells her she is thinking of escaping from her of her project would be authentic—the fact that she began with over
roommate by moving into the Days Inn. Barbara is shocked that $1,000 was one of them. Gail, for instance, is forced into a wildly
she’d be paying $40-60 per day, but Gail is similarly shocked inefficient economic situation just because she doesn’t have enough
that Barbara would think Gail could afford a month’s rent and a existing money to put down a deposit on an apartment and
month’s deposit for an apartment, even if the apartment might therefore save more over time.
cost less long-term. Barbara had allotted herself $1,300 for
start-up costs, so she could afford to pay for a deposit.

There are no secret economies or tricks for the poor, Barbara Barbara’s conversation with Gail leads to an important realization
realizes: if you can’t afford a deposit, you end up spending far about the economics of poverty, in which inefficiency reigns. She
more for a room by the week. If you only have a room, you can’t gives various examples—housing, food, and health insurance—all of
cook big portions of food to freeze for the rest of the which add up mainly because the working poor simply can’t afford
week—instead, you eat fast food or convenience store food, to be smart about money. Some of these examples, like Gail’s pills,
which is more expensive and unhealthier. Without health initially seem like trifles, comparatively unimportant, but as Barbara
insurance (which, at the Hearthside, kicks in only after three shows, even something small can balloon into a crisis when there
months) you pay the price for the lack of routine care. Gail ran isn’t a large margin for error. The fact that the housing market and
out of money for estrogen pills, and the Hearthside health other aspects of the economy seem to be set up in such a way that
insurance company said they lost her application form, so now the poor are blocked from acting in the most cost-efficient ways is
she has to spend $9 per pill until they complete her paperwork. one of Barbara’s realizations in her experiment. It’s not that the
poor are dumb or lazy; it’s that the system is stacked against them.

Barbara’s tips usually cover her meals and gas, with a little bit After the first few weeks, what had seemed like a sustainable
left over. But as the tourist business slows, her tips go down situation suddenly turns unsustainable, though due to
and her wage amounts to about minimum wage or $5.15 per circumstances beyond Barbara’s control. Yet, again, this is another
hour. She will be $100 short by the end of the month. She of Barbara’s realizations: that being poor is like living on a knife’s
makes her lunch every day, and eats dinner at the Hearthside edge, and that even minor shifts or things totally out of your control
for $2. She’ll have to find a second or alternative job. can completely transform your situation. The poor, in other words,
have no buffer to protect them.

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Barbara starts making the rounds again at hotels. Almost all the Barbara is realizing that the color of her skin will impact the kinds of
working housekeepers she sees are African Americans, jobs she’s offered—though she had applied for housekeeping jobs,
Spanish-speaking, or Central European refugees, while servers she’s shunted towards waitressing, and given her precarious
are almost all white and native English speakers. Her search finances she has to accept whatever she’s offered. Jerry’s higher
leads her to Jerry’s (not the real name, and part of a national volume means that she’ll probably make more money, but also that
hotel/restaurant chain) which, like the Hearthside, offers her a this job will be far more demanding.
job as a server rather than housekeeper. Jerry’s has about four
times as many customers as Hearthside does—she accepts.

Jerry’s only seems to offer artery-clogging meals, which come Barbara paints a vivid and extremely distasteful portrait of Jerry’s,
from a massive kitchen above the grimy, foul-smelling garbage or at least the side of it that remains unknown to customers. By
and dishwashing area. Sinks are clogged with food, and doing so, Barbara gives readers a glimpse into what goes into the
counters are sticky with spills. Servers use their hands for meals that they may casually enjoy at a restaurant like Jerry’s. The
everything, even though there’s often no soap in the bathroom. lack of breaks, the sudden flooding of the restaurant by tour buses,
There is no break room since there are no breaks for the six- to and the inability to develop relationships with servers or customers
eight-hour shifts. Almost everyone smokes constantly, from the further make the place a far from ideal work environment.
servers and cooks to dishwashers. Often customers come fifty
at a time from their tour buses. Rarely does Barbara have time
for conversation with fellow servers or customers.

For two days, Barbara manages to work both the breakfast/ Though Barbara had needed to supplement her income, now that it
lunch shift at Jerry’s and the later shift at the Hearthside. But turns out working both these jobs is unsustainable, she sticks with
when she finally has a chance to sit down and eat something, the higher earnings (though greater unpleasantness) of Jerry’s.
Stu yells at her. She tells Gail she’s just going to quit. Gail, in Barbara is unimpressed with Phillip’s “generousness,” which seems
turn, tells her excitedly that Phillip is letting her park overnight to keep Gail in a still-precarious housing situation. That Gail is
in the hotel parking lot and sleep in her truck. pleased by it details just how much the expectations of the poor can
be lowered by their experiences.

Barbara finds she can only survive at Jerry’s by treating each This is the first of many examples of self-medication and emergency,
shift as a one-time-only emergency. She starts to be in constant unofficial treatment, which Barbara will show is a common element
pain, and takes four ibuprofens before each shift to deal with of low-wage work, since such labor is often physically grueling, and
spasms in her upper back. In her regular life, she’d take a day off because the workers often can’t afford and aren’t provided with real
with ice packs and resting, but can’t afford to do that now. health insurance.

Barbara does take breaks sometimes, but increasingly her old Just as low-wage workers are often invisible to the upper classes,
life seems strange and distant, her emails and messages from their jobs seeming strange and different, the reverse is also true,
people with odd worries and too much time on their hands. showing how foreign the two worlds are.

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Management is generally calmer at Jerry’s, except for the Like Phillip, Joy is able to exert an inordinate influence over her
manager, Joy, whose moods vary wildly within a shift. On subordinates, not only regulating how they act but also how they
Barbara’s third night, Joy pulls Barbara aside abruptly only to feel. Just as she did at Phillip’s break room meeting, Barbara feels
tell her she’s doing fine, except she’s spending too much time psychologically put down. With the efficiency needs of management
chatting with customers and is letting them “run her” or ask for always winning out, there’s no place or time for her to develop
too many minor changes in their orders. Barbara feels individual relationships with other people, rather than being simply
chastened. She realizes that she doesn’t get to express a a drone whose role is to serve management as efficiently as possible.
positive service ethic like the college servers at the fancy Barbara shows how this mentality can become an entire world view,
downtown restaurants. Her job is just to move orders between which she describes through the humorous example of certain,
the tables and kitchen, and customer requests are just especially bad-tipping customers.
interruptions to this transformation of food into money.
Barbara actually starts to see the customers this way, against
her will. The worst, she says, are the “Visible Christians,” who
are needy and difficult and then leave a $1 tip on a $92 bill.

Barbara makes friends with the other “girls” on her shift, Eventually, Barbara is able to develop relationships with her
including the fiftyish Lucy, who limps towards the end of the coworkers, which she again uses as an opportunity to learn more
shift because something has gone wrong with her leg, which about the various difficulties faced by the low-wage workforce. Her
she can’t figure out without health insurance. They talk about examples show that her coworkers are entirely normal people,
all the usual girl things, though not potentially expensive topics whose problems lie, once again, in areas like health insurance and
like shopping or movies. No one is homeless, usually thanks to a housing. As they do within the job, they find ways of supporting
working husband or boyfriend, and they tend to support each each other outside work as well.
other if someone’s feeling sick or overwhelmed.

Barbara’s favorite is George, the 19-year-old Czech Barbara writes fondly about George, who is not only a pleasant
dishwasher who has been in the States for one week. When she person to work with but also an example of how low-wage workers
suggests he grab a cigarette from someone’s pack lying on a can easily be exploited, especially if they’re further disadvantaged
table, he is appalled. Barbara tries to teach him a little English, by their ethnicity, lack of English language skills, or immigration
and learns that he is paid $5 an hour not by Jerry’s but by the status. Other elements of survival like housing become even more
“agent” who brought him over, with the other dollar of his precarious and miserable when compounded by these
salary going to the agent. He shares an apartment with other disadvantages.
Czech dishwashers and can only sleep when one of them leaves
for a shift and a vacant bed is left.

Barbara decides to move closer to Key West, because gas is In order to make her budget work, Barbara constantly has to
costing $4-5 per day, and tips at Jerry’s average only 10 recalculate her wages, expenses, and extras like the uniform she had
percent, meaning that she’s averaging about $7.50 an hour. She to buy, all of which means that she might have to change housing
also had to spend $30 on tan slacks, the uniform, far out of her situations on a dime.
budget.

Everyone who doesn’t have a working husband or boyfriend Though working two jobs at Jerry’s and the Hearthside didn’t work,
seems to have a second job, from telemarketing to welding. Barbara thinks she can join the majority of her coworkers working
Barbara thinks she can get a second job if she doesn’t have a two jobs even if she has to pay more for a trailer closer to home. This
forty-five minute commute, so she takes her $500 deposit, the trailer park is far from idyllic, but it seems to be occupied mainly by
$400 she’s earned, and her $200 for emergencies, and pays the those in a similar situation to Barbara, which shows how broadly
$1,100 rent and deposit on a trailer in Key West. It is eight feet her own circumstances and ability to pay can be applied.
in width and a few yards from a liquor store, bar, and Burger
King. The park has a reputation for crime and crack, but it is
mostly quiet and desolate, filled with other working people.

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At Jerry’s, an announcement on the computers used for This incident only serves to exacerbate the atmosphere of suspicion
inputting orders states that the hotel bar is now off-limits to and distrust between management and employees. With regard to
restaurant employees, due to a twenty-three-year-old who had George, this atmosphere touches Barbara personally for the first
snuck out one morning and returned to the floor tipsy. time. She’s seen first-hand how honest George is (from his horror at
Everyone feels the chill and suspicion. The next day, the dry- the idea of taking a coworker’s cigarette). The locked room becomes
storage room is locked for the first time: Vic, the assistant another emblem of suspicion.
manager, says that one of the dishwashers was trying to steal
something, and he has to keep him around until Vic finds a
replacement. He’s talking about George.

Barbara wishes she could say she stood up to Vic and insisted This example shows how the constant pressures of a job like
George be given a translator, or that he’s honest. But she Barbara’s can affect even someone’s personality, making him or her
admits that she’s been infected with a new caution and more frightened and pliable and, in the eyes of management, a more
cowardice, and worries that in a month or two she might have ideal employee.
turned George in.

Barbara isn’t to find out, since near the end of the month she Only by embarking on extreme, proactive tactics does Barbara
finally lands a housekeeping job. She walks into the personnel manage to get the specific kind of job she’s been looking for all
office at the hotel attached to Jerry’s and insists that she along. The detail about Carlotta’s missing front teeth provides a
couldn’t pay the rent without a second job. The frazzled vivid reminder of what can happen after a lifetime working at a job
personnel lady marches her back to meet the housekeeping that doesn’t offer health insurance nor pay enough for employees to
manager. The job pays $6.10 an hour, from 9 a.m. till have their own.
“whenever,” so hopefully, she thinks, before two. Carlotta, a
middle-aged African-American woman missing all her top front
teeth, will be training her.

On this first day, Carlotta or “Carlie” and Barbara move through At this new job, Barbara has to master a new set of skills and new
nineteen “checkouts” (rather than “stay-overs”), which require vocabulary (another reminder that no job is really “unskilled”). In
more work. They work four hours without a break, with housekeeping, the contrast between tourists’ leisurely, privileged
Barbara covering the beds and Carlie the bathrooms. They experiences and the physically grueling nature of the housekeepers’
keep the TV on, especially the soaps, which keep them going. labor is particularly evident.
Barbara feels like an intruder into the tourist’s world of
comfort and leisure, though with backaches and constant
thirst.

All Barbara learns about Carlie is how much she is in pain, Carlie can only deal with the comparative disadvantage of her
making her move slowly—while the younger immigrant chronic pain by relying on being paid by the hour—the potential
housekeepers finish by 2 p.m., she isn’t done until six. Though shift is, of course, meant to benefit management. Carlie’s sensitivity,
they pay by the hour now, there’s talk about moving to pay by like Barbara’s sense of being chastened at Jerry’s, may be
the room. Carlie also becomes upset and hurt at slights, like the exacerbated by the job’s indignities.
rudeness from a white maintenance guy.

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Barbara asks to leave at about 3:30, and another housekeeper Barbara had mentioned that every shift at Jerry’s was like a state of
warns her that no one has yet managed to combine emergency, and now her attempt to juggle two jobs only ramps up
housekeeping with working at Jerry’s. She rushes back to the the volume. Again, self-medication is the only fix, no matter how
trailer and swallows four Advils before spending the rest of her short-term, that she can find. The poor can only ever treat their
hour-long break trying to clean ketchup and dressing stains off symptoms—both physical and regarding their finances—and never
her tan slacks. address the root causes of their problems.

At Jerry’s, George is distraught. Barbara resolves to give him all This scene is one of slowly increasing tensions, a crescendo of
her tips that night. She takes a short break for dinner before conflict that seems will inevitably end in disaster. As readers of the
the rush—only one, new cook is on duty. Four of her tables fill book, who are probably more often customers rather than servers at
up at once, all clustered around each other, and each has her restaurants, we see the other side of service, in which a single
running constantly. Table 24 consists of ten British tourists who customer’s complaint or difficulty can lead to a crisis for the
each order at least two drinks and an array of food. One of waitress handling the table. Barbara knows that the ten British
them sends hers back and insists that the others’ go back as tourists were most likely not purposely making her life hell, but by
well while she waits. The other tables grow restless, and table portraying this dramatic scene she seeks to show how thoughtless
24 rejects their reheated main courses. When Barbara returns people can be, failing to understand that there are real, individual
to the kitchen with the trays, Joy confronts her, asking if it’s a people that will have to suffer the consequences of their
“traditional, a super-scramble an eye-opener?” Barbara has no thoughtlessness.
idea what she’s talking about, but at that moment a customer
barges into the kitchen to yell that his food is late, and Joy
screams at him to get out of the kitchen.

Barbara simply walks out, without finishing her work or picking After the rising crescendo of tensions, the climax is abruptly cut off
up her tips. She is almost surprised to find that she can simply when Barbara barges out. Her “scientific” mindset has been invaded
walk out the door. Though she went into this project with a by her emotions. A job like this, we realize, is often inevitably tied to
scientific mindset, it has become a personal test, and she feels the person as a whole—it can’t simply be parceled out as one aspect
that she has failed. Plus, she’s forgotten to give George her tips, of his or her life, and a failure in it can feel like a life failure.
which makes her feel even worse. For the first time in many
years, she is on the verge of crying.

Barbara moves out of the trailer park and gives her keys to Gail. As the chapter ends, Barbara ties up the loose threads, attempting
Gail tells her that Stu had been fired, apparently for ordering to track down what happened to the people she’s formed
crack while still in the restaurant and trying to pay from the relationships with. Her inability to find George suggests the
register. Barbara never finds out what happens to George. invisibility of the poor within the broader world.

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CHAPTER 2: SCRUBBING IN MAINE

Barbara chooses Maine because of how white it is—from In Key West, Barbara had found herself steered towards particular
college students and professors to the hotel housekeepers and jobs and not others because of her ethnicity and native language
cab drivers. She feels she’ll fit in as an English-speaking ability. In Portland, all the talk of job faires, special shifts, TV ads,
Caucasian in search of low-wage work. She also had noted on and appealing workplace environments seems to suggest a tighter
an earlier visit that Portland seemed eager for employees—a labor market (meaning that there are fewer available workers per
TV ad mentioned a “mothers’ shift” for a telemarketing fair, and open job), which should, in theory, provide better economic
the radio was promoting job fairs. The lengthy help-wanted ads possibilities for low-wage workers because they should have more
she downloads from the newspaper’s web include several leverage.
promises of “fun, casual” workplace environments, which she
finds appealing.

On August 24th, Barbara arrives at the Portland bus station Barbara admits that her experiment can sometimes be less
and takes a cab to the Motel 6 where she’ll stay until she finds a authentic than a true low-wage workers’ experience, but the
job and home. She knows it can’t be common to leave a familiar disjunctive nature of her project—how she jumps from place to
place and settle down far away where she knows no one, but place—also gives her an opportunity to mention how stressful and
she figures that these kinds of dislocations take place in the discontinuous the search for jobs and attempt to settle down can be
lives of the very poor, who might lose their job or babysitter, or for many low-wage workers.
live with a sister who throws you them because she needs the
bed, et cetera.

Barbara has arrived with a laptop and suitcase with some As usual, Barbara is able to paint a garish but effective portrait of
clothes, a tote bag with books, and $1,000. She’s paying $59 a the bleak shopping strips and suburban outposts that cater to the
night for a room in a Motel 6 that still contains remnants of less affluent members of society, through details like Cheeto crumbs
previous inhabitants, like deposits of cigarette smoke and and fast food marts. The detail of the turnpike shows how Barbara’s
Cheeto crumbs under the bed. Outside the main entrance car provides a particularly useful advantage—places like these are
there’s a Texaco station and Clipper Mart, and across the not made for those without one.
turnpike (which is terrifying to cross on foot) there are more
food options, like a supermarket and Pizza Hut. She brings
pizza and salad back to dinner.

Barbara reasons that it should feel exhilarating to blow off all This time, rather than comparing her move with those of low-wage
old relationships and routines and start over from scratch. But workers, she contrasts it with the experiences of those in her own
educated middle-class professional like her, she realizes, never income bracket, for whom economic precariousness is just not a
hurl themselves into the future without a plan or to-do list. possibility. Now, lacking any job or address that would tie her down,
Everything is always anticipated. Now, to get a job she needs an she sees no way of getting out of the complicated loop of instability.
address, but to get an apartment it helps to have a history of
stable employment. She decides to do everything at once and
use the hotel phone as her answering machine.

It turns out that while there are plenty of condos and Having experienced the inconvenience and expense of a long
$1,000-per-month apartments, the only low-rent options seem commute, Barbara knows that that is not a sustainable option for
to be thirty minutes south—though even there rents are over the kinds of jobs that she’ll be looking for.
$500. A few phone calls reveal that the poor tend to live, at
least during the winter, in the low-rate motel rooms after Labor
Day.

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Barbara goes to check out a room share instead, for $65 per In financial terms, the room share is Barbara’s best bet, but she had
week. The landlord shows her around, saying that the also committed herself to sticking with the best job and apartment
roommate is a “character” but has a job. In the basement of the she could get, and given the details she provides here, it doesn’t
motel-boardinghouse, there’s a closed door to the kitchen, but seem like the room share would really count as stable, safe housing.
there’s someone sleeping in there, so they can’t go in. the room For the working poor, cost-effective can also mean unsafe.
is down the hall from the kitchen, with two unmade twin beds
and a few light bulbs, with no window.

Barbara decides to forgo the room share, and visits the While Barbara had expressed shock at Gail’s idea of moving into a
SeaBreeze motel, but at $150 a week it’s too much. On the way motel, now she finds that living in a motel is probably her best, or
home, she notices that the Blue Haven Motel on Route 1 has only, option. While she mentions she could have found something
apartments to rent for $120 per week, and it looks almost better, often the working poor simply can’t afford to wait long
picturesque. The security deposit is only $100, so she pays on enough for something affordable to arise.
the spot. She probably could have found something better with
more time, but she’s eager to get out of the Motel 6.

Barbara now knows to apply for as many jobs as possible. She’s Equipped with several lessons from her first attempt in Key West,
ready to move on from waitressing, and she doesn’t have Barbara sets out on the job hunt. She had learned earlier, but now
enough office-type outfits for clerical work, so she calls about can confirm, that the process of filling out constant applications is
cleaning, warehouse and nursing home work, and draining and, at its worst, emotionally damaging. She casts a wide
manufacturing. Applying is humbling, since it consists of net, as is shown by the mention of both a tortilla factory and
offering yourself and your life experiences to a series of people Goodwill, where the contrast between its self-presentation in its
who just aren’t very interested. She is interviewed by a bored marketing attempts and the unappealing atmosphere of the place
secretary at a tortilla factory, and fills out an application at becomes acutely evident.
Goodwill, which she knows has been positioning itself as the
ideal employer for the poor recently out of welfare. There, no
one meets her eye except for one person staring and making
swimming motions above his head, perhaps to warn her off.

At a Wal-Mart advertising a job fair, a woman shows up after a The “survey” bears much resemblance to the test Barbara had to fill
ten-minute wait, flustered since, as she explains, she just works out at the supermarket in Key West. Questions about ratting out
there and she’s never interviewed anyone before. Barbara fills fellow employees appear to be a common trait to these tests.
out a four-page “opinion survey” with, apparently, no right or Barbara can easily see what they’re meant to do—weed out
wrong answers. The form has questions about forgiving or potential employees who would cause any strain on management or
denouncing a coworker caught stealing, and if management is be anything other than dutiful, obedient, and loyal only to their
to blame if things go wrong, with answers ranging from “totally managers.
agree” to “totally disagree.” Barbara finds it hard to believe that
employers can learn anything from these tests, since most
people can see through to the “right” answers—knowing to say
she works well with others, but would denounce them for any
infraction, for instance.

At a housecleaning service called The Maids, Barbara is given “Psyching out” the test is just what Barbara has been doing all along,
the “Accutrac personality test,” which warns at the beginning and she doubts there’s any way to prevent that. In general, for her,
that there are multiple measures that detect attempts to these tests symbolize and are meant to promote the authoritarian
“psych out” the survey, but the “right” answers are just as nature of low-wage work for a corporation.
transparent. Barbara decides the real information is for the
employees, who learn that they can keep no secrets from their
employers, who will control every part of them.

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Barbara is surprised to learn from her job hunt that Portland, Having seen various examples of Portland’s need for labor, Barbara
despite its labor shortage, is still a $6-7-an-hour town. At now shows that wages in Portland seem impervious to the
another housecleaning service, Merry Maids, the interviewer economic laws of supply and demand that should increase workers
tells her not to try to calculate the “$200 to $250” per week in wages. Employers, she notes, find sneaky ways at getting around
dollars per hour, but of course she does anyway and discovers these laws, by calculating in weeks rather than hours, for example,
that it comes to $5-6 per hour for heavy labor with risk of without accounting for the grueling physical nature of the job.
repetitive stress injuries. She realizes that one job will not be
enough, and that the laws of supply and demand do not seem to
apply here.

After two days of job applications, Barbara sits and waits in her Another skill Barbara had learned in Key West: be flexible with the
small, dingy Motel 6 room (she can’t move into the Blue Haven jobs being offered that day. This time, she’s managed to secure two
until Sunday). The phone rings twice that morning, and she jobs right from the start, which hopefully will prevent the kind of
accepts both jobs immediately: a nursing home on weekends financial precariousness she experienced once the tourist season
for $7 per hour, and The Maids starting Monday for $6.65. She ended in Key West. Her optimism is further shown through her
isn’t sure how “maid services” differ from agencies, but the confidence that she’ll have time to job hunt in the afternoons, and
office manager assures her that the work will be easy and by her willingness to “splurge” on a dinner at Appleby’s.
familiar. She’ll supposedly be done at around 3:30, leaving time
for job hunting for better options in the afternoons. She
celebrates by eating dinner at Appleby’s—$11.95 plus tip for a
burger and glass of wine.

The next day Barbara wakes up early to be at the Woodcrest Having applied to every job she could find, now that she has one
Residential Facility (also a made-up name) by 7:00am for her Barbara has to adapt to the needs of the workplace. Again, she’ll
first day as a dietary aide. Her supervisor tells her about her have to learn a new skill set and learn to work with a new set of
rights and responsibilities. Today they’ll be working in the management probably with its own particular (and overbearing)
locked Alzheimer’s ward, which involves transferring food from style.
the main kitchen to the ward kitchen and serving and cleaning
up after the residents.

As a former waitress, Barbara finds this work relatively simple, Here, Barbara can draw on her previous experience in developing
rushing around pouring decaf-only coffee and taking “orders.” these new skills. As she had done at the Hearthside, she makes an
The fact that it’s an Alzheimer’s ward means she doesn’t have effort to reduce the monotony and impersonality of the job by
to worry about forgetting things, but she tries to remember the forming relationships with the customers, remembering specific
residents’ names: Grace, who demands that her untouched cup details about each one of them.
be refilled, Letty, a diabetic who sneaks doughnuts from others’
plates, and Ruthie, who pours orange juice all over her French
toast.

Cleaning up is less pleasant, since a “dietary aide” ends up Once again, the less visible elements of work tend to be the least
meaning a dishwasher—rinsing, presoaking, and stacking the appealing, as well as requiring physical strength and exertion.
dishes of the forty people at each meal, before bending down Barbara’s title of “dietary aide” would hardly seem to suggest the
to the floor with the full rack of 15-20 pounds. Though Barbara need for such physical endurance and stamina.
is used to washing dishes at home, it’s a struggle to make sure
there’s always a new rack ready as soon as the last one is done,
all while keeping an eye on the residents.

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Barbara chats with Pete, one of the cooks, during the Barbara has also learned how helpful, as well as enjoyable, it can be
midmorning break. She’d like him to be an ally, since she realizes to have fellow employees as friends. Pete helps Barbara get a handle
that a dietary aide is dependent on a cook just like a waitress is. on the social dynamics of the facility—she’s seen how much they
They sit in Pete’s car smoking cigarettes. She tells him that her can differ from place to place.
dad’s last days were spent in an Alzheimer’s facility, so it
already feels familiar. Pete warns her about one coworkers
backstabbing and their manager’s strictness.

Pete continues asking Barbara questions, and she feels Pete’s stories are fantastical, but they also speak to the broader
awkwardly that Pete might be treating this as a date. He says disjunction between economic classes, which can lead to wishful
that he’s made far more at restaurants than he makes now, but thinking and a longing to break out of one’s lower economic
it doesn’t bother him, since he’s gotten rich from gambling and position. At the same time, Pete’s reasoning confirms for Barbara
investment (even though he’s driving a rusty old car and his the importance of establishing human relationships in these kinds of
front teeth are in a sad state). He says he tried just staying jobs.
home since he doesn’t need to work, but he got stir-crazy from
not being around a community. Barbara is somehow touched by
this, the idea that the facility could be a true community.

At lunch, Barbara is surprised to find that many residents seem Now it’s Barbara’s turn to concoct her own fanciful stories, a path
to recognize her and are happy to see her. She starts thinking that nevertheless doesn’t last long—though she will often return,
she’ll become the star of the facility and compensate for her seemingly naturally, to a kind of white knight or savior complex she
own father’s more impersonal care—until she refills the milk has toward her coworkers.
class of a tiny old lady who immediately throws the entire glass
at her, soaking her clothes.

That night, Saturday, is Barbara’s last at the Motel 6, and she This is one of the few times that Barbara ventures out of her stated
decides to try to see what there is to do for fun with limited purpose of simply trying to equate income with expenses. Here she
means. There is a marquee in front of the “Deliverance” church casts an anthropological eye on a religious tent revival, injecting
downtown advertising a “tent revival,” and, as an atheist, some humor into the narration. Barbara clearly shows her cards
Barbara is curious enough to drive over. About 60 of the 300 here—she’s an atheist, and is skeptical of the preacher’s claim on
seats are filled, mainly with white “hillbilly” types, and a woman spiritual knowledge and truth, especially when he seems mainly
gives Barbara her own Bible. There’s singing and preaching, concerned about the bottom line.
from a man saying that the Bible’s the only book you need to
another attacking the “wicked” city for its low attendance at the
revival. Barbara wonders what good an immortal soul would do
for her Alzheimer’s patients at the Woodcrest.

Barbara thinks it would be nice if the preachers mentioned Barbara is constantly thinking about her experiment, and manages
income inequality and Jesus’s precocious socialism, but only to draw connections between the economic troubles of the poor and
the crucified Jesus seems to make an appearance here—she whatever she’s experiencing.
sneaks out.

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On Sunday Barbara moves into the Blue Haven, though it’s Barbara had begun her stay in Portland with none of the three
smaller than she remembered, with the toilet less than four things she lists—a car, address, and job seem to be general markers
feet from the kitchen table and the bed right next to the stove. of stability allowing her to become less anxious. However, the
But her anxiety starts to ebb, since she now has an address, situations of the other people in the motel that Barbara surveys
two jobs, and a car—this time a Rent-a-Wreck. She is one of the seem to challenge the inherent stability of just any living space,
only people in the community with a unit to herself: the others since the residents are often crowded into small rooms.
are mainly blue-collar couples with children, crowded three or
four into an efficiency or one-bedroom. A grandmotherly type
tells her that living in a motel can be hard at first, but she’s been
there for eleven years now.

Barbara arrives at The Maids’ office on Monday morning at Barbara had accepted the job as one of the first she could get, and
7:30, knowing little about the cleaning service besides that it now once again must adapt to the specific skills, necessities, and
has three hundred franchises nationwide. Her uniform will be social requirements (not to mention uniform) of this new job
kelly-green pants and a blinding yellow polo shirt. In the next opportunity.
day and a half of training, she learns about the code of
conduct—no smoking, eating, drinking, or cursing in a house.

About 20 other employees arrive for the free breakfast Waiting for her orientation gives Barbara the chance to observe the
provided by The Maids. The average age is the mid-twenties, (mainly) women heading out to work around her. Unlike at her
and all but one is female. Barbara and the other new girl sit and previous jobs, no one stays in the same place or even with the same
wait while the teams are dispatched to the day’s houses—one group each day, and she’s already familiar with how management’s
woman tells her that you aren’t necessarily on the same houses suspicion and sense of distrust can hobble attempts at developing
every week or even the same team from day to day. Perhaps relationships with other coworkers.
one of the advantages for the owners is the lack of
relationships developed, she thinks, since the customers almost
exclusively communicate with the office manager or the
franchise owner, Ted.

It’s difficult to see the advantage to the cleaner, since while Just as Barbara had had to choose between convenience and
independent cleaners can earn up to $15 an hour, and The affordability for a trailer in Key West, this same economic choice
Maids charges $25 per person-hour, the cleaners receive pops up again—it seems it’s impossible to have both.
$6.65 per hour. The only advantage seems to be that you don’t
need a clientele or a car.

Barbara is led into a tiny room to watch a videotape of the While Ted is officially Barbara’s boss at The Maids, the franchise has
company’s method of dusting, bathrooms, kitchen, and such a devotion to efficiency that the orientation is conducted
vacuuming. Each is broken down into sections: where to begin completely by video, so the company can ensure that everyone is
vacuuming, how to disinfect surfaces, and where to polish or following the exact same method at no additional cost. This method
buff. Ted stops in sometimes, mentioning proudly that this was seems to be one, once again, that prioritizes efficiency and low cost
all figured out with a stopwatch. He warns that there’s a danger for the company (though not, Barbara thinks, for the employee).
in undersoaking the rags with cleaning fluids, which are less
expensive than her time, and Barbara thinks it’s good to know
that the company considers something cheaper than her time.

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The vacuuming video is the most disturbing, dealing with a The possible physical discomfort of such a task seems to be
vacuum that is meant to be strapped around one’s back like a banished from the video, which considers maids as just another
backpack. When strapped in, the video seems to say, the maid useful tool in the efficient, seamless cleaning of each house.
will become a vacuum cleaner. Barbara is exhausted by this
video and by the sterile, impersonal model home and model
maid.

Barbara realizes that there is no water involved, unlike the This detail about the pure surface value of the cleaning serves to
methods taught to her by her mother, a compulsive make Barbara—and the reader—recoil against the implications of a
housekeeper on a war against germs. The video never mentions corporation’s dogged pursuit of profits and efficiency, not only at the
germs: scrubbing is only for removing visible impurities, while expense of employees’ well-being but also of a job well done.
wiping is for everything else. The cleaning, in fact, is entirely
cosmetic, from giving toilet paper rolls a special fold to spraying
the house with the signature air freshener.

On her first day, Barbara realizes the video had been in slow Barbara’s team puts The Maids’ emphasis on efficiency into
motion—the team races to the car and from the car to the practice. All the employees nevertheless seem intent on doing the
house. Her first team leader explains that only a certain job the best they can, even as this job, more than the others where
number of minutes are allotted per house. After an hour, even Barbara’s worked, seems especially physically grueling.
dusting becomes like an aerobic exercise, but as soon as she’s
done she must report to the team leader to help someone else.

The promised thirty-minute lunch break turns out to be a five- Barbara’s off-time experiences with her coworkers give her the
minute pit stop at a convenience store. The older women eat opportunity to try to understand how people manage to live on such
sandwiches and fruit, while the younger ones tend to eat pizza a small income. Here, it turns out, they don’t really manage at
or a small bag of chips. Barbara recalls a poster showing the all—even a basic mark of economic stability and survival like having
number of calories burned per minute for each task—on enough to eat seems to elude some of these women. The younger
average, in a seven-hour day, she notes, 2,100 extra calories are ones, especially, seem to struggle more with figuring out how to fuel
needed. Barbara admonishes Rosalie, a recent high school grad, themselves on a small income.
for her lunch of a half bag of Doritos, but Rosalie responds that
she had nothing else in her house and she doesn’t have money
with her. She admits that she gets dizzy sometimes.

Barbara doesn’t want to ask straight out about her coworkers’ As Barbara has observed in her own lodgings at the Blue Haven
economic situations, so she listens. Eventually she learns that Motel, housing only seems to work if people surrender the possibility
everyone seems to live among extended families or house- of privacy and rely on, or extend help to, others in similar situations.
mates—the oldest, Pauline, owns a home, but she sleeps on the Each dollar counts for the women working at The Maids, and the
sofa while her children and grandchildren sleep in the woman seeking healthcare further underlines how one thing that
bedrooms. There are signs, though, of real difficulty: they argue goes wrong can easily become an emergency.
about who will come up with the 50 cents for the toll and if
they’ll be quickly reimbursed by Ted; someone has a painfully
impacted wisdom tooth and is frantically calling to try to find
free dental care.

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On Barbara’s first Friday, it’s 95 degrees, and she’s teamed with Barbara has already learned how much of the talk among
Rosalie and their leader, Maddy, who’s sullen and brooding employees at low-wage workplaces is about simply how to survive
about her childcare issues: her boyfriend’s sister watches her on such wages, especially when compounded by other needs like
18-month-old for $50 a week, already a stretch even though a child care. These difficulties create an uncomfortable contrast with
real daycare could be $90. The first house to be cleaned is a the sprawling wealth of the “Mrs. W.” estate, and with the owner’s
5-bathroom spread, a massive place that Barbara compares to lack of interest in them.
a beached ocean liner. Maddy hopes that “Mrs. W.” will give
them lunch, but Mrs. W seems exasperated when the nanny,
one of several other caretakers, brings them to her.

In this case, Barbara is grateful for The Maids’ special system, Mrs. W.’s worries about childcare have little to do with Maddy’s. It’s
since it means she only needs to move from left to right, room a 95-degree day, and Barbara finds that even the construction
to room. She dusts around a whole shelf of books on pregnancy, workers seem to have it better than she does, since they can drink
breastfeeding, and raising children. As she Windexes and wipes whenever they’d like. Once again, Barbara contrasts the
the endless glass doors, she watches the construction guys conspicuous consumption and materialism of Mrs. W.’s home not
outside drinking Gatorade—maids cannot drink while inside a only with the financial situation of her cleaners but also with the
house. She sweats constantly, unable to replenish fluids like in demanding physical labor required to clean her home.
her regular, yuppie life. In the living room, she wonders if Mrs.
W. will ever realize that all her amassed objects and
expressions of individualism are, in another sense, just an
obstacle between a thirsty person and a glass of water.

Next, Maddy assigns Barbara to clean the kitchen floor, For Barbara, the method promoted by The Maids has far more to do
following The Maids’ corporate “hands-and-knees” approach. with marketing rhetoric and selling points than with actually
It’s a selling point, even though the advantage is undermined by cleaning a home. This is exacerbated by the shame she is made to
the fact that the maids are instructed to use barely any water. feel by having to kneel in a position of submission, watched over
But the posture of submission seems to gratify the customers. carefully by the homeowner who is both economically and literally
She realizes at one point that Mrs. W. is staring at her—she “above” her.
wonders if she’s about to be offered a glass of water, but Mrs.
W. just wants to make sure that nothing is missed.

At the end of the day, Barbara rushes home and congratulates Barbara had been overly optimistic about her ability to use her two
herself on her first successful week, accomplished without a existing jobs as a jumping-off point from which to seek better
breakdown. Still, it turns out she often doesn’t end work until options: it turns out that much low-wage work is not at all
4:30 or 5:00, and, sweaty and soaked, there’s no way she can go conducive to long-term planning, merely because of the physical toil
to other job interviews after work. Instead, she goes for a walk that goes into it, leaving her with little energy left to pursue other
on the beach, and stops to listen to a group of Peruvian options.
musicians, transfixed. She gives them a dollar after their
song—that dollar is worth about 10 minutes of sweat.

Soon, though, Barbara starts to suffer from a skin disease. At Barbara’s rash gives her the chance to detail further examples of
first she thinks it’s poison ivy from hunting around for a way in Ted’s single-minded focus on the bottom line, even to the extent that
when customers forget to leave the door unlocked (which Ted he’ll blame locked homes on the cleaners or make Barbara go out
blames on the maids, saying it “means something”), or it may be even while looking like a “leper.” Here, she does resort to the
the cleaning fluids. She knows she probably shouldn’t work advantages of her “real life,” suggesting that the situation would
since she looks like a leper, but Ted has no sympathy for illness have been far worse if she hadn’t been able to do so.
or injury. He says it must be a latex allergy and sends her off.
She breaks down and calls her real-life Key West
dermatologist, who prescribes various creams, which set her
back $30.

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Barbara, Rosalie, and Maddy fantasize one day in the car about The total lack of water—both in The Maids cleaning process and
full water immersion after cleaning a house with a pool and throughout the real maids’ days—suggests an environment of
gazebo. They aren’t even allowed to wash their hands in the deprivation, especially offensive when contrasted with the decadent
houses after drying and buffing the sinks. pool and gazebo.

Barbara has been proud of how she’s kept up with women The physical pain suffered by the employees of The Maids testifies
twenty or thirty years younger. Any bond they have is physical: to the arduous nature of their labor. They do manage to forge bonds
everyone shares their medication and complains about their among each other thanks to this common affliction, but it’s
back pains and cramps. Lori and Pauline can’t vacuum because solidarity that certainly comes at a price—one only made more
of their backs, while Helen has a bum foot and Marge’s arthritis difficult by the fact that few of them can afford to take a day off or
makes scrubbing painful. It’s a world of pain manage by see a doctor for prescribed medications. Barbara’s conversation
Excedrin, Advil, and cigarettes, with alcohol on the weekend. with one owner makes clear the extent to which they live in two
Barbara wonders if the owners have any idea of the misery that separate universes, in which “exercise” is either a luxury or a
goes into making their homes perfect, and if they’d care if they constant battle against pain.
did. One owner, who actually offers her water, works part-time
as a trainer and says she tells her clients to fire their cleaning
lady if they really want to be fit. Barbara refrains from saying
that this exercise is brutally repetitive and more likely to cause
injury than strengthen muscles.

The owner of another sprawling condo points out the marble At some points, Barbara’s continuous humor turns melodramatic,
walls of the shower stall, which she says have been “bleeding” revealing her more militant social activist side. Of course, her
onto the brass fixtures. Barbara wants to say that it’s not her experiment makes her experience particularly dramatic, since she is
marble bleeding but rather the working class, which has constantly able to contrast her former life with her current one, and
enabled her comfortable life, that’s bleeding. Of course, realizes how financial comfort can build up over decades to give her
Barbara admits to herself that she is not a member of that enormous advantages. This perhaps makes her even more deeply
class—she can work hour after hour because she has gotten conscious of the enormous gulf created between a cleaner and
decades of good medical care, a high-protein diet, and homeowner (a gulf that someone who has always been a low-wage
workouts in expensive gym. She has, however, never employed worker may in some ways not notice as acutely because they’ve
a cleaning service, finding the idea of such an asymmetrical always been made to feel this way).
relationship repugnant.

For instance, Barbara is shocked the first time she encounters a These vivid and even repulsive details are given on purpose, so that
shit-stained toilet. There are several kinds of these stains, she the reader can understand just how much indignity goes into the job
explains, and while she wouldn’t have wanted to know this, she of a housecleaner. In addition to distasteful aspects of the job,
is forced to figure out how to clean each kind. Pubic hair is cleaners are also subjected to an atmosphere of surveillance that is
another unsavory aspect of cleaning the homes of the elite. directly tied to mistrust and suspicion, which can easily make them
Owners can also spy, leaving tape recorders or video cameras: feel like lower-class citizens.
Ted encourages them to imagine that they’re under constant
surveillance. Owners also arrange to be home so that they can
check up on them while they work.

Barbara isn’t interested in decorating and lacks the vocabulary Countering the shame she’s made to feel through her job, Barbara
to describe in detail all the intricate furnishings of these turns the cards and “spies” on the houses she cleans, painting a
houses. The books are mainly for show: real life seems to go on pretty damning portrait of the materialism and anti-intellectualism
in the large-screen TV room. She is mainly offended by all the of the upper classes.
antique books bought in bulk and placed on end tables, not to
read but for quaintness and “authenticity.”

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Around a quarter to a third of the houses seem middle-class Wealth is relative: from Barbara’s former-life perspective, there’s a
rather than rich. However, once Barbara asks her team leader, wide range in these houses, but there’s also a thick line drawn
Holly, if the next house is “wealthy,” and Holly responds says between houses that can be cleaned and those that aren’t.
that if they’re paying to have their house cleaned, they’re
wealthy.

In late September, Barbara starts being assigned to Holly’s Barbara has seen first-hand the difficulties faced by her coworkers
team day after day. This is a serious team, and conversation is in trying to survive on their salary, but Holly’s situation seems more
restricted to the houses about to be cleaned. Holly is visibly ill. dire than most. In fact, as we’ve learned, since there are no “secret
She is twenty-three and manages to feed herself, her husband, economies” for the poor, no secret tricks that make it easier for the
and an elderly relative on her salary, minus rent, or $30-50 per poor to get buy on their meager wages, something has to give, and in
week (only a little more than what Barbara spends on herself). this case it’s Holly’s ability to eat, which she gives up so that the rest
She weighs very little and only ever eats than tiny cracker of her family can survive.
sandwiches. Every afternoon in the car she starts food-fantasy
conversations, asking others what they’ve eaten recently.

One day Holly admits that she’s a little nauseous, but refuses to Barbara, as we’ve seen, has a bit of a savior complex, and this kicks
say any more. Barbara suggests Holly refrain from vacuuming, in when Holly collapses at one of the houses. Barbara has become
but Holly refuses. When Barbara finishes her task, she rushes pretty disgusted with the job, or at least has very little respect for
into the kitchen to find Holly slumped over the counter. Holly the people whose houses she cleans, and Holly’s crisis gives her an
admits she’s probably pregnant, but she wants it to be a secret opportunity to feel like her work has a larger meaning.
until she can inform Ted. Barbara can only talk Holly into eating Unfortunately, the exacting demands and standards of the homes
one of her sports bars. Barbara also takes over the driving for they have to clean ends up complicating Barbara’s mission. The
the rest of the day. For the first time, Barbara feels she has a book is full of minor climaxes like this one, in which tensions ratchet
higher purpose than just meeting New England bourgeois up to a finale that’s somewhere between funny and horrifying. Here,
standards. The next house has a Martha Stewart-like owner the disastrous aspect is magnified by how deeply Holly takes to
who insists that every decorative pot and pan hanging in the heart her work.
kitchen near the ceiling needs to be polished, which can only be
done by kneeling on the kitchen counter and reaching up. As
Barbara does so, a pan slips and comes crashing down into a
fishbowl: fish fly and water soaks everything. Barbara’s only
punishment is seeing Holly’s terrified face.

They take a cigarette break, and Barbara muses that she has to This is the first time that Barbara explicitly acknowledges this savior
get over her “savior complex,” her desire to save the people she complex of hers and tries to work out where it might come from.
is working with. She wonders if she wants to do this because Earlier, Barbara has talked about the inability for customers to
she is sick of her insignificance. Barbara asks why so many consider or care about low-wage workers serving them: here, she
owners seem hostile or contemptuous, and Holly says that the goes a step further, suggesting that there is an element of shame
owners think the cleaners are stupid, that they mean nothing to placed upon these workers not just by individuals but by society at
them. At convenience stores, a maid’s uniform seems to make large.
even other employees look down on them. Barbara gets stares
at supermarkets. She wonders if she’s getting a small glimpse of
what it would be like to be black.

At the next house, the liquid around Barbara’s toilet brush spills This detail is a microcosm of Barbara’s livelihood in general—she
out on her foot. In normal life, she would take off the shoe and must work through with only the resources she has.
sock and throw them away, but here she can do nothing but
work through it.

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Barbara also has problems of her own: money issues. She didn’t Barbara has calculated her income and expenses down to the last
get a check her first week, and learns that the first paycheck is dollar—which can work, if barely, only if nothing goes wrong. Of
withheld until she eventually leaves or quits, so that she doesn’t course, a tiny margin of error means she’s always on the verge of
fail to show up a second week. The rent for her first week at the disaster. This precariousness is only aggravated by the withheld
Blue Haven was more expensive at first because the tourist paycheck, another example of suspicious management.
season wasn’t deemed completely over, and she had to spend
extra money on kitchen supplies at Wal-Mart. Until the other
checks arrive, she’ll have to live even more leanly.

Though help for the working poor exists, it takes determination Here, Barbara attempts to navigate the resources available to the
and, ironically, resources to find it. Barbara calls the Prebles working poor—resources which she knows, intellectually, exist, but
Street Resource Center one evening after work and learns that which she realizes function in a far more complicated and
it closes at 3 p.m. (not practical for the working poor). She waits bureaucratic fashion. Within just a few minutes, she’s made to feel
on hold for the help number listed and tells the operator that ashamed for not looking for better rents, and comes to realize that
she is employed but needs some immediate food aid or cash these kinds of resources, while supposedly directed towards low-
assistance. The man asks her accusingly why she needs help if wage workers, in fact fail to take into account the schedule of these
she’s employed, and why she didn’t check out the rents before very workers.
moving, but finally gives her another number. After several
more calls she reaches Gloria, who tells her to go to the food
pantry in Biddeford the next day between nine and five—times
that are also no good for a working person.

So Gloria connects Barbara to Karen, who finally tells her she Again, the poor are looked at suspiciously—they aren’t even trusted
can pick up a food voucher at a Portland Shop-n-Save, and asks to buy food if they’re just given cash. Barbara draws a connection
what she’d like for dinner. She can’t have cash, and is limited to between poverty and the inability to eat healthfully, despite
any two of a list including spaghetti noodles, baked beans, and society’s disapproval of the obese poor. Nearly everywhere they turn
hamburger—no fresh fruit or vegetables. the poor are faced with impossible Catch-22s.

After picking up the food, Barbara calculates that she’s Less than five dollars (net) is hardly worth all the trouble, unless
acquired $7.02 worth of food in 70 minutes of calling and someone is truly desperate.
driving, minus $2.80 for phone calls.

At the Woodcrest on weekends, Barbara tries to forget, like the Unlike her job at The Maids, this one lacks an overarching corporate
residents, about the functioning people they used to be, and philosophy and the suspicion and distrust that tends to accompany
treat them as toddlers at a tea party. She makes friends with it; instead, Barbara can actually do her job as best she is able to.
other cooks, nurses, and dietary maids, and enjoys the lack of
supervisors and the greater autonomy.

One Saturday, though, Barbara arrives to find that the other Nevertheless, crises are never far from Barbara’s line of vision,
dietary aide has failed to show up and she’ll be the only one. A meaning that her experience at each shift can vary wildly depending
dishwasher is broken, and a set of keys she needs is missing. on circumstances outside her control—she has to employ all her
Barbara only remembers the day as a panicky blur, mental and physical energy just to get through the day.
remembering the lesson learned at Jerry’s about how to refrain
from stopping and thinking.

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After work Barbara visits the state park, and wonders what a Even though she’s working seven days a week, Barbara’s life is still
few months with zero days off would do to a person without precarious—and she finds that even her personality shifts due to
the kind of accolades and praise that come from writing, for constant labor without rest. The example of her paranoia about
instance. She already has tunnel vision: slights loom large, and Pete is a comical one, but it reveals a broader truth about the
mistakes aren’t easily forgotten. She wakes up at night after the harmful effects of constant work on someone’s psyche.
Woodcrest solo day convinced that Pete deliberately was
trying to trip her up, until the next weekend he brings her
breakfast as a treat and she realizes her theory was groundless.

Barbara starts her third week at The Maids committed to Barbara’s coworkers are perhaps more resigned to the daily grind
staying detached, like the others seem to do. One of the only and small, constant slights of the job, which are new to her. For
forms of rebellion she’s seen, in fact, is theft—at one meeting Barbara, theft can be understood as a reaction to the struggle of the
Ted says that there’s been an “incident,” and the perpetrator, job.
whom the nearly 100-percent-reliable Accutrac test somehow
failed to weed out, is no longer there.

As Barbara scrubs and Windexes, she tries to cobble together a We already know Barbara is not religious, and here her “philosophy”
philosophy of nonattachment, melding a socialist Jesus with a is more intellectual than spiritual—really anything she can use to get
tale her friend had told of rich people paying to do menial through the day. Minor examples of unfairness are everywhere,
chores at a Buddhist monastery in California. In this new including the extra, unpaid half hour, but here Barbara follows her
fantasy, she is part of a mystic order performing hated tasks coworker and chooses to resign herself rather than fight back.
cheerfully rather than working for a maid service. She’s
realized, for instance, that the pay clock only starts at 8 a.m.,
even though they have to arrive at the office at 7:30, but this
time she doesn’t complain.

Only a day later, Barbara’s mood of detachment is shattered Barbara’s nonattachment philosophy takes a comical turn as
when Barbara cleans the home of an actual Buddhist, with a Buddhist spiritualism jars with the banal toil of housecleaning.
Buddha statue in the living room. As they leave in the usual Once again, crisis strikes, and it becomes increasingly clear that
rush, Holly trips and falls down and screams. She says Holly is in no state to be cleaning houses—though she obviously
something snapped, but she’ll only consent to calling Ted from relies on this work, which is evident because of how frantic she
the next house, while Barbara begs her to go to the emergency becomes at the possibility she won’t be able to continue. Barbara’s
room. At the next house Barbara tells Holly not to work, and as activist side kicks in here, as she yells at Ted everything she’s
she listens to Holly talk to Ted, she feels the Zen detachment thought about, and has put into this book, about the questionable
fade away. She grabs the phone and begins a diatribe to Ted morality of management.
about putting money above his employees’ health, before
hanging up on him. She tells Holly that she won’t work if Holly
won’t sit down—she’ll go on strike. But Holly ultimately wins
out, continuing to work.

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On the ride back, Barbara imagines the rousing argument Of course, Barbara can afford to mount a social protest against
against human indignity she’ll give when Ted fires her for unfair management—unlike her coworkers, this isn’t her real life.
insubordination. Marge, another cleaning lady in the car, says This scene in the car also helps to explain while the other women
that she looks tired. Barbara won’t be fired, Marge says don’t rebel or even complain about their difficult working
brightly, but the rest of them need her—and she can’t just leave conditions. Ted has managed to create almost a cult of loyalty
Ted in the lurch. Barbara asks why they’re all worrying about around him; this is useful to him, since he can treat his employees
Ted—he can hire anyone to do the job. When Holly mentions less well, but it also has the effect of making them feel necessary
the Accutrac test that they have to pass, Barbara says that and wanted.
that’s bullshit—anyone can pass it. She knows this is insulting to
Holly and her sense of professionalism, and she’s gone against
the no-cursing rule. Even now, however, Barbara isn’t sure how
she should have handled the situation.

Ted doesn’t fire Barbara—he says he’s sent Holly home, but that Here, Barbara gets a sense of Ted’s tactics, in which he tries to win
you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. A few each employee over to his side, so that he can then keep tabs on the
days later Barbara is out with Holly, who hasn’t forgiven her, others. Barbara, of course, is not falling for these tactics. She takes
and Ted calls to say that Barbara is to be sent back to the office quite a skeptical attitude to his professions of kindness and
to join another team. Ted picks her up to bring to her to the generosity, given that she knows he cares only about squeezing the
other team. As he drives her he tells her he’s giving her a raise, highest profits as possible out of his “girls.” At the same time, that
and then says that he’s not a bad guy and cares about his girls. Holly doesn’t “want” to be helped only underlines how desperately
He just wishes a few “malcontents” would stop complaining. she clings to any job.
Barbara knows she’s supposed to name names. Instead she
asks him if Holly will be paid for the day he sent her home. He
says of course, chuckling in a forced way.

Barbara wonders why anyone puts up with this job when there Here Barbara plunges into the broader economic lessons of her time
are so many others. But changing jobs means at least a week with The Maids—without first-hand experience, one could easily
without a paycheck. There’s also the appeal of Ted’s approval assume that a low-wage worker could simply quit and look for a
and praise, which keeps many of the workers going. On more appealing job, which she now realizes is not very viable. In
Pauline’s last day—she’s sixty-seven and has been on the job addition, management can keep an iron grip on the emotions of
longer than anyone—Ted makes no mention of her departure employees, who have often bought into the corporate rhetoric.
and doesn’t wish her well privately. Barbara offers her a ride
home that day, and Pauline talks mostly about how hurt she
feels, and how Ted hasn’t liked her since she stopped being able
to vacuum.

Barbara wonders if Ted’s approval means so much because of The invisibility of low-wage workers will gradually become a major
the chronic deprivation and lack of approval for a job well done. theme for Barbara, who sees first-hand not only how such workers
No one will congratulate or support these women—they do an are looked down on, but also how they’re often simply forgotten or
outcast’s invisible work. Ted may be greedy, but he represents a ignored. In such cases it makes sense that Ted’s approval assumes
better world, in which people wear civilian clothes to work and vast importance.
live in nice houses. Sometimes he’ll even send a team to his own
house to clean.

Low-wage work may have the general effect of making one feel The invisibility of the low-wage workforce is not just an issue of
like an outcast, Barbara thinks. On TV, nearly everyone makes individual thoughtlessness or lack of empathy, Barbara shows. Even
$15 an hour or more, and all the shows are about middle-class such a general cultural medium as television portrays a world in
professionals. It seems like nurses’ aides and fast-food workers which the working poor simply don’t take part, which can only
are anomalies. The poor are not a part of visible culture, even of alienate them even more.
religion, if the tent revival she attended in Key West was any
indication.

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On Barbara’s last afternoon on the job, she tries to explain what Barbara had mentioned in the introduction how surprised she
she’s been doing to the other workers. At first, no one listens, initially was at her coworkers’ lack of surprise—after all, she hasn’t
but then Lori latches onto the idea that Barbara has been been in hiding but rather has been accomplishing the same tasks
“investigating,” which Lori finds hilarious. Barbara asks how that they have. Lori’s and Colleen’s responses portray the possible
they feel about the owners, whose situations are so different range of reactions to stark economic inequality, from envy and
from their own. Lori says she feels motivated—she’d like to get motivation to resignation at such a blatant contrast.
to where they are. Colleen, a single mother of two, says she
doesn’t want what they have, since she’s a simple person. But
she’d like to take a day off once in awhile and still be able to feed
herself the next day.

CHAPTER 3: SELLING IN MINNESOTA

From the sky Minnesota looks lush and picturesque. Barbara Barbara’s internet research seems to show that Minneapolis’
isn’t sure why she chose Minneapolis as her next destination: economic situation will be favorable to low-wage workers. Of
she knows Minnesota is a pretty liberal state and generous to course, if Maine’s tight labor market is any indication, we readers
its welfare poor, and an Internet search has shown that there should be suspicious of such optimism.
are jobs for $8 an hour and studio apartments for $400 or less.
This time, she’s looking for a more comfortable situation.

Barbara gets a $10 map of the Twin Cities at the airport and Barbara’s short-term living situation is probably pretty authentic,
picks up her new Rent-A-Wreck. She’s staying at the apartment given what she’s learned about the necessarily crowded apartments
of friends of friends while they’re back east for a few days, in and shared rooms occupied by many of her coworkers. The cockatiel
return for taking care of their cockatiel (despite her phobia of tidily symbolizes the minor tribulations that stem from having to be
birds). It’s a tiny one-bedroom with furnishings from the late flexible about living arrangements.
seventies. It’s pleasant and cozy, and Barbara has learned that
part of low-wage working life is sharing small spaces with
others—in this case, a cockatiel.

The next morning, Barbara starts her job search, this time Having gotten a relatively comprehensive introduction to the trials
looking for a change to retail or factory work. She fills out of low-wage labor in waitressing and housecleaning, Barbara is now
applications at the closest Wal-Marts and the Targets across ready for a change. Once again, she’s required to fill out a survey or
town, when it strikes her that with her lack of experience, she’ll test, according to which there are supposedly no wrong answers.
have a better chance showing up in person. She calls one of the However, Roberta’s desire for “further discussion” seems to
Wal-Marts and speaks to Roberta, who tells her to come into challenge this claim. Barbara now can confirm that employers are
her store office. Roberta had six children before starting at looking for full-blown obedience and lack of independent thinking,
Wal-Mart, so she’s sympathetic to Barbara “re-entering the and will be concerned if that doesn’t seem to be the case with
workforce.” But after she takes Barbara’s personality survey to potential employees.
the computer to score, she comes back with the news that
three answers are in need of further discussion. Barbara had
left wriggle room in some survey questions so it didn’t look like
she was faking out the test. It seems this was the wrong
approach—it pays to be a full-blown suck-up.

After going through the questionable answers, Roberta Barbara uses Roberta’s inability to remember the third branch of
introduces Barbara to Sam Walton’s personal Sam Walton’s philosophy in order to subtly poke fun at it—if it’s that
philosophy—service, excellence, and something else Roberta important and memorable, you would think it would be difficult to
can’t remember. Barbara expresses wholehearted agreement. forget it. The drug test crops up again as a way for management to
All that’s left is to pass the drug test. Unfortunately, Barbara control employees.
has had a slight “indiscretion” in the past few weeks involving
marijuana, which she knows can linger in the body.

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So Barbara goes back to the help-wanted ads, and heads to an At times like these, Barbara literally stumbles into job
interview for an assembly job across town. She gets opportunities—another example of the strange disconnect between
overwhelmed in the afternoon urban traffic and doesn’t reach the tight labor market and the low wages she’s being offered. This
the factory before 5. Lost, she pulls into a parking lot and sees a personality test seems oriented towards a different, probably
Menards housewares store (like a Home Depot) with a “Now rougher crowd, but it similarly attempts to trick out potential
Hiring” sign. Paul in the personnel office hands her the employees.
personality test: it seems rougher, asking questions about
fistfights and whether dealing cocaine could ever not be a
crime. Paul says she’d be good in plumbing at $8.50, as long as
she passes a drug test.

After a full day of job searching, Barbara is feeling worn down In addition to the fact that the questions asked can easily be
from having to lie throughout the personality tests—she psyched out, Barbara realizes that the very process has a more
wouldn’t snitch on an employee and doesn’t believe subtle consequence, sucking the energy out of potential employees
management rules by divine right. It also frustrates her that her and making it clear that there’s no way they’ll be able to get around
ability to perform a job well and her engaging qualities can be employer requirements and surveillance.
trumped by smoking pot. That weekend she goes on a drug
detox, informed by internet searches and assisted by $30
ingredients bought at GNC.

On Saturday Barbara also goes through all the apartment Already, Barbara’s internet searches prior to arriving don’t seem to
agencies, and comes up only with 12-month leases and plenty square with the reality on the ground—especially given that she
of places where they don’t answer the phone. The cockatiel, can’t afford a deposit on a 12-month lease, a common issue for
constantly squawking and pacing, prevents any kind of people like those she’ll be working with in Minneapolis. Barbara’s
relaxation. On Sunday she goes to the home of an aunt of a visit to her friend’s aunt gives her the opportunity to supplement her
friend from New York. Though Barbara has been concerned own tale with a “true” story of someone who did seem to manage to
that it’s artificial to move to a totally new place without housing make it entirely on her own.
(making the project of her book inauthentic), friends and family,
or a job, it turns out that this woman did exactly that in the
seventies, moving from New York to Florida.

Caroline lives with her family in a three-bedroom for $825 a This anecdote recalls Barbara’s question to Holly about which
month, which doesn’t seem bad to Barbara, though the block is homeowners were “wealthy”—the notion of class can be relative
full of drug dealers and the dining room ceiling leaks. But depending on various factors. But Caroline’s family also reveals that
Caroline gets $9 an hour at a downtown hotel, and her even “middle-class” families can be struggling.
husband makes $10 as a maintenance worker. Together, at
$40,000 a year, they’re official “middle class.”

Caroline is a real-life version of Barbara’s experiment: she’d The beginning of Caroline’s story seems to echo what Barbara did in
been working in New Jersey when she left a difficult home Key West, including the relatively small amount saved up in cash.
situation and decided to leave for Florida, where she’d heard The theme of developing relationships in solidarity crops up again,
the rents were lower. She had clothes, Greyhound tickets, and here in the form of friendships developed at church. Though
$1,600 in cash. The bus dropped her and her kids off outside Caroline did manage to find a job, it came with major disadvantages
Orlando, where they stayed at a low-priced hotel and found a including physical pain and the inability for her to see her children
church. People from church drove her to the WIC (Women, often.
Infants, and Children, a federal food program) and to find a
school and day-care. Soon she found a job cleaning hotel rooms
for about $300 a week, which gave her backaches and meant
her 12-year-old had to watch the baby all evening.

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Caroline was in constant stress and anxiety, in addition to pain Caroline’s story forces the reader to recognize, once again, the acute
from work. But she made a few friends, including Irene, a physical and emotional distress that comes from low-wage labor.
migrant farmworker whose boyfriend murdered a man who The instability inherent in it can lead to stories like that of Irene,
had raped her and was permanently in prison. Caroline took who floats in and out of lives with her coworkers (just as Barbara
Irene in and she got a job, but after awhile Irene started has, though artificially so because of her experiment). Though
drinking and carousing and finally left to live with a man. Caroline’s life is now relatively stable, it’s clearly not without a great
Caroline hasn’t been able to find Irene since. Caroline also met deal of struggle
her current husband in Florida, though the two suffered bouts
of homelessness before ending up here.

When Barbara leaves to go, Caroline comes back with a family- Another reminder of how members of the working poor often only
sized container of homemade stew. Caroline truly did it all on manage to make it due to kindness and solidarity shown by others.
her own, with children, Barbara realizes, while she herself is
only a pretender.

On Monday, drug test day, Barbara goes to a chiropractor’s Barbara describes in a detailed fashion a process that, most likely,
office for the Wal-Mart test. She is sent into a regular public few middle- or upper-class readers (barring professional sports
rest room with plastic containers to fill (she could easily have players) would have experienced. The major lessons she takes from
substituted someone else’s pee with a vial). For Menards, she is the experience deal with how much drug testing allows employers to
sent to a suburban hospital, where, after forty minutes, a nurse exert control over workers, not only in their mobility but in their
arrives and tells her to go into a bathroom to wash her hands privacy and personal lives, which are interrupted in order to apply
and pee while the nurse waits with her purse. She realizes how for a job at all.
much drug testing limits workers’ mobility, since each potential
new job requires the application, interview, and drug test,
requiring hours spent driving around and money spent on
babysitters.

Barbara continues applying for jobs, since she doesn’t yet know Like many of Barbara’s interludes, this one both provides a bit of
the drug tests results. She applies for one entry-level customer humor and serves to make a broader, relevant point about low-wage
service job, involving a group interview conducted by Todd in a workers and the corporations for whom they work. Like The Maids,
large room at “Mountain Air,” an “environmental consulting Mountain Air seems to embrace empty rhetoric and skills that, after
firm” offering help to people with asthma and allergies. They considering them, don’t make too much sense. From “environmental
will be sent out to these people in their own cars and make consulting” to selling a “Filter Queen” appliance, such vocabulary
$1,650 if they complete 54 2-hour appointments in a month. leaves Barbara confused as to what the job even entails, other than
Mountain Air is really looking for a self-disciplined, money- making money for Todd or those above him. Of course, Barbara
motivated, and positive attitude—nothing about healing the intimates, there’s no way a goal of “helping people with asthma”
sick, Barbara realizes. Todd stresses that the job is a question of could possibly get her a job at such a place.
taking people who have a serious problem, though far less
serious than they think it is, and leaving them happy with a
“Filter Queen” appliance. Barbara completes a personal
3-minute interview, and says she wants the job to help people
with asthma. Nothing about the bottom line—which perhaps is
why, 2 hours later, she’s told there’s no job for her.

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The apartment search, meanwhile, is increasingly desperate: For the first time, Barbara has to navigate her way through a city
the vacancy rate is apparently less than 1 percent, and even where there’s an affordable housing crisis—even in places without
lower for “affordable” housing. Barbara is only now realizing such a crisis, she’d struggled to find a decent and affordable place to
how vast Minneapolis is, and that her two job possibilities are live. Barbara’s various attempts to reach Hildy underline how much
about 30 miles apart. There is one place, the Hopkins Park time and energy such a search can take (recall all the energy spent
Plaza, which rents “affordable” apartments weekly or monthly. on trying to find a food pantry), It’s difficult to tell without hindsight
After days of trying to get in touch, she reaches Hildy, who says whether her decisions will turn out to be “mistakes.”
she might as well come apply (for $20), even if nothing’s
available. Turnover is always high, Hildy says, so Barbara
decides to turn down a $144-per-week basement apartment
without a kitchenette—which turns out to be a mistake.

The rental agents that Barbara does reach recommend finding Once again, Barbara has to do her best to juggle competing
a weekly motel until something opens up. But the lowest is the concerns—affordability, safety, gas prices, and ability to commute to
Hill View at $200 per week, and it’s far outside the city, with no work, among other factors. Everything she looks at, she realizes, has
commercial establishments around. Another, Twin Lakes, is its own disadvantages.
inside the city, but is $295. Everything looks gray and stained,
but it’s her best bet, and she takes it.

On the job front, though, Barbara is told to show up for Though she hasn’t been told she’s been hired, Barbara is already
orientation at Menards on Wednesday morning. A blonde in being treated like an employee—vest, badge, rules and regulations
her forties explains the rules, and says that the tools they’re and all. There’s no intermediate point between applying and being
required to wear on their belts will be deducted from their hired, as Barbara will realize.
paycheck. They’re handed vests and IDs. Barbara has to ask if
this means she’s hired, since there’s been no offer made, but it
seems she is.

Barbara meets her supervisor in plumbing, Steve, who’s nice, Barbara is already aware that even the lowest wage labor requires
though she realizes the shelves contain no items she can name. certain specific skills—that she’s been hired speaks more to the fact
But she learns she’ll be starting Friday and will be making an that there aren’t that many available workers rather than to her
incredible $10 an hour. skillset.

Though Barbara doesn’t need the Wal-Mart job now, Roberta Again, Barbara is invited to orientation without explicitly being told
calls her telling her to come the next day for orientation. When that she’s hired, nor being told her wages (until she asks). This
Roberta says the wage is $7 an hour (only after Barbara asks evasiveness speaks to one way employers hope to keep wages low,
specifically), she decides she certainly won’t take the job, but by keeping them out of the conversation until its too late and relying
will attend orientation for the sake of inquiry. on potential employees’ discomfort with conflict or asking direct
questions.

The Wal-Mart orientation, which Barbara believes is unrivaled Once again, Barbara goes through an orientation in which the
in grandeur and intimidation, is supposed to take 8 hours. They corporation at large, rather than middle management, instructs
begin with a video on the history and philosophy of Wal-Mart, employees in how best to fulfill its own policies and philosophy,
including an almost cult-like legend about Sam Walton and Wal- complete with an origin myth of the Waltons.
Mart’s transformation from a five-and-dime into the nation’s
largest private employer.

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Sam is shown saying that the best ideas come from the Barbara writes all these phrases between quotation marks herself,
employees or “associates,” like having a “people greeter” showing just how skeptically she regards the special vocabulary and
welcoming each customer upon entering the store. The rhetoric employed by management. For her, such language is no
associates are encouraged to think of managers as “servant more than muddying or hiding the truth.
leaders,” serving both them and the customers. But the music
turns ominous as the video warns of problems with “associate
honesty,” like thefts by cashiers.

Another video talks about the feeling of family for which Wal- Barbara makes it clear here that the videos seek to bias employees
Mart is so well known, meaning that there is no place for a against unions before they even begin working: unions sometimes
union—in fact, it says, unions have been targeting Wal-Mart for serve as a tool for employees to demand higher wages, so the dire
years to greedily collect dues money. Employees could lose warnings make sense for management.
their voice to the union organizers and even their wages and
benefits would be put at risk, the video warns.

Next are the rules against jewelry and blue jeans, and especially The warnings begin to accumulate, and by contrasting the time
against “time theft”—doing anything other than working during wasted in the orientation with the absurd-sounding “time theft,”
company time (even as the employees’ time doesn’t seem to Barbara shows how little Wal-Mart seems to trust or care about its
count, since during orientation they are often left for many employees.
minutes at a time in the small training room).

Barbara drinks a caffeinated coffee—rare for her—and finds The narration turns almost surrealist, as it’s difficult to tell whether
herself wired for the next steps: creating name cards for Barbara’s overwhelmed state comes from the caffeine or from the
themselves, participating in Computer-Based Learning on ridiculous tasks.
topics like what to do if pools of human blood should appear on
the sales floor.

That night is a sleepless one. Budgie the cockatiel has gone When you’re living off close to minimum wage, small expenses and
haywire and refuses to return to his cage. Small things have unforeseen costs can quickly add up. For Barbara, caffeine
been going wrong: Barbara had to spend $11 to replace her exacerbates this stress, but here caffeine also stands in for the
watch battery, three wash cycles ($3.75) to get out an ink stain constant stress and anxiety many low-wage workers feel when
on her khakis, and pay $20 for the belt she needed for anything minor goes wrong.
Menards. She’s still jittery from the caffeine, even though she’s
due at Menards at 12.

Barbara now realizes that she’s employed at both places, but In a normal, low-stress state, Barbara was able to coolly compare
the endless orientation at Wal-Marts has done some work on the advantages and disadvantages of the jobs at Menards and Wal-
her, and she can’t imagine mastering plumbing projects when Mart, but now, the physical stress she’s dealt with makes her act
she’s so sleep-deprived. She calls Paul, who says she’d be irrationally, making decisions based on the moment rather than on
working from noon to eleven, and that $10 an hour can’t be what makes economic sense. Barbara shows how easily this can
right—he’ll have to check. Now Barbara is unnerved. She tells happen to any low-wage worker.
Paul she can’t start. It’s all, she admits to herself, because of the
coffee mistake, since she’s now too exhausted to work for 11
hours in a row.

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Barbara wonders why she hadn’t bargained with Roberta about Barbara had thought that economic laws of supply and demand
the wages. She realizes that employers are clever with their would work in her favor in Minneapolis, but now she learns that
hiring process: one moves from application to orientation employers have various tricks to pay as little as they can—and to
without ever meeting the potential employer as a free agent make employees feel like they’re not worth a better option.
able to bargain. Even in a tight labor market like Minneapolis,
the potential employee is made to feel like a supplicant.

On Saturday, Barbara packs up and heads to the Twin Lakes, Once again, Barbara’s well-thought-out plans are stymied by
where she finds that the room she’d requested is now taken. unforeseen events, meaning that she’s forced, again, to recalculate
She calls the Clearview Inn, another rental place, which is $245 her budget. The fact that her new rent alone is higher than her
per week and closer to the Wal-Mart. That price is still higher income doesn’t bode well—at the very least it means she’ll be
than her aftertax weekly pay, but she’s confident she’ll get a playing catch-up for the next few weeks.
room from Hildy next week, and the weekend job at a
supermarket that she applied to.

The Clearview Inn may well be the worst motel in the In her attempt to balance affordability and proximity to work,
country—not an easy feat. There’s a stench of mold when the Barbara has had to give up cleanliness—it seems that it’s impossible
wife of the young East Indian owner shows Barbara in. She to have all three at her budget. If her view is any indication, the
switches to another room with a bed, chair, drawers, and a TV working poor in Minneapolis are just as likely to have to live in close
fastened to the wall, with a single overhead bulb. There’s no AC quarters in less-than-ideal apartments in order to make things work.
or fan and no bolt on the door. She can see through the other
motel windows to rooms with a woman with a baby, two
bunches of teenagers, and various single men.

Without a bolt, shades, or screens, Barbara feels vulnerable Another, less mentioned aspect of low-wage working life is the
and is afraid to sleep. She dozes on and off, realizing at one likelihood of a lack of safe living conditions, which is only
point in the night that poor women really do have more to fear exacerbated by issues faced by women.
than women who live in houses with double locks, dogs, and
husbands.

That Monday, Barbara arrives to Wal-Mart and is directed to Once again, Barbara is faced with new expectations and a new
ladies’ wear. Ellie, a manager, sets her to “zone” the summer vocabulary to master, from “zone” to “image” when referring to
dresses, or group them by color, design, and size. She helps ladies’ wear—skills that the corporate orientation was less
Melissa, also new on the job, to consolidate certain Kathie Lee interested in cultivating than it was in explaining the rules.
dresses so that the other silky ones can be prominently
displayed in the “image” area.

Their job turns out to be keeping the ladies’ wear area As with her job at The Maids, Barbara’s position here seems less
“shoppable.” Instead of asking if customers need help, they’re oriented to the customers’ needs (an actually clean house, help with
meant to put away the “returns” and the items scattered and finding something) and more to maximized efficiency. Her struggle
dropped by customers. For the first few days, Barbara to memorize everything is another reminder that “unskilled” labor is
struggles to memorize the one thousand-square-foot layout, anything but.
from the “woman” sizes through the Kathie Lee and teen-
oriented Jordache collections. There are dozens of each kind of
item, and the layout suddenly changes every few days.

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Barbara feels resentful and somewhat contemptuous the first Barbara had gotten through the day at her other jobs by attempting
few days: nothing’s very urgent, and no one will go hungry or be to feel needed or significant (even though this was against the
hurt if she makes a mistake. Wal-Mart mandates that all companies’ best attempts), but here it’s difficult to even pretend to
employees in this section be called “ladies,” and bars them from do so.
raising their voices or swearing, which she also finds grating.

At Wal-Mart, customers shop with shopping carts filled to the By describing her daily tasks down to the number of minutes it takes
brim, often leaving about 90 percent rejected. Barbara and to clear a cart, Barbara gives the reader some insight into the
Melissa measure their workload in “carts.” It takes her 45 monotony of the job. She and Melissa attempt to deal with this
minutes to return the rejected contents from a cart her first monotony by working together when they can, though the tasks are
week, which she eventually gets down to 30. There’s minimal clearly not set up to facilitate relationships.
human interaction, though sometimes Melissa and Barbara try
to make up a task they can do together.

Barbara likes Ellie, who’s polite and demure, though she doesn’t Howard seems like another one of those managers who’ve crossed
like the assistant manager, Howard, who spends ten minutes to the “other side,” obsessed with serving the corporation rather
taking attendance at the first meeting. He admonishes than representing the employees.
associates for loitering and talking to each other and for
committing “time theft.”

When Barbara arrives at the Clearview, the sewage has been As Barbara deals with monotony at work, her home life has its own
backed up in her room and is all over the floor. She’s moved into difficulties, as even a motel beyond her budget fails to satisfy basic
another room, which has a screen in tatters and, again, no fan. needs of cleanliness and safety. A small issue like where to leave her
She only has a few possessions with her, the most expensive of laptop grows complicated as a result.
which is her laptop, but with temperatures in the nineties she
hesitates to leave it in the car trunk during the day.

That afternoon at Wal-Mart, Alyssa, another new orientee, had Another irony of low-wage work: Wal-Mart requires a uniform that
asked whether a clearanced $7 polo shirt might fall further. its employees can’t afford based on the salary that the company
Barbara hadn’t recalled that polos, not t-shirts, are required for itself pays them.
employees, but at $7 an hour a $7 polo shirt is beyond her
budget.

That evening, Barbara scopes out the low-priced food options Another example of how both price and proximity make it far easier
in Clearview—only a Chinese buffet or Kentucky Fried Chicken. for low-wage workers to eat fast food rather than venture out to
She chooses the latter and eats in front of the TV, though it’s distant produce markets. Of course, as the humorous Survivor
tricky without a table, and wonders why the contestants on scene reminds us, Barbara is only a visitor to this world.
Survivor would ever volunteer for an artificially daunting
task—before remembering her own situation.

Barbara notices that there’s only one bed for the two African The mention of a mournful song against the sound of trucks seems
American men who live next door—she can see everything, and straight out of a movie, but Barbara uses it to make a point about
notices that they take turns sleeping in the bed and in the van the general atmosphere of quiet desperation that pervades a place
outside. It seems that Clearview is full of working people who like Clearview.
just don’t have the capital for a regular apartment. She wakes
up at night to hear a woman singing sadly against the sound of
trucks on the highway.

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The next morning, Barbara buys hard-boiled eggs at a Barbara has been experiencing low-wage working life as an English-
convenience store and takes out the trash. The owner’s wife speaking American. Here she tries to imagine a different kind of
does clean the rooms, but she rarely remembers more than the struggle — in addition to economic difficulties, the need to adjust to
bare basics. Barbara pictures the wife as a product of an a vastly different culture and language.
arranged marriage and a move from her native village to
Clearview, Minnesota, with a husband who may not even speak
her language.

The next morning, Barbara tries to spruce herself up: she Barbara attempts to cling to her dignity by looking presentable.
doesn’t want to look homeless, though she essentially is. She’s Even though she’s no longer vigorously scrubbing floors, much of
been stressed and getting stomachaches, so she hasn’t been low-wage labor is physically exhausting.
eating lunch – not ideal in a job where she’s always on her feet.

That day, though, Barbara arrives with bounce in her step to Barbara has often found that fellow workers who understand her
Wal-Mart, trying to think positively. She’d told Melissa she was financial situation have provided help and comfort—and that this
living on fast food at a hotel, so Melissa has brought her a solidarity could not be more different than the empty corporate
sandwich for lunch. Barbara is overwhelmed by this generosity, rhetoric about company “families.”
which counteracts the severe, penny-pinching corporate
philosophy.

In Barbara’s second week, her shift changes from 10-6 to 2-11, One previously unexamined element of low-wage labor is the
so an extra half hour and a dinner break. Her two 15-minute uncertainty of shift hours—companies can easily change an
breaks are now vital, and she tries to juggle simultaneous needs employee’s shift from day to night or weekday to weekend, which
of drinking, getting outside, and sitting down, especially when complicates the ability to get a second job or ensure day care. Such
heading to the Radio Grill for an iced tea could waste four sudden changes show how little the employer cares about its
precious minutes. The post-Memorial Day weekend lull has employees and just how much control the employer has over the
ended, so there are always at least a dozen shoppers in ladies’, employees’ lives.
and whole families in the evening.

For the first half of the shift, Barbara manages to be helpful and Like at Jerry’s, Barbara starts to become susceptible to the
cheery. But at 6 or 7, she starts to detest the shoppers—the pressures and stress of the job, making her increasingly
toddlers who pull down everything in reach, the obese misanthropic—though, tellingly, no less likely to want to do a good
Caucasians—and consider them merely an interruption from job.
how things should be, with every piece of clothing unsold and in
its place.

One evening, Barbara is exhausted when she returns from her Throughout this scene, Barbara portrays her coworker as “the
last break to find a new employee folding T-shirts in one of woman,” or just “she,” underlining Barbara’s point about how the
“her” areas. The woman says Barbara has been putting certain stress of the job makes her unwilling to see someone else as another
T-shirts away in the wrong place. She chides Barbara not to human being, rather than as an interruption of the tasks she has to
forget to check the ten-digit UPC numbers. Barbara snaps back complete. It’s interesting that this worrisome result of unpleasant
at her, saying their time is better spent putting things away labor seems to coexist with the solidarity often shown among
from the carts. The woman says she only folds—she’s too petite coworkers, as when Melissa brings Barbara a sandwich, for
to reach the upper racks, which gives Barbara malicious glee. instance.
She worries that she’s growing into a meaner, bitchier person.
“Barb,” which is on her ID tag and what she was called as a child,
isn’t Barbara. She wonders if this is who she would have
become without her father’s luck and hard work.

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The day Barbara moves to the Hopkins Park Plaza, there’s a Barbara’s frantic calculations show just how little wiggle room she’s
new woman there, who says Barbara misunderstood and the left with when trying to reconcile income with expenses. Economists
room won’t be available until next week. Barbara is dismayed. actually say that rent should be around 30 percent of income, but
But she knows that at $179 a week, even Hopkins Park would Barbara is obviously far from being able to follow ideal economic
be too expensive without a second job. She’s applied for a advice. This is also another example of how companies’ power over
weekend job at the Rainbow supermarket for $8 an hour. With employees can complicate their lives, as available and required
both jobs, she’d make about $320 a week after taxes, so that shifts can quickly change.
rent will be 55 percent of her income, or closer to “affordable.”
But then, Rainbow decides they need her five days a week, not
just weekends, and Howard schedules a different day off for
her every week.

In the long run, Barbara knows things will work out if she The problem with waiting for things to work on in the long run is
devotes her mornings to job hunting while waiting for a that many low-wage workers simply can’t save enough to wait out a
Hopkins Park opening or an apartment at $400 a month. But by difficult period, forced to resort even to the idea of staying in dorm
then she’ll really be broke. The YWCA refers her to Budget beds.
Lodging, which only has dorm beds for $19 a night. She’s
relieved to rule that out since it’s on the other side of
Minneapolis.

Barbara calls Caroline for any insights, and Caroline invites Caroline’s offer is another reminder of solidarity, especially since
Barbara to move in with her family. Though Barbara refuses, Barbara knows Caroline has gone through similar periods herself.
she’s rejuvenated by the sense that she’s not entirely alone. The Here, Barbara is able to tie her own apartment hunt into broader
Clearview now wants $55 a night for further nights, but the social and economic trends in Minneapolis, in which economic
Comfort Inn has a room available for $49.95 a night. She growth has proved unable to raise standard of living for its lowest-
reserves but feels defeated, though less so when she sees a wage citizens.
front-page newspaper headline saying “Apartment rents
skyrocket,” while vacancy rates remain low. Prosperity,
ironically, is increasing upward pressure on rents and further
hurting low-wage workers.

When Barbara moves into the Comfort Inn, she thinks it’ll only Barbara had decided to stay for a month at each place, but it
be for a night or two, but this turns out to be her moment of doesn’t take a full month for her to realize that her attempt to
final defeat. In three weeks she’s spent over $500 and equate income with expenses in Minneapolis is doomed—a failure
discovers that she has earned only $42 from Wal-Mart for caused mainly by rent issues but exacerbated by Wal-Mart’s
orientation. They’ve withheld her first week’s pay, and when payment policy.
they do pay her it will come too late.

Though Barbara never finds an apartment, her last attempt is Housing aid, like the food aid options in Portland, Maine, turns out
to call the United Way of Minneapolis, through which she to be far less helpful than Barbara might have hoped. The
finally reaches the Community Emergency Assistance Program. suggestion of moving into a shelter is extreme and seems hardly
A woman there suggests she moves into a homeless shelter to sustainable as a means of helping people move up out of poverty.
save up for a rent and deposit, and sends her to another office
to apply for a housing subsidy. But there, she finds only an out-
of-date list of affordable apartments.

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Back at the first office, the woman says she’ll find some kind of Once again, food aid for the poor is neither convenient (she has no
emergency food aid: a bar of soap, lots of candy and cookies, fridge or freezer to put the ham) nor healthy. The fact that more
and a one-pound can of ham. The woman mixes Barbara up than one employee of Wal-Mart has relied on emergency aid within
several times with someone else who worked at Wal-Mart who the space of a few days is a damning indictment of the low wages
came in a few days ago. Barbara had already realized that many paid.
of her coworkers are poor, but now knows that some of them
are residents of shelters.

Now, at the Comfort Inn, Barbara lives surreally in a business The surrealism Barbara mentions stems from something she’s
traveler’s room before going out to her shabby “real” life. But already learned—that the working poor are often forced into wildly
she sleeps better, and improves from day to day at Wal-Mart. inefficient living situations simply because they’re unable to save up
On one Saturday, a heavier shopping day, she arrives to clothes enough to actually save money. As usual, she’s able to draw some
tossed inches deep on the floor, but reaches a kind of flow state kind of humor from her surroundings and current work situation,
in which all her tasks seem to complete themselves. She here trying to make her coworker laugh with her comment about
realizes, while picking things up, that what she does here is preventing abuse. But her thought is also a reminder that the people
what most mothers do at home, picking up the toys and who shop at Wal-Mart are sometimes taking a brief respite from
spills—so here the mothers get to behave like small children. their own home and work struggles.
She suggests her theory to her coworker Isabelle: that rates of
child abuse would soar without them around to give mothers
this break, and they should be getting paid like therapists as a
result, and Isabelle just laughs.

Barbara has to wonder why anyone puts up with the wages Here Barbara ventures two hypotheses on a question she’ll return to
they’re paid. Most of her fellow workers have other jobs or in the Evaluation chapter: if low wages like those Wal-Mart pays are
partners, but still, there’s no signs of complaining or so insufficient, why don’t workers demand higher wages – especially
resentment. Maybe it’s what happens when drug tests and in a tight labor market? Here, her hypotheses deal mainly with the
personality “surveys” create a uniformly servile workplace, she success of corporate rhetoric.
thinks. But Wal-Mart is also a world within itself, a super-sized
corporate entity directed from afar and against any form of
local initiative.

Barbara asks Isabelle how she can afford to live on $7 an hour, Isabelle’s living situation seems to confirm Barbara’s sense that
and she says she lives with her grown daughter, who also extended families or artificial families are the only ways people can
works. She also now gets paid $7.75 an hour after two years, find housing stability. Melissa’s experience, meanwhile, helps
and tells Barbara to be patient. Melissa says she made twice as Barbara understand the difficulty of simply changing jobs to get a
much when she was a waitress, but that place closed down. better salary – it’s more complicated than that.
Barbara understands Melissa’s unwillingness to start up again
searching for another job, with the applications, interviews, and
drug tests.

A few days later, Melissa is assigned to bras, a new section for Melissa’s concern is, to Barbara, an example of how companies
her. She confides to Barbara that she doesn’t like taking too brainwash employees so that they feel both needed, but also
long with a new task and wasting the company’s money. unworthy enough that they can “waste” the company’s time.
Barbara can’t imagine why Melissa worries about the Waltons’
wasted labor.

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That day, Alyssa returns to check on the clearanced $7 polo Barbara’s comment to Alyssa makes it clear what she thinks about
and finds a stain on it. She is trying to negotiate a further the wages Wal-Mart pays its employees, as well as its general
reduction in the cost with the fitting room lady when Howard treatment of people who work there—again, it’s ironic that Alyssa
appears and says there are no employee discounts on clearance can’t afford to buy even a mandated uniform at the store.
items. Barbara says to Alyssa later that it can’t be right when
Wal-Mart employees can’t afford to buy a clearanced Wal-Mart
shirt.

At an employee meeting, Barbara is listening to another Barbara’s realization is probably not going to lead to union
associate complain about how bad a deal the company health recognition for Wal-Mart employees: in terms of the book’s plot, it
insurance is, when Barbara realizes they need a union. She allows her to learn more about the plight of her fellow workers by
corners other employees outside at cigarette breaks, and finds bonding around their equally low wages and lack of benefits like
that no one gets paid overtime, and the health insurance is overtime and reasonable health insurance. She sees the results first-
considered not worth paying for. A twenty-something named hand: Stan is unable to continue his education, for example, and
Stan is eager to talk to her about wages: he originally wanted to Marlene feels insecure in her job even though there’s a tight labor
work while studying at a two-year technical school, but work market which means there should be options for each worker.
cut into studying and he had to drop out. Another woman,
Marlene, says that Wal-Mart would just rather keep hiring new
people than treat the ones it has well—it’s constantly bringing
new people in for orientation.

Though Barbara thinks any union could help somewhat, she Here Barbara admits that her push for unionization doesn’t mean
doesn’t believe that unions are a cure-all. She really just wants that she thinks the knotty problems she’s uncovered could be
to puncture the fantasy of the Wal-Mart “family,” with the undone simply through this one solution. However, unions do
rhetoric of “servant leaders” and “guests.” She’s also discovering provide an opportunity to counter prevailing corporate rhetoric with
how monotonous a lot of low-wage work can be, which doesn’t another kind of rhetoric – and they’d also give workers a concrete
apply as much to waitressing or housecleaning. Instead there means of fighting for better wages and benefits.
are just full carts, then empty ones. She looks at her gray,
cranky coworkers and wonders how soon she would become
like them.

However, then something does happen: 1,450 unionized hotel This scene reveals the absurdity of Wal-Mart’s rules against “time
workers strike at nine local hotels. That day, Barbara is theft,” as Barbara describes in detail her attempt to reach the car,
supposed to call two lesser-priced motels as possible options which sounds like she was participating in a bank heist. Of course,
for her to move to from the Comfort Inn, but has left the phone we’re reminded at the end of the scene that this has been, to an
numbers in her car and wonders if she can get away with “time extent, an act – one which is about to end now that Barbara knows
theft” by running to her car. But then Howard tells her she’s for certain that she won’t be able to equal expenses to income for
behind on her Computer-Based Learning and tells her to get her time in Minneapolis.
back to the computer area. She heads that way, then sneaks
outside to her car, at one point having to dodge into shoes to
avoid Howard. But neither of the motels has an opening – her
Wal-Mart career is about to end abruptly.

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That evening, Barbara tells Melissa she’ll be quitting soon, and Like many of Barbara’s previous coworkers, Melissa is nonchalant
Melissa says she might do so too—Barbara knows Melissa about Barbara’s big reveal – again, it’s not as if Barbara hasn’t been
might be saying this since it’s so much more pleasant to work doing the work, just like her. Melissa still seems torn between her
with someone you like. She tells Melissa about the book, and natural loyalty to the corporation and a growing sense that there’s a
Melissa just nods and says she hopes she hasn’t said too many disconnect between wages paid and the physical and emotional toll
negative things about Wal-Mart. Melissa also says she’s been of the labor.
thinking that $7 an hour isn’t nearly enough for how hard we
work, and she’s going to apply for a plastics factory where she
can hopefully get $9.

At Barbara’s last break, she and one other woman are watching Barbara’s last job ends on a hopeful note, as it seems that, at the
TV in the break room when the local news turns to the hotel very least, some of her Wal-Mart coworkers increasingly have some
strike. A senator is shaking hands with the son of a picketer and awareness of the unfair playing field, even if this knowledge isn’t
says he should be proud of his father. The other woman jumps translated into action. The last sentence has Barbara ironically
up and waves her fist. She ends up telling Barbara about her noting that, because of rent troubles, she literally cannot afford to
daughter, her long hours, and her inability to save. Barbara says continue working at Wal-Mart.
she still thinks they could have done something together if she
could have afforded to work at Wal-Mart longer.

EVALUATION
Though one might think someone who has a Ph.D. could easily We’ve seen this notion repeated again and again, as Barbara seeks
hold down a low-wage job, the first thing Barbara learned is to show a middle- or upper-class reader the complexities of low-
that no job is “unskilled,” and each required concentration and wage labor.
new terms, tools, and skills. In this world, she was only average.

In addition, Barbara notes, each job has its own hierarchy, Social relationships have been a key element of Barbara’s work,
customs, and standards, that required her to figure out who even when camaraderie between coworkers is discouraged. Along
was in charge and who was good to work with. She also had to with that comes a need for social adeptness, another skill a reader
make sure she was fast and thorough, but not so fast and might not think would always apply to such labor.
thorough that she made life difficult for the other workers.
They knew that there are very few rewards for heroic
performance.

All Barbara’s jobs were physically demanding, even physically Throughout the book, Barbara has chronicled in detail just how
damaging, in the long-term, and she feels proud of having been much brutal physical labor is required in jobs like the ones she took:
able to manage her fatigue without collapsing or taking time off. “work” in this world takes on its most basic definition of physical
She also knows she usually displayed punctuality, cheerfulness, exertion, in addition to the various other qualities required.
and obedience, all traits that job-training programs encourage
in post-welfare job candidates. She gives herself a B or B+ for
her performance as a worker.

In our society, it’s assumed that a job is the way out of poverty Barbara seeks to challenge the stereotype of the poor as lazy or
and welfare recipients just need to get one in order to stay on spoiled, wasting their money on alcohol or other non-staples. The
their feet. To Barbara, her experience proves this is not the poor are poor, she argues, because once you are poor there is
case. She spent no money on flashy clothes or going out and ate essentially no escape from it. The system is stacked against the poor.
chopped meat, beans, and noodles, or fast food at $9 a day.

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However, in Key West, Barbara earned $1,039 in one month Here Barbara delves into line-by-line calculations of the economic
and spent $517 on food, gas, toiletries, laundry, phone, and realities of her experiment. At the start she’d noted that she could
utilities. She could have been able to pay the rent if she had simply add up income and expenses from a desk, but now the reader
stayed in her $500 efficiency with $22 left over (though sooner can recall specific moments and choices that led to Barbara’s
or later, she would have had to spend something on medical struggles to pay the bills. In Key West, there was no ideal situation:
and dental care). But by moving to the trailer park in order to even having a bike wouldn’t have solved her financial troubles.
take a second job, she had to pay $625. She could have bought
a used bike instead of using the car, but she still would have
needed two jobs—and she learned she could not sustain two
physically demanding jobs.

Barbara was most successful in Portland, though only from Barbara’s success in Portland, she shows, stems less from her ability
working seven days a week. She earned $300 a week after to find a stable living situation than from the vagaries of living in a
taxes and paid just $480 a month in rent. But if she had stayed tourist destination—both an advantage and disadvantage for her
until summer, the Blue Haven’s summer rent would have kicked income bracket.
in. And she’s not sure she could have kept up the 7-day-a-week
regimen.

In Minneapolis, the only way Barbara can imagine having Barbara has to introduce a lot of speculation in order to imagine
succeeded is if she had found a $400 a month apartment or how things could have worked out in Minneapolis. Her point is that
made $440 a week after taxes at Menards (though she’s not low-income workers, like anyone else, are held to higher standards:
sure she could have stayed on her feet eleven hours a day). She they cannot make a single mistake, as she did, merely in order to
knows she made mistakes—she should have stayed in the survive off their income, and even while enjoying advantages like
dormitory bed, worked somewhere better-paying than Wal- those she had.
Mart, and not lived in motels for $200-300 a week. But she
realizes it’s wrong when a single person can barely support
herself while working and owning a car.

Rents are too high and wages too low, Barbara concludes. With We’ve seen through the book how the poor are simultaneously vital
the rising numbers of the wealthy, the poor have been forced and invisible, necessary for the well-being of the wealthy and
into more expensive and distant housing—even as the poor nevertheless treated far worse.
often have to work near the rich in service and retail jobs.

The official poverty rate has remained low for the past several Though Barbara did attempt to find food aid, her main problem
years, but only, Barbara argues, because the poverty level is with food was trying to eat cheaply and healthfully. The major issue
calculated based on the cost of food. But food has remained in terms of expenses, she notes, is the rent — in each city she lived, it
relatively inflation-proof, while rent has skyrocketed (meaning was searching for affordable housing that caused the most anxiety
that if the poverty rate were linked to the cost of housing, it and, in several cases, forced her to call it quits.
would be much higher). The public sector, meanwhile, has
retreated, as public housing spending has fallen since the
1980s.

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While rents are sensitive to market forces, wages aren’t. Every Here, Barbara dives into the research in order to find an explanation
city Barbara worked in was experiencing a “labor shortage,” yet for a phenomenon she’s experienced first hand —the fact that a
wages at the low end of the labor market remained flat. Wages “labor shortage” can coexist with stagnant wages, at least for those
did rise, Barbara learned from various economists, between making the least. The fact that wages did rise – just not enough as
1996 to 1999—however, they have not been able to bring low- inflation – shows how society can become complacent and
wage workers up to the relative amounts they were earning in unwilling to closely examine “facts” such as rising wages. One of
1973. Barbara argues that employers resist wage increases Barbara’s hypotheses as to employers’ ability to resist wage
however they possibly can. She recalls how Ted once griped to increases is simply their all-encompassing obsession about it – one
her about not being able to find enough workers. When she that she’s seen in action, from Ted’s free breakfasts to Howard’s
asked why he didn’t just raise wages, he seemed surprised, obsession with “time theft.”
saying he offered “mothers’ hours,” as if to say that no one
could complain about wages with such a benefit. Many
employers, Barbara has learned, will offer anything from free
meals to subsidized transportation rather than raise wages,
since these can be taken away more easily when the market
changes.

Barbara asks why workers don’t demand higher wages Again, Barbara is able to question existing research and economics
themselves. She was initially surprised that people didn’t just by drawing on her own experience, showing how low-wage workers
leave underpaid, demanding jobs. But low-wage workers are are not merely free, rational agents, and instead are caught in a
not just “economic man.” They’re often dependent on relatives cycle that prevents them from saving up and establishing
or friends with a car, or else use a bike, which limits range. Just themselves in a position of stability.
filling out applications, being interviewed, and taking drug tests
is a hassle and leads to more time without work.

In addition, for the laws of economics (including supply and Barbara pokes more holes in the classical free-market conception of
demand) to work, people involved need to be well-informed. labor by showing how low-wage workers are subject to
But most low-wage workers have no financial advisors, only misinformation or lack of information. The “money taboo” is
help-wanted signs and ads, relying mainly on unreliable word of encouraged by corporations’ obsession with profits and the bottom
mouth. There’s also what one analyst calls the “money taboo” line, but it also has broader cultural and social causes.
preventing people talking about their earnings. Employers do
their best to prevent any discussion or disclosure of wages as
well.

The question of why people don’t demand better wages and Barbara has seen how successfully corporations can construct an
conditions where they are is a huge one, but Barbara weighs in imaginary fantasy about symbiotic relationships between manager
with her experience of the power of management in getting and worker, a fantasy which they then can exploit to get the most
workers to feel like “associates” through profit-sharing plans, out of their employees.
company patriotism, and meetings that function like pep rallies.

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Barbara was also shocked at how low-wage workers are made Drug testing has been a ubiquitous requirement (or threat)
to surrender their basic civil rights: her purse could be throughout the book, symbolizing the culture of suspicion and
searched at any time at the restaurant, and drug testing is a shame to which low-wage workers are often subject. Barbara goes
routine degrading act that has the function of keeping further, arguing that their very civil rights are not respected in a
employees “in their place.” Rules against “gossip” make it variety of ways. She also ties this flouting of civil rights and
difficult for employees to band together, and low-wage workers imposition of shame to a concrete phenomenon, hoping to explain
without union contracts can be fired “at will,” or without a why workers don’t rebel against their low wages and demand better
reason. So she understands why low-wage workers don’t treatment.
behave in an economically rational way: they are not free
agents and their sphere is neither free nor democratic. For
Barbara, many of the indignities imposed on workers make
them feel unworthy enough to accept how little they’re being
paid.

Barbara came across very few slackers, and in fact recognized Barbara reiterates her challenge to existing stereotypes about low-
that workers often consider management as an obstacle to wage workers, a stereotype that holds that worker’s laziness forces
getting the job done, whether it was waitresses challenging management to treat them strictly. That’s simply not the case
managers’ stinginess toward the customers, or housecleaners according to her own experience.
resenting the time constraints that forced them to cut corners.

Barbara claims that this cycle supports a culture of extreme Here, Barbara reveals a link between the low wages paid to workers
inequality, in which corporate actors are far removed from and an entire atmosphere of suspicion – not just between workers
their underpaid laborers, and because of class and sometimes and management, but between low-wage laborers and the rest of
racial prejudice, they tend to distrust these people and spend society. Low-wage workers are made to feel like lower-class citizens
great amounts of money on things like drug and personality through various initiatives, from testing to mass incarceration.
testing. Barbara identifies a broader parallel between this sort
of corporate behavior and government (local, state, and
federal) cutting services for the poor while investing heavily in
prisons and the police.

A “living wage,” according the Economic Policy Institute that Barbara cites existing research showing that in order to have a
Barbara cites, is on average $30,000 a year for a family of one “living wage,” she’d need to be making about twice what she’d made
adult and two children—about $14 an hour. That amount at Wal-Mart, for example – and this excludes many things other
includes health insurance, a telephone, and childcare – but not Americans view as essential. A substantial chunk of the 60 percent
restaurant meals, internet access, or alcohol. About 60 percent figure, then, has probably faced struggles similar to what Barbara
of American workers actually earn less than this. While some did in her experiment.
rely on a working spouse or relatives or government assistance,
many rely on wages alone.

The non-poor often think of poverty as difficult but sustainable, Barbara has already shown that there are no “secret economies” for
but Barbara shows it is a situation of acute distress—a lunch of the poor, and here she underlines that fact, showing that the only
potato chips leading to dizziness, a “home” in a van, an illness way people survive is by treating each day as another emergency.
that can’t be treated. She suggests that we should understand
poverty as a state of emergency.

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In the summer of 2000, Barbara returns to her “real life,” eating When she returns to her real life, Barbara can now view the
at restaurants, sleeping in hotel rooms cleaned by someone comforts and amenities of her economic class from a new
else and shopping in stores tidied up by someone else. In the perspective, understanding how visible she is – and, by extension,
world of the top 20 percent, problems are solved without how invisible the working poor are – as well as how seamlessly
anyone seeming to do them. When people from this class things are accomplished and problems solved.
speak, they are listened to, and when they complain, people
below them will probably be punished. They have inordinate
power over the lives of the poor, often determining the
minimum wage and labor laws.

Barbara is alarmed by how invisible the lives of the poor are to Barbara further develops the theme of shame to which the poor are
the affluent—which is certainly not the case the other way subjected by showing how invisible they are on a broader social
around. The wealthy are less and less likely to share schools, level – increasingly, in addition to being looked down upon, they’re
private clubs, taxis, and gated neighborhoods with the poor, entirely ignored.
and even the affluent young now prefer summer school and
internships to working as a lifeguard or waitress.

Both political parties are eager to support welfare reform, even Barbara wrote this book at a particular moment in history, one at
though the 1996 legislation didn’t include any provision for which economic prosperity – according to national averages and
monitoring people’s post-welfare economic conditions. Only by economic research – made many politicians eager to pass welfare
very carefully combing newspapers can you find that food reform, essentially getting people off of welfare. Barbara once again
pantry demand is increasing or shelters are operating above attempts to puncture the stereotypes associated with welfare by
capacity. Americans are used to thinking of poverty as tied to arguing that simply having a job is no guarantee of economic
unemployment, which means there needs to be an increase in stability. She turns around the theme of shame by suggesting that
jobs, but Barbara shows that the problem goes deeper when we (the reader, presumably those like her, but also Americans
there is nearly full employment. The welfare poor, she argues, citizens in general) are the ones that should be ashamed of our
were often condemned for their laziness and dependency, but simultaneous dependency on and mistreatment of the working
now that the majority of the poor are working, the correct poor.
reaction is shame at our dependency on the underpaid labor of
others. The working poor, in fact, she argues, make sacrifices so
others can benefit. She predicts that one day they will tire of
getting so little in return and demand to be paid what they’re
worth, but we will all be better off for this in the end.

AFTERWORD: NICKEL AND DIMED

While Barbara wrote this book in a moment of prosperity and In her afterword, written in 2008, Barbara seeks to situate the
growth, it was published in 2001 just as the dot-com bubble book’s publication within a particular historical moment: given the
was about to burst. People seemed shocked by the book’s prosperity and economic growth of the time, it’s understandable
revelation. It inspired a documentary and play, though it was that people would have been shocked at her portrayal of desperate
also denounced as a “classic Marxist rant” by a group of low-wage working life. Barbara contrasts what she sees as a
conservative students at the University of North Carolina, senseless critique with what she was really trying to accomplish –
which had assigned the book for freshmen, as well as by some hence the example of the housekeeping staff.
North Carolina and state legislators. At the same time,
housekeeping staff at the university was fighting for union
recognition, and these employees invited her to campus.

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If Barbara had to account for the book’s success among middle- Throughout the book, Barbara addresses a reader who seems to be
class people, she’d say that they can identify with and imagine someone much like herself – middle-class, educated, well-
themselves as the main character. In addition, the book has intentioned but ultimately woefully ignorant about the real lives of
been read among low-wage workers, many of whom have the working poor. She seems pleasantly surprised by the strong
written her to tell her their stories. Three months after the reaction from this group itself.
book was published, a policy report found that 29 percent of
American families lived in poverty.

Seven years later, Barbara’s question is whether things have What Barbara reports about Wal-Mart won’t be surprising to the
improved or worsened for people like those in the book. The book’s readers, who have learned through Barbara about the
former low-wage coworkers she’s managed to reach have struggles of people who hadn’t been paid for overtime or felt
struggled, reflecting a general downward trajectory for low- pressured into being highly flexible for shift times. At the same time,
wage workers. It was revealed that Wal-Mart, in the early Barbara suggests that some progress has been made: the pressure
2000s, had been abusing its workers by falsifying time records groups combating Wal-Mart policies perhaps have provided a tool
and locking workers into stores at midnight. Organizations to counter the powerful corporate rhetoric that she’s discussed
have arisen to combat these policies and counter the opening throughout the book.
of new stores, and in 2007 the company finally broadened its
health benefits (while also seeking to transform its workplace
from 20 to 40 percent part-time). Meanwhile, the Bush
administration has been cutting public programs.

In addition, in the previous few years there was an expansion of Writing in 2008, Barbara briefly mentions the financial crisis, the
easy credit for the poor, including furniture scams and dodgy Great Recession – the most significant news at the time – in order to
mortgages, which stood in for good wages but also contributed draw connections with her subject. She may have been able to last
to a global financial crisis. Meanwhile, prices in food and rent longer in Minneapolis with easy credit, but only at the expense of
have increased. However, “living wage” campaigns have future stability.
strengthened enough to become a movement, and are
beginning to win broader public support.

As she’s traveled around lecturing, Barbara has tried to show In 2015, living wage laws were passed in major cities like Seattle
that you don’t have to go far to find the working poor—she’s and New York. At the time Barbara was writing the afterword, this
traveled to Harvard and Yale to speak at campus protests was a nascent movement – clearly, it’s taken years to develop. She
about underpaid janitors and lack of child care. Business continues to stress, however, that economic and financial realities of
interests still resist paying a living wage, but over a hundred wages are simply stacked against low-wage workers, something that
cities have passed living wage ordinances, without any falling she argues won’t change without public intervention.
into economic ruin. Still, these increases aren’t enough: in 2006
a worker had to earn on average $16.31 an hour to afford a
2-bedroom housing unit. Affordable housing is growing scarcer
and transportation costs are increasing: Barbara argues that
these issues will require action from the public sector.

To answer readers’ questions of “What can I do?” Barbara In the seven years after the book’s publication, Barbara received a
suggests joining a community living wage campaign, great deal of support and comments: here she answers readers
volunteering for a shelter or food bank, or supporting certain directly, encouraging them to show solidarity in a different way
political candidates. But she argues that there is no one quick while still emphasizing the entrenched, deep-rooted nature of
fix: our economic culture rewards the rich and punishes and economic inequality.
insults the poor. Changing this will take at least a lifetime.

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To cite any of the quotes from Nickel and Dimed covered in the
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To cite this LitChart: MLA
MLA Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. Henry Holt & Company.
2008.
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2015. Web. 21 Apr 2020. CHICA
CHICAGO
GO MANU
MANUAL
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CHICA
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MANUAL
AL Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. New York: Henry Holt &
Company. 2008.
Baena, Victoria. "Nickel and Dimed." LitCharts LLC, August 6, 2015.
Retrieved April 21, 2020. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/nickel-
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