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Nickel and Dimed

on (not) Getting by in America
britprincess1ajax
May 08, 2016britprincess1ajax rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
We all know, but we don't really know, do we? NICKEL AND DIMED is about the working poor, that most confusing class of poverty. Author Barbara Ehrenreich captures the experience of not making it by in America so explicitly you want to cry. And it's not reserved to one little pocket of the country, either. No, Barbara faces humiliation first as a waitress in Key West, Florida; then as a housemaid in rural Maine; and, finally, as a Walmart employee in Minnesota. At the low end of the totem pole, you are forced to degrade yourself, picking up after others, scrubbing away their feces, while always being suspected of drug abuse by altogether useless supervisors and managers. The goal was simply to see if one could make a second month's rent on these ghastly wages, but what Barbara learned was that there are more problems living this way than financial. There are the psychological effects of being subjugated and never praised, being told when and if you can pee, along with the glares and whispers in the supermarket after your shift finally ends. There are physical demands taking a toll on an undernourished body, forced to inhale god knows what with a rash on your elbow and no life insurance while you pop Advil like Tic Tacs before upgrading to Aleve to handle the aches and pains of not being allowed to sit. These are the kind of things that keep you up at night. NICKEL AND DIMED exposes these industries as unkind and unsustainable, killing those who agree to work for them and scaring away the rest. I highly recommend that everyone read this book.