So what’s wrong with the book, specifically? First, although Ehrenreich claims that she is no martyr, she certainly is not the testament of bravery that her readers have held her to. No one can experience poverty like the poor, and I fail to see how working at a diner in a decidedly expensive area in Florida will help Ehrenreich garner any real insight on the lives of the people who live on the bare minimum. Second, and far more importantly, Ehrenreich never really takes the initiative to share their true experiences. She hardly socializes with the staff outside of work; she never participates in any activities except work. So all we are really left with is the rantings of Ehrenreich, empty meditations that end up taking a sizeable portion of the book, rather than what the text purports to do: get inside the lives of the working poor.
If the text does not indicate that Ehrenreich has failed to provide such an account, the reaction of her co-workers when she reveals her true identity is instructive. Indeed, when Ehrenreich tells them that she is a writer investigating the conditions of the lower class, the women she has been working with do not even bat an eye. “Will you listen to me? I’m a writer and I’m going to write a book about this place” (Ehrenreich, 118, emphasis hers). Ehrenreich must, of course, emphasize the fact because there was no connection made between herself and her co-workers; there wasn’t even an attempt to make one, and they could care less if they are in a room with a writer who has a Ph.D., they want to know if they are going to have to work extra tomorrow.
Many of you who may have read the text will wonder what basis I have to say about this. I know what it is like to occupy this social-economic sphere. If I read Nickel and Dimed during a similar time in my life, I might have given up all hope. All I can do is sigh in relief that Ehrenreich’s text didn’t fall into my lap, otherwise I might have thought much less of myself and would have taken decidedly less pride in the work I completed. Until reading Nickel and Dimed, it never occurred to me that working in a low to middle wage position was particularly demeaning, and as indicated in Nickel and Dimed, these thoughts do not appear to even entertain the thoughts of those who do work in the restaurant, in the nursing home, or in the cleaning business. Nevertheless, Ehrenreich wonders why these girls work so hard in seemingly unpleasant jobs, thinking that they must, given their conditions, cling for approval from a Ted-like figure in order to have some respect (Ehrenreich, 116). The remark is pretentious. It is a simple fact of life: no matter if you occupy the role of a cleaning lady or you are a boss at Microsoft, you want to be recognized and you want your work to be appreciated; if another individual from the higher up yells at you, it's going to ruin your day. Working-class or upper-class has absolutely nothing to do with it, and if Ehrenreich spent a little more time with the girls on a one-to-one basis, she might've realized this fact.
Unfortunately, the problem is that Ehrenreich has given nothing. There is not one shred of evidence, not one story of suffering that is not already available in, say, Breadgivers, 1185 Park Avenue, or any other account that documents the individuals who actually endure tha pangs of poverty every day. Moreover, there is nothing in this text that economic reports could not to tell you. And the moreover’s continue with the fact that there is not one single suggestion regarding how we can make the lives of the poor a little bit easier.
Perhaps this text will be useful for English classes, in terms of discerning specific literary devices that may have pulled others into thinking that the text is ‘intelligent’, or sociological classes, in terms of demographics and statistics that the author provides, but aside from that I see no genuine value of Ehrenreich’s novel in contributing to our knowledge of the poor or their conditions. It’s useful to keep the topic of poverty in the limelight; I guess I just don’t agree with the way that the message of the book came across, nor do I particularly agree with the methods that the author chose to employ to ‘investigate’ the lives of the poor.
