Saralee Says
Imagine you could pretend to be someone else; you could move to another community, take another name, live in a home different from your own and take a job knowing it was only temporary and that nothing in this pretend world would last or be permanent. Would you do it? What if you had to give up all of your creature comforts and live on a salary much different than what you were used to? That is exactly what Barbara Ehrenreich did to research her book, Nickel & Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America (Owl Books).
Ehrenreich is no stranger to yanking the chains of the establishment. Her books, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women(Anchor) and The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Anchor/Doubleday) have made her popular with the feminist movement. She has been a regular contributor for the New York Times and she proudly labels herself a "leftist." She is not the type of employee that Wal-Mart would actively recruit.
At the beginning of the book, Ehrenreich says she was enjoying a froufrou salmon salad moaning the fact of how hard it was for people to live on $6- to $7-per-hour jobs. According to the author, she said "Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism - you know, go out there and try it for themselves." Her editor tells her to do it, so Ehrenreich goes undercover and fills out job applications as a divorced homemaker who had to support herself. For short periods of time, she lives in Key West, Fla., where she works as a waitress; in Portland, Maine, where she tries her luck as a housecleaner; and, my favorite, in Minneapolis, Minn., where she becomes an employee for Wal-Mart. She tells herself she must drive cars that only someone making $6 to $7 per hour could afford, that she must only live in housing that reflects her hourly wage, and that she can only eat food that fits into that budget. When Ehrenreich talked about unions at Wal-Mart I laughed; when she described how unsanitary the cleaning service was I cringed; but when she shared the circumstances of her fellow hourly employees I felt sad. Like everyone else, most are doing the best they can.
Larry's Language
Unfortunately, there is another America out there - and I am not talking about red states versus blue states. Folks who make minimum wage or even more, $7 or $8 per hour, can barely make ends meet. Therefore, they live life very differently.
As author Ehrenreich tells it, one of her co-workers fell and seriously injured her ankle. Ehrenreich wanted her to go to the emergency room for an x-ray but her friend goes back to work, although in much pain. Her attitude was that she could not afford the emergency room visit and risk of losing her job if she took time off to seek medical attention. After work when Ehrenreich wanted to talk about the oppressive nature of this low-income job, her friend wanted to talk about home recipes and what she would cook that night.
The supervisors are the worst part of this sad and disturbing report. Almost everyone in Ehrenreich's book works hard and, despite many hardships, they seem to maintain a sense of self and respect. Their bosses seem mean and uncaring, not because they are evil by nature but because of their single-minded focus on their corporate status.
The author and her co-workers have to live in trailer courts at best, sleazy motels at times, and some must sleep in their cars. At times these able-bodied and willing workers have to resort to living in homeless shelters. When they try to get vouchers for food they usually get the bureaucratic runaround. The food they can afford is not on the South Beach or Atkins diet. It is starchy, heavy in carbohydrates, and guaranteed to put pounds on you.
Do the math. Make $7 an hour instead of the much lower minimum wage. Work two jobs for up to 50 hours a week with no overtime. If you never miss a day or an hour, you will gross about $1,500 a month, or net about $1,300, with no benefits. Put down a deposit of one month's rent, buy a car, take care of your children or parents and there is not going to be much left for daily expenses. Pray that you never have an emergency. That's the other America.
Join us for our next Book Club discussion, which will feature Three Junes by Julia Glass.
