Student Name: Sam Yong

Book Name: Nickel and Dimed

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Quotation/Passage from the text with page
number

Paraphrase or Summary

Analyze and React

Three days go by like this and, to my chagrin,

no one from the approximately twenty places
at which Ive applied calls me for an interview.
I had been vain enough to worry about
coming across as too educated for the jobs I
sought, but no one even seems interested in
finding out how overqualified I am. Only later
will I realize that the want ads are not a
reliable measure of the actual jobs available at
any particular time. They are, as I should
have guessed from Maxs comment, the
employers insurance policy against the
relentless turnover of the low-wage workforce.
(15)

Here, Ehrenreich was looking for a job, when

she encountered several cases where no jobs
were available at the time. As she continued,
she realized that companies put up
recruitment not really because they had empty
seats, but because continuous supply of
workers potential prevented workforce breach
due to occasional fire or drifting away.

Here, Ehrenreich reveals the cruel reality of

working class labor market condition in
United States. It clearly indicates a sense of
indifferent competition. At least as
Ehrenreich states, she is highly educated and
theoretically quite qualified for most of the
jobs she applied for. She implies a question
why people like her simply cannot get a job,
even if companies put up want ads. Further
on she reveals the truth: on one would care
about you if caring about you does not benefit
him/her directly. Companies all aim at best
utility of workforce as well as best use of
capital resource: it is the higher authority
you answer to, if you take the job, that
determines your value. And the value can
literally be unpredictable anytimeemployees
are merely the chess pieces.

Years ago, the kindly fry cook who trained me

to waitress at a Los Angeles truck stop used to
say: Never make unnecessary trip; if you don't
have to walk fast, walk slow; if you don't have
to walk, stand. But at Jerrys the effort of
distinguishing necessary from unnecessary

One of Ehrenreichs job was to work as a

waitress at Jerrys. Here she is literally saying
that the workload at Jerrys is so terrible that
she is kind of paralyzed and would not have
second thoughts when shes got work to do.

The tone in the last sentence is quite funny

and somehow irony, as she makes an analogy
between the costumers and poor people
scattered on the battlefield, in that the
battlefield refers to the restaurant. And she is
then a soldier who is expected to do her best

and urgent from whenever would itself be too

much of an energy drain. The only thing to
do is to treat each shift as a one-time-only
emergency: you've got fifty starving people out
there, lying scattered on the battlefield, so get
out there and feed them! (pp. 32-3)

to contribute, actually to meet the

requirement. Plus, she says that the effort of
distinguishing necessary from unnecessary is
itself too much of an energy drain, which
indicates that the workload at Jerrys is
consistently heavy and it is thus really not
effective anyway to choose how to do the job
rather than simply doing it straightforward. By
complaining in both ways, Ehrenreich reveals
and criticizes the inhumane workload for lowwage workers.

The pay is $6.10 an hour and the hours are

nine in the morning till whenever, which I
am hoping can be defined as a little before
two. I don't have to ask about health
insurance once I meet Carlotta, the middleaged African American woman who will be
training me. Carlie, as she tells me to call her,
is missing all of her top front teeth. (pp. 41-2)

Towards the end of her experience recounted

in Florida, Ehrenreich finally received her
dream joba housekeeper. She
nevertheless found out that the working
condition of this hotel housekeeping job was
terrible as well.

Here Ehrenreich criticizes the funny

expression of working hours being from in
the morning till whenever, implies an
undetermined working condition for this kind
of low-wage workers. Also, the irony about
Carlie missing all of her top front teeth
suggests in fact no health care about these
workers. These all reveal the terrible situation
among working class in the society and the
indifference of their employers.

Still, I reason, this sudden removal to an

unknown state is not all that different from
the kinds of dislocations that routinely
segment the lives of the truly poor. You lose
your job, your car, or your babysitter. Or
maybe you lose your home because you've
been living with a mother or a sister who
throws you out when her boyfriend comes
back or because she needs the bed or sofa

Here Ehrenreich recounts her experience of

finding a place to stay when first coming into
Maine.

Some words reveal a hidden sense of selfidentification, although the author may not
really mean it but merely wants to create this
kind of a sense to the audience. The truly
poor, a mother or a sister who throws you
out, and clueless and alone all suggest her
hard situation at the time. Although what she
experienced here may not truly reflect what
most working class people would face when

you've been sleeping on for some other

wayward family member. And there you are.
And here I amas clueless and alone as I
have ever been in my grown-up life. (pp. 52-3)

In my interview, I had been promised a thirtyminute lunch break, but this turns out to be a
five-minute pit stop at a convenience store, if
that. I bring my own sandwichthe same
turkey breast and cheese everydayas do a
couple of the others; the rest eat convenience
store fare, a bagel or doughnut salvaged from
our free breakfast, or nothing at all. The two
older married women Im teamed up with eat
bestsandwiches and fruit. Among the
younger women, lunch consists of a slice of
pizza, a pizza pocket (a roll of dough
surrounding some pizza sauce), or a small bag
of chips. (pp. 77-8)

they first got into career since Ehrenreich was

moving from place to place intentionally, still
her recounts indicate how hard it would be to
start out for a hopefully steady but most likely
unpredictable life. The situation may most
likely be true for college or high school
graduates who do not have high level
education but quickly long for a job.
Ehrenreich discovered that her coworkers
were generally extremely poor, as their lunch
all happened to be merely a sandwich, a
bagel, a doughnut, a slice of pizza, or even a
bag of chips.

The listing of austere items as their luncha

sandwich, a bagel, a doughnut, a slice of pizza,
or even just a bag of chipssuggests that her
coworkers as well as herself generally live very
hard materially. The comparison and contrast
between the younger women and the older
married women imply that the situation is
not possibly going to be better if one
continues to work in such a position or
situation. Here, Ehrenreich further indicates
the widespread problem of the hardship of
working class people, and thus perhaps seeks
for a resolutionmore care about these
people and better conditions and possibly
higher wage.