Post by marcmanheim on Aug 6, 2011 13:44:40 GMT -5
A few days ago, my mother decided to take me, and some relatives that were staying over for lunch at Applebee’s (yes, this relates, just wait a second). Everyone ordered pretty simply except for my mother who seems to have a principle of having to always change something or other with what she’s ordering. Of course, whether it was the waitress or somebody in the kitchen that made the mistake, my mother made a big deal about getting her salad with the dressing on it instead of on the side as asked. When the time to tip came, I recounted to my mother some of Ehrenreich’s experiences, and that she (my mother) shouldn’t dock the waitress especially since it probably wasn’t her fault anyway. Nickel and dimed changed my perspective of the low wage worker. During most of the book, I was too busy taking in what she was saying to formulate real opinions. In general, I completely agreed with what she said during her experiences but the area where I had the most to offer in terms of personal opinion was Barbara Ehrenreich’s Evaluation. Most of what she explained near the end made perfect sense to me. With increasing housing prices, low wage workers are finding it more and more difficult to make a living. However, I had some particular issues with the first couple pages describing Ehrenreichs performance. While yes, she did get what she wanted out of her experiment and yes, she did do very well in terms of job performance, I simply cannot see what she did as an accurate reflection of low wage life. Firstly there are some variables which would be important to such a reflection but that it would be nearly impossible for one to factor into an experiment as performed by Ehrenreich. They include childhood experience, lack of certain education levels, and expectation of life (A low wage earner will likely be easier to please than a rich upperclassman in material terms). Most low wage workers probably don’t have a car and almost definitely don’t have 1000 dollars to fall back on. It should also be noted that she broke every rule she set for herself. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I would have done better, I’m just pointing out that there were more effective ways of getting into low wage life. I think that the experiment should be retried with a few differences. The reporter should start off at each location only with possessions that would likely be had by a low wage worker (A house, some furnishings, and maybe bike as opposed to a respectable sum of money and a car). It would also be preferable for the reporter to have come from a lower wage family if possible. While the conclusions about low wage earnings being largely insufficient for life would likely be similar in both tests, this one would likely give better insight as to the life of the wage worker. Overall, Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickel and dimed was an informative read in terms of the issues with low wage work and some of the hardships of the low wage worker, but with some notable flaws in the Experiment itself.