Nickel and Dimed

On (Not) Getting By in America

By: Barbara Ehrenreich

Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis

Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication. With nearly a million copies in print, Nickel and Dimed is a modern classic that deftly portrays the plight of America's working-class poor.

A successful author, Barbara Ehrenreich decides to see if she can scratch out a comfortable living in a blue-collar America obsessed with welfare "reform". Her first job is waitressing, which pulls in a measly $2.43 an hour plus tips. She moves around the country, trying her hand as a maid, a nursing home assistant, and a Wal-Mart salesperson. What she discovers is a culture of desperation, where workers take multiple thankless jobs just to keep a roof overhead.

Often humorous and always illuminating, Nickel and Dimed is a remarkable expose of the ugly flip side of the American dream.

©2001 Barbara Ehrenreich (P)2004 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

• Book Sense Book of the Year Award Finalist, Adult Non-Fiction, 2002
• Alex Award Winner, 2002

"One of today's most original writers." (The New York Times)
"A close observer and astute analyzer of American life, Ehrenreich turns her attention to what it is like trying to subsist while working in low-paying jobs....Her narrative is candid, often moving, and very revealing." (Library Journal)
"Delivering a fast read that's both sobering and sassy, she [Ehrenreich] gives readers pause about those caught in the economy's undertow, even in good times." (Publishers Weekly)

Prett Good but Necessarily Shallow

The author intro outlines the very reasonable and truthful limitations of the book: You can try to recreate working poverty but it is ultimately limited in realism because for a multitude of reasons.

It succeeds in providing a glimpse of low wage life and has some insightful moments particularly regarding the costs of poverty and why rational decision making (to the outsider) may not happen. The real shine is in the humor of the author and her wiseass remarks.

We’re still here

I can’t believe this book was written 17 years ago and here we are with no real change. The poor are still getting poorer and everyone just wants to blame the poor. I wish everyone read this book and took the time to really understand what is going on. I can only hope it doesn’t take another 17 years for something to give.

Real life

I am so happy Barbara Ehrenreich take this real life experience. What she has done let’s us know that life is not easy.

A Primer on Poverty in the United States

Nickeled and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America, is a first-person reflective work documenting the author’s attempts to make a sustainable living on minimum wage jobs. The book is structured around the locations where Barbara Ehrenreich gained her live-bodied experience, first in Florida, then in Maine, and finally in Minnesota. Ehrenreich balances descriptive narrative, third-person perspective, and scientific and economic research, painting a detailed picture of life at minimum wage. While the book is not comprehensive or thorough in its assessment of the problems of poverty and contributing factors, she does not portray it as such. Rather, she outlines her process and objectives clearly enough such that readers should not be disappointed in her final scope.

At the beginning of the book, Ehrenreich sets up the guidelines for her field experimentation. She draws from her background as a scientist to set the parameters of her time “under cover.” From there, she attempts to work and live off of minimum wage jobs in Key West, Florida where she works at a waitress. She portrays the sullen lifestyle of people, mostly women, trapped in the vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. And her descriptions of the people she served (food to) were profoundly thought provoking. As a person of faith, I was particularly sobered into reflection by her description of Christians, writing:

The worst, for some reason, are Visible Christians—like the ten-person table, all jolly and sanctified after Sunday night service, who run me mercilessly and then leave me $1 on a $92 bill. Or the guy with the crucifixion T-Shirt (SOMEONE TO LOOK UP TO) who complains that his baked potato is too hard and his iced tea too icy (I cheerfully fix both) and leaves no tip at all. As a general rule, people wearing crosses or WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) buttons look at us disapprovingly no matter what we do, as if they were confusing waitressing with Mary Magdalene's original profession. (36)

In the next section of the book, Ehrenreich details her life in Maine working as a maid. Readers are forced to consider the exuberance of financial excess employed in such a way as to benefit the owner and only the owner. Ehrenreich reflects:

There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but a culture of extreme inequality. Corporate decision makers, and even some two-bit entrepreneurs like my boss at The Maids, occupy an economic position miles above that of the underpaid people whose labor they depend on. For reasons that have more to do with class—and often racial—prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing…. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves. (212)

In the third working section of the book, Ehrenreich moves to Minnesota and takes up work at the local Wal-Mart. She conveys the litany of evaluations, assessments, tests, and training she and other new employees are subjected to. Recounting the often passive-aggressive or, more often, outright aggressive attitude of managers, she concludes:

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you were treated as an untrustworthy person, a potential slacker, drug-addict or thief, you may begin to feel less trustworthy yourself. If you were constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. (210)

Ehrenreich is thoughtful if not always fully informed. There is enough substance to force engaged readers to reflect on their own role in perpetuating cycles of poverty. If her research is dated, that is the result of time and not effort. Where she is perhaps over-dependent on research and reports from the Economic Policy Institute, to the neglect of other sources like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the Bureau of Economic Analysis, one may conclude this is intention: calling into question the legitimacy of governmental reporting standards. If her opinions are sharp, well, frankly, that’s her prerogative as a writer.

I recommend Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed, not as an expert treaties or a model of slow, deep journalism, but as a text that brings poverty in the United States into focus. By marrying real data, verified research, and personal experience she avoids the ubiquitous anecdotal sob-story that such stories . Instead, she invites each of her readers to consider and then act on behalf of those enslaved by our economic practices and policies.

Great Body of Work

Barbara takes the relatively unusual stance of literally putting herself into someone else's shoes, the shoes od the working poor. While most, including myself, would not consider this to be a scientific study, I think it is even more in debt and validating than a clinical and sterile scientific study. It not only takes into account real life situations, but it also forces Barbara to grapple with real time and real life situations, something that a clinical study would find hard to replicate. This book is recommended for every psychology and Sociology class in the world.

Necessary read for all Americans

Deeply researched and humbled look at the reality of the “working poor” in America. A must read for all Americans. I’m so grateful for this book. As someone that was able to jump from one socioeconomic class to another of higher status, I have seen firsthand the systems of inequality that perpetuate the hierarchy. The imposter syndrome I face is nothing compared to the health crisis, shorter lifespan, and difficulties of those who by no fault of their own, live this way. We must do better to support a living wage among our people to ensure the future is better and break the cycles of poverty.

A Classic must Read!

Was she spying on me in my early 20’s while getting through college.
Lots of laughs and Wisdom

A human exploration of a systemic problem

Excellent narration and writing of a selfless woman's journey into the soul-crushing poverty experienced by millions daily.

Everyone should read this book

This is a book I would have not picked up for myself but it was a pick within my book club so I needed to give it a try. I thought I was an open minded, economic aware person until I read this book. my husband and I are now having our kids listen to it.

Who really makes your world work?

Would you listen to Nickel and Dimed again? Why?

I will listen to Nickel & Dimed again to understand more deeply the pathos of its characters, all taken from real-life, a pathos present every day wherever human persons are treated like objects existing for the benefit of the idol 'net-profit.'

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The author brings us with her on a journey of self-discovery as she encounters the lives of the invisible-people with whom she and all of us share our daily-lives, those overworked and underpaid workers upon whom we depend to make our worlds function smoothly. These workers, each of whom is precious in their own right, are Walmart greeters, clerks at Menards and the person behind the voice at the McDonald's drive-thru speaker, . Barbara Ehrenreich brings their humanity to us in a way we cannot ignore either in the book or as we hurry past the smiling clerk who meets us entering the store on our next shopping trip.

Which scene was your favorite?

The most memorable scenes for me were descriptions of the people the author encountered during her research, which she developed into the book's narrative.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I listened to the book while driving, not in one sitting.

Any additional comments?

Writing this review encouraged me to listen again to this well-written, thought-provoking book that has lingered just below the surface of my own daily-grind helping me to know my otherwise unknown: