Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

In this chapter, Ehrenreich dispels many of the Pervasive Stereotypes about Poverty and addresses the negligent and cruel treatment of people in low-wage jobs by their managers and clients. Her experience with The Maids captures the plight of her coworkers, how hard they work, and how much physical and emotional stress they endure. She also highlights the huge wealth gap in the US by contrasting the lifestyles of the people whose homes she cleans and the lifestyles of the people paid $6.65 an hour to clean their homes.

Due to Maine’s demographics, Ehrenreich argues that a “blue-eyed, English-speaking Caucasian” can easily “infiltrate the low-wage workforce, no questions asked” (50). Race and gender deeply influence the lives of low wage-workers in America especially, with primarily people of color populating certain low-wage positions. As a white woman in Florida, Ehrenreich is steered toward certain public-facing types of work, such as waitressing, and away from cleaning. By going to Maine, Ehrenreich blends into the workforce more easily, as Maine is a less racially diverse state. The association between race and the job of housecleaning bears out in statistics, as a footnote on page 79 states:

[I]n 1998, BLS reports that 36.8 percent were Hispanic, 15.8 percent were Black, and 2.7 percent “other.” However, the association between housecleaning and minority status is well established in the psyches of the white employing class (79).

These statistics support Ehrenreich’s assertion that the experience of poverty is not monolithic, and her personal experience during the experiment is subjective. She acknowledges that race and gender must be considered in any study of poverty that aims for a truthful representation of its nature.

This chapter also includes information about the way managers and corporations cut many corners to maximize profits and minimize the cost of labor. At the nursing home, she is hired to watch over elderly people who are vulnerable and require special care. She has very little training, and even employee oversight is relatively minimal in this facility. She contemplates how dangerous it is to hire uncertified people to watch over and feed the elderly Alzheimer’s patients. She includes data that supports the fact that understaffing at nursing homes means that there are more likely to be accidents or patient neglect. She recounts a day when a coworker skips work and she is left by herself to take care of breakfast for the entire Alzheimer’s ward. Ehrenreich is incredibly stressed by the numerous small things that go wrong during her solo shift. By describing the chaotic nature of this particular day and the overwhelmed mood of her journal that evening, which she vividly compares to the “panicky tone of e-mails from an Everest climber who has just used up her last oxygen canister” (105), Ehrenreich emphasizes how easily she could have made a fatal error by, for example, feeding a diabetic patient sugar. She asserts that as nursing homes become profit-driven the quality of care inevitably decreases.

An additional theme that Ehrenreich explores is religion, particularly Christianity, and the views Christians espouse on poverty. During the tent revival scene, she complains that there is little rhetoric of hope for those who are impoverished and an outsized focus on the afterlife, on fire and brimstone. She states that “Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse” (68), and she alludes to the Sermon on the Mount, a series of teachings from the Book of Matthew, which includes the famous line “Blessed are the meek/for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). This reference highlights her view that Christianity could inspire those who are impoverished to fight for economic justice. Her commentary on Christianity and income inequality contrasts with the sermons she hears that evening, which focus on the existence of hell, the judgment of God, and the church’s need for monetary contributions. Ehrenreich was criticized for her views on Christianity following the publication of this book, but this passage suggests that her criticism is not aimed for Christianity as a religion, but rather with the ways in which Christianity, which could be a tool for empowering those who live in poverty, is instead used for their further oppression.

On the theme of the multifarious ways that impoverished people are degraded, Ehrenreich considers why a cleaner would choose to work for a corporate cleaning service, with pays so much less—$6.65 an hour—versus work as an independent cleaner, which pays up to $15 an hour. She notes that the main advantage to working for a corporate cleaning service is that you do not have to build up a clientele or own a car. Many of the employees are former welfare recipients; she interviews the owner of The Maids franchise in Massachusetts, who tells her that half of the employees are former welfare recipients. She realizes that her coworkers at The Maids are in desperate situations that make it even more difficult for them to escape from poverty. When she finds that she is coming short on next month’s rent despite her seven-day work week, she spends 70 minutes calling various agencies that offer resources to the impoverished and manages to get a small amount of food ($7 worth) for free using a food voucher.

The Maids epitomizes the ways that corporations and managers take shortcuts and value profits over the happiness and health of their workers. The workers have no benefits and receive so little pay that many of them cannot afford to eat healthy meals (or even what could be considered a meal). The young women that she cleans with do not have real food to eat at lunchtime. While she eats a sandwich, she notices that some of the younger women eat only a bag of chips, and she worries for their health because the job is physically taxing. She buys a soda for a young coworker named Rosalie, who does not have 0.89 cents to buy one for herself.

She comments at length on the physical pain that her coworkers experience. The Constant Risk of Injury is a persistent theme when she works at The Maids. Holly’s ankle injury, which she attempts to work through at the urging of the manager, causes Ehrenreich much guilt and conflict because she feels she cannot stand by while a woman works with a sprained ankle. Ehrenreich comments on her own physical health and ability to clean the homes, which she acknowledges is a product of “decades of better-than-average medical care, a high-protein diet, and workouts in gyms that charge $400-$500 a year” (90). She states, “If I am now a productive fake member of the working class, it’s because I haven’t been working, in any hard physical sense, long enough to have ruined my body” (90-91).

There is one thing that bonds her to her fellow co-workers: Ehrenreich finds that she has a severe allergic reaction to something after working at The Maids, leaving her with red itchy bumps on her body. The silver lining in the terrible itchiness that does not leave her for days is that it bonds her with her fellow cleaners, who all suffer from a variety of ailments and pains and discuss them frequently with each other.

Ehrenreich includes additional commentary on the status of low-wage workers as the lowest rung of society, comparable to the untouchables or invisible people. She notes the lack of representation on television, where most characters have high-status and high-paying jobs, and there Is little to no acknowledgment of the existence of a huge low-wage worker population. She states that “the poor have disappeared from the culture at large” (117-18). This cultural analysis and insight portray the contrast between the reality of life in the US and the Hollywood portrayals on television and film. She asserts that this omission further dehumanizes the impoverished, who are made to believe that they are essentially unseen and alone.

After her secret is “out,” she asks the cleaners how they feel about cleaning the homes of the wealthy while they are making so little money. Lori, a young woman, tells her that it inspires her to work harder because she wants to be like the people whose homes she cleans. Another named Colleen, a single mother of two children, says, “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they have. I mean, it’s nothing to me. But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then [...] if I had to [...] and still be able to buy groceries the next day” (119). Colleen’s desires contradict negative stereotypes of impoverished people, and the author’s inclusion of her coworker’s perspectives paints a portrait of the real faces behind the low-wage work that supports the wealthy and middle-class lifestyle, adding a bit of humanity to a class of workers who are often treated inhumanely.