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

Based on preliminary research on average rent and wages, Ehrenreich predicts that Minnesota will offer the most “comfortable correspondence between income and rent” (122). She is surprised when it is the most difficult experience for her of the three locations. Her experience in Minneapolis highlights the uncertainty, lack of agency, and demoralization that is intrinsic to the lives of impoverished people in the US This amounts to a life of extreme complexity due to the mental and emotional resilience and organizational demands required for daily survival.

“Selling in Minnesota” especially emphasizes the dehumanizing aspect of the job hunt for low-wage workers. Ehrenreich describes how draining it is to lie on the applications and personality tests that require a servile obedience to authority: “It whittles you down to lie up to fifty times in the space of the fifteen minutes or so it takes to do a ‘survey’” (127). The numerous hoops that job seekers have to jump through make it even more difficult for them to secure jobs or compare offers. Using the process at Wal-Mart as an example, Ehrenreich reveals how candidates are unable to negotiate on their own behalf and are stripped of any sense of control or power over the hiring process as it unfolds.

She also explores the ways that drug testing is demeaning and pointless to the hiring process. Ehrenreich describes being forced to leave her purse with the nurse administering the test and peeing into a cup. To support her argument that drug tests are a useless filtering step for employing workers, she cites statistics that show that drug tests do not “lower absenteeism, accidents, or turnover” (128). However, in some cases, they work to lower employee morale. Ehrenreich speculates that this practice is a product of the multibillion-dollar drug-testing industry, adding that though the profit-motive is definitely a factor, she also thinks that it works to establish a hierarchy from the start, with the demeaning act of peeing in a cup for a job serving as a reminder of the employer’s authority. Finally, she suggests that one of the purposes of the drug testing is to create yet another obstacle; each job requires an application, interview, and drug test, and these all take considerable time and money to complete. This is especially difficult for most applicants, as they oftentimes have little money for extra expenses, such as gas, and lack easy access to transportation.

Wal-Mart’s treatment of its employees is highlighted as especially torturous. She sits obediently through the lengthy and mind-numbingly dull presentations on the history of Wal-Mart, the company’s values and anti-union stance, and many tedious rules in the associate’s handbook. Ehrenreich highlights rules that seem particularly strict, including rules about clocking out for 15-minute breaks (of which they only have two on a long shift), and no talking to fellow coworkers, as this is considered theft of the company’s time. This sounds absurd to Ehrenreich as she considers how one of the most successful companies in the history of the world refuses to allow its employees to chat because this is considered theft of the company’s time.

Later in the chapter, she turns the idea on its head. She feels older and more ragged from the dullness of her Wal-Mart job. She comments on the strange way that time passes because of the repetitiveness and boredom of the job, and that one could easily spend an entire lifetime this way: “What you don’t necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you’re actually selling is your life” (187). Rather than the associates stealing the company’s “time,” Ehrenreich suggests that the company is in fact stealing their time, or their entire lives, by underpaying them and overworking them.

Later as she puts away clothing and looks at the clothing tags from countries all around the world, she thinks about how Wal-Mart has influenced the world: she notes Wal-Mart’s important role in securing “the reign of globalized, totalized, paved-over, corporatized everything” (179). This makes her sad as she contemplates that even beautiful, “exotic” places have become swallowed up by this great “machine” (179). Her reference to the Kathie Lee Gifford clothing line’s use of sweatshop labor alludes to the vast system of injustice outside of the US, where women and children labor in far worse conditions for far less pay (and sometimes no pay at all) for large corporations. Though Ehrenreich’s focus is on the injustices occurring within the US, in the treatment of low-wage workers, this reference draws the reader’s attention to the interconnected global system of injustice that she views as supporting the profit-making machine of capitalism. Ehrenreich received much criticism for her anti-capitalism views, but this section highlights that her concern is primarily for the fair treatment of humans in America and beyond.

Another theme that this chapter explores is the situation of impoverished women in particular. She notes that she never fully understood that impoverished women “really do have more to fear than women who have houses with double locks and alarm systems and husbands or dogs” (152). That changes when she tries to sleep at the Clearview Inn, the low-priced motel that is the only housing she is able to secure close to Wal-Mart. Her hotel room is small, moldy, has no AC or fan, and does not even have a screen over the window. The window curtain is transparently thin, giving little privacy. She hardly sleeps the first night in the motel. As such, she shows up exhausted to her first day of work at Wal-Mart after an anxious night.

There are almost no apartments available for low-income people in the area. The lack of affordable housing in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area is explained by a simple economic axiom: “The stronger the economy, the stronger the upward pressure on rents” (172). This means that the rich suburbs, where there is the most job growth, have housing that is far too expensive for those who are impoverished to afford; thus, impoverished people are pushed into housing that is further and further away from their places of work. This paradox highlights the inability of the wealthy and the impoverished to coexist in the current economic system without serious assistance to those who are impoverished in the form of housing that is affordable.

She goes to the Community Emergency Assistance Program (CEAP), and a worker suggests that she move into a women’s shelter until she can save up enough money for rent. The CEAP worker who interviews her keeps mixing her up with someone else who also works at Wal-Mart who came in for housing assistance. Ehrenreich considers what it means that she and one of her coworkers are both in this situation. She emphasizes another fact, that securing help from community resources is a byzantine and time-intensive process that is difficult to navigate for anyone, and this would be even more difficult for those with little money, time, or access to transportation. Her attempts to get help with food and housing resources from community programs for those who are impoverished capture how difficult it is for people to access even the resources that are ostensibly designed to assist them. This emphasizes one of the most common Misconceptions Around Low-Wage Work that Ehrenreich seeks to dispel: that low-wage work is the path out of poverty. In fact, low-wage work seems to doom people to even deeper poverty, as they are never able to get ahead financially, are constantly exhausted, and suffer from frequent physical injuries due to the repetitive physical work that they perform. Ehrenreich’s living situation in Minneapolis emphasizes the feeling of fear, instability, and anxiety that characterize the situations of those who are impoverished who are on the verge of being unhoused, despite working full-time jobs.

The terrible conditions of the motel where Ehrenreich stays affect her mental health. She notices that the stress of her home life is affecting her as she begins to scratch at her clothing incessantly. Though the situation is dire at the Clearview, she observes that the people living around her at Clearview are not “drug dealers and prostitutes,” but are just normal people who don’t have the money to rent an apartment (160). The comment undercuts the Pervasive Stereotypes about Poverty that flood the American consciousness; those who are impoverished or work low-paying jobs are oftentimes viewed as “defective,” “immoral,” experiencing addiction, or in some way to blame for their poverty. Ehrenreich shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Through her experience as an educated white woman without children, almost as close to the ideal circumstances as possible, she illustrates that poverty is a trap from which it is incredibly difficult to free oneself. This develops her thesis that low-wage work is not the panacea for poverty that the Welfare Reform Bill of 1996 presented it to be.

Ehrenreich bemoans how mean and petty she becomes under the stressful conditions of working at Wal-Mart. She notices a change in her personality and behavior as she becomes more resentful and exhausted—changing from “Barbara” to “Barb” (165). She is ashamed of her thoughts about the weight of the customers, and these comments could definitely be viewed as problematic for a variety of reasons. However, by including her worst thoughts, she emphasizes how much working at Wal-Mart brings out her “worst self,” because she felt stressed and depressed about her situation.

Unionization is a major topic in this chapter, and Ehrenreich highlights the challenges to unionization that are built into the work experience of low-wage workers, one of which is the fact that the workers are discouraged from viewing themselves as having any value to the company. Another is the fact that they are discouraged from talking to each other and that pay rates are considered a “taboo” topic in US culture. By including the hopeful story of the hotel and restaurant workers who went on strike, Ehrenreich ends the final chapter on an optimistic tone that sets forth a potential path for workers to unionize and fight for better pay, benefits, and greater dignity.