My essay 3 explores the way that the current economic state has impacted religion in the US.

On the last page of the “Evaluation”, Ehrenreich asks, “Isn’t [guilt] what we’re supposed to feel? But guilt doesn’t go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame–shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others”(221). This passage struck me as it is one in which Ehrenreich directly addresses the audience. One key part of her statement here is that the audience, because they feel shame or guilt regarding the inequalities of poverty, is not itself impoverished. This is a large supposition. Although Ehrenreich acknowledges several working class people’s opinions regarding her novel in the afterword, she seems to navigate the majority of the novel with the assumption that the reader is more like less as she is. How might this assumption affect the novel? Would she have been less comical/offensive had she understood her audience differently?

Ehrenreich is certainly very critical of modern Christianity in the United States. She discredits the sermon she hears in Portland because she feels the church does not actually help the poor in the way Jesus did and are therefore not the caring organization they make themselves out to be. It seems only later does Ehrenreich realize the importance of God to some of the poor people she meets. Caroline believes the lord is responsible for her luck turning around, but Ehrenreich, as shown through her sarcastic commentary, is skeptical. Moreover, Melissa, a coworker at Wal-Mart, views that the “disorganized patches” in her past are over because she has accepted Christ in her life. Since Ehrenreich has not spent a great deal of time working as a low wage worker, perhaps she cannot criticize the tendency to cling to God. Clearly, this is a tendency among some of the people she meets.

Throughout the book, I have been very critical of Ehrenreich. However, as I finished the book, I must say that at the very least I applaud her for going out and doing the work in order to acquire a better understanding of low wage workers. While it does seem as though Ehrenreich went into her task with the answers she wanted (and therefore highlighting things that align with her prior preconceptions), I do think that what she found and looked at is very important. In particular, I liked reading her evaluation at the end of the book. I believe that it offers a plethora of information that Ehrenreich gathered on her journey. It also provides further insight into the problem she analyzed.

There are so many passages that I’ve highlighted as I finished the book that point to really uncomfortable statements made by Ehrenreich. I think comments like the following one point to her incapability to really grasp the full meaning of the work that she is doing. As we have found with the comment she made about prisoners of war, she likes to go straight for the gutter.

On page 100 she states:

“True, I don’t look so good by the end of the day and probably smell like eau de toilet and sweat, but it’s the brilliant green-and-yellow uniform that gives me away, like prison clothes on a fugitive. Maybe, it occurs to me, I’m getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black.”

Obviously I get her meaning, but the way she categorizes a group of people is poorly founded. For one she assumes that all black people must either feel like prisoners where ever they go or that many black people are indeed prisoners. Either way you look at it, it is wrong. Especially given her position, even in the low wage community as a white woman, she is not experiencing the worst of the worst which many black and latino/a populations are exposed to. So no, she is definitely not getting “a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black.”

I found the passage about her alter-ego Barb on page 169 particularly interesting. Here, she claims that the Barbara from her normal life and the Barb who works at Walmart are completely different people. Barb, she explains, is “meaner and slyer” than she is. While this passage stands out to me, I am having trouble deciding what exactly I think of it. On the one hand, it seems quite honest and understandable. On the other hand, it seems almost like she is claiming that minimum-wage workers are inferior (personality wise) to those with a higher income. What do you all think of this part?

While exploring the possibility of migrating to California’s Central Valley, Ehrenreich mentions her worry that, “…Latinos might be hogging the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they so often do”(121). For me, this passage was startling as it denotes yet another instance in which Ehrenreich does not clearly show her intentions. With a such a rash generalization, I first thought this statement was satire. She is thus illuminating the flaws in such generalizations regarding “Latinos” and minimum wage labor. However, Ehrenreich later uses this statement as reasoning for her choice to live in Minnesota, not California. If this is not a satire, why then has she not provided stats to backup such a generalized, potentially hurtful and untrue statement?

I noticed in our first reading that Barbara was constantly adjusting her mindset to give herself a or ethical moral motivation for the job so as to perhaps lessen the mental toll of the job. In the reading for today, she does this once again on page 66 when she says, “I will become a luminous beacon in the gathering darkness of dementia.” Now that she’s adjusting her mindset once again, I wonder if that is sort of unaddressed privilege that she has since she is working there for only short periods of time. The other workers at the nursing home seem far more cynical about their day to day affairs. What do other people think about Barbara’s privilege to adjust her mindset accordingly to the task at hand?

In about the middle of this chapter, Ehrenreich describes her experiences going out into the world after her shift. She has on her maid outfit which makes her stand out, and combined with her strong odor, she gets a lot of mean looks and generally poor treatment. My problem (and confusion) comes when she writes, “Maybe, it occurs to me, I’m getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black” (100).

I genuinely do not understand why she would think that. I get that she said maybe it’s a tiny glimpse, but to me, that statement is such an incredible stretch, and given her past microagressions, I don’t think she is in a position to feel that way. She is a white woman from the middle class. Maybe if she had shown more insight into race relations in the 90’s or even elaborated on her statement, I might understand. But instead, she just drops that sentence at the end of a paragraph and then goes on describing her day. I want to talk more about this in class, but right now, I strongly disagree with Ehrenreich on this one.

When Ehrenreich begins her journey as a cleaning lady, she talks about the idea of distrust between the homeowners and the cleaning crew. She writes, “Ted encourages us to imagine that we are under surveillance at all time in each house… Owners set traps for us,” (93). To me this is a troubling dilemma. From the perspective of people who clean the houses, this is an insult and makes it seem like these “privileged” homeowners are out to get them. However, on the other hand, it is hard for the homeowners to grant all their trust in someone they don’t know. The harsh reality is that things do get stolen, but it is hard to stop these incidents from happening without casting distrust over everyone.

This idea also connects back to our class discussion on Monday when we talked about the managers of the restaurants monitoring the worker’s behavior for anything suspicious. In my opinion, I feel like it is hard to maintain a positive self image when everyone is doubting you.

“If you want to be fit, just fire your cleaning lady and do it yourself (90).”

This quote from the trainer speaks to the following:

1) the disposable nature of the working class (“just fire”)

2) irony- the cleaning ladies are sweating from dehydration and manual labor which they do to survive however the owner only sees the physical gains of the work

3) lack of regard for the job the maids do

After Barbara first arrives at The Maids, her manager, Tammy, encourages Barbara that, “cleaning is in our blood”(61). Does this quotation refer to the working class or the female gender? If it pertains to gender, where else has gender played into Barbara’s discussion of the working class? How does Joy fit into her understanding of gender in the working class? How about Vic?

“I can’t help letting my mind wander to the implications of Alzheimer’s disease for the theory of an immortal soul. Who wants an afterlife if the immediate pre-afterlife is spent clutching the arms of a wheelchair, head bent back at forty-five degrees, eyes and mouth wide open and equally mute? Is the “soul” that lives forever the one we possess at the moment of death… or is it our personally best soul-say, the one that indwells in us at the height of our cognitive powers and moral aspirations?” (68)

This passage that Ehrenreich writes is intriguing in the context of her personal views. Previously she is known to have called herself, a “fourth generation atheist” which then leads the reader to wonder why she bothers with this consideration of the immortal soul at all if she doesn’t hold that faith. In fact she even criticizes the entire demonstration on page 69, “I got up to leave… and walk out to search for my car, half expecting to find Jesus out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole.” To accept her claims with more veracity, I would like Ehrenreich to also address the reasons behind the poor’s reliance on religion as opposed to mocking their religious declarations.

One thing that struck me about Ehrenreich’s account is the mentality that a minimum wage worker has. The tasks they have and the hours they work lead their bodies to exhaustion. It gets to the point that when they finally take a seat, she describes “my flesh seems to bond to the seat” (32). The people who work these jobs have no choice but to continue. In order to get by, they need to take on as much work as humanly possible. Ehrenreich experiences this first hand and talks about the ways in which she stayed sane. She discusses the idea of taking each day as it comes, rather than thinking about the next day, or the day after that. She writes, “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!” (33). You have to literally give it your all each and every day because, like I said before, these people don’t have a choice. Ehrenreich also talks about how the customers are a source of motivation. At the Hearthside restaurant, she knew the people were hardworking locals, just like herself. She wanted to give them the best experience possible because they deserve “the closest to a ‘fine dining’ experience that the grubby circumstances will allow” (18). It takes a certain kind of mentality to survive this overwhelming lifestyle and we get a glimpse of this through Ehrenreich’s experience.

As I’m reading this book, I’ve noticed a couple of infuriating times where Barbara falsely equates herself to a war hero or in some way pats herself on the back for “surviving” a day in the life of something she willingly chose to do in contrast to the people who are all but forced to live in these conditions. I’ve compiled a list of quotes again to best voice my frustrations.

1. “‘Hardly anyone comes back after the first day.’ I feel powerfully vindicated -a survivor- but it would take a long time, probably months, before I could hope to be accepted into this sorority” (31).
   • First off, I strongly dislike how she refers to her coworkers as a “sorority”. What they do to make ends meet has nothing in common with the privilege inherently associated with any college sorority. I am also against how making it a single of day working in a diner in any way makes Barbara a “survivor”.
2. “In real life I am moderately brave, but plenty of brave people shed their courage in POW camps, and maybe something similar goes on in the infinitely more congenial milieu of the low-wage American workplace” (41).
   • I shouldn’t even have to say this, but no. The experience of a PRISONER OF WAR has very little in common with Barbara’s situation. It is an incredibly different set of circumstances, especially for Barbara, who again, willing chose to do this.
3. “Much of what happens next is lost in the fog of war” (47).
   • I think this is a totally rational opinion, but Barbara’s experience is very much removed from anything to do with war. I find her continuous analogy between her experiences and  those of war incredibly off-putting.

As I’m reading this book, I’m finding Barbara’s attitude toward the working class increasingly troubling. I want to talk about this more in class, and so here are some of the instances that have bothered me most. (I’ll add to this list as we read on.)

1. “in the American workplace, the only thing people have to call their own is the tumors they are nourishing and the spare moments they devote to feeding them” (31).
   • I can’t even really summarize my thoughts on this one but she writes as if these people don’t have families or lives of their own to value.
2. “the Overseas park is a nest of crime and crack, and I am hoping at least for some vibrant multicultural street life” (39).
   • I feel like this quote undersells that fact her neighbors are on drugs and committing crimes because of a complete lack of opportunity in their lives. It’s insulting how she sees people of color and jumps to stereotypes, hoping for little bit of “vibrant multicultural street life” to keep her middle-class self entertained.

Something that really stood out to me was how strongly Ehrenreich’s opinions pervade the piece. For instance, when she is discussing her first attempt to get a job, she says that she was asked to pee in a cup before they would give her the position. She describes having to do so as an “indignity” (14). To me, this does not seem like an indignity, but rather a precaution for the employer. I also find it hard to believe that this sort of test is required only at low-paying jobs. Do you guys find this to be an “indignity” and if so, why?

Regardless of the many problems I have with Barbara, I don’t understand the reasoning for keeping her car, or at least using it to the extend which she does. Most people in the working class don’t have the luxury of owning a car. They have to take public transportation, and if Barbara is so committed to living their lifestyle, why does she keep a car? I could understand if she held onto it in case of emergencies, but she uses it everyday to get to and from work. She claims that this decision was made because “a story about waiting for buses would not be very interesting to read” (5), but I don’t buy it. I feel like she was just being lazy. I personally think that including travels on public transportation would have bettered her story and increased its realism.

In the first 60 pages of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich describes low minimum wage workers who barely make their livings. Simultaneously, her point about “Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism — you know, go out there and try it for themselves” (1) sparks my interest. Just learning the theory or hearing from others does not provide enough reality to the facts of something that we want to know. In order to explore minimum wage workers’ lives, the journalist in Nickel and Dimed puts herself in low wage workers’ shoes so that readers know how hard it really is to support housing, food, childcare, medical care, etc. In another case, the new generation after a genocide would not fully understand the awful emotional pain of survivors, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Is it always true that we need to experience a phenomenon in order to understand it?