num_pages: 240
description: Millions of Americans work full-time year-round for poverty-level wages. In 1998 Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive let alone prosper on $6-$7 an hour? To find out Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress hotel maid house cleaner nursing home aide and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity anxiety and surprising generosity--a land of Big Boxes fast food and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight humor and passion this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.
language: English
title: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
publisher: Owl Books (Henry Holt)