This is a useful book for showing just how vapid some of the arguments against a social safety net are. That low-paying jobs are easy, that assistance that is available on paper is available in practice, that class mobility is a matter of work ethic, or that poverty reveals a flawed character, are notions that don't survive contact with reality.

I've seen lots of reviews saying this book is insulting because Ehrenreich had family and wealth to return to if her experiment didn't work out. They say that she doesn't truly understand what it's like to be poor, so she has nothing to offer. I think this criticism is unfair. Ehrenreich says many times that her experience is easier than her co-workers'. She relates conversations and testimony from genuinely poor people. And in her evaluation of the experiment she concludes that the working class are under-compensated and under-valued by society. If she'd concluded that that life is not so hard, and that thrift and diligence could get you through, I'd agree with the critics, but she doesn't, so it's hard to imagine that these reviewers were reading the same book as me. ( )

I had high hopes for this book. Wealth disparity is a topic I've been interested in for years. Ehrenreich does get into a little bit, but I felt like too much of the book was her privilege showing. There was far more about her than there needed to be. In fact, I'd say more than half of the story was about her and if she was going the Gonzo journalism route, she wasn't entertaining enough. ( )

I have complex feelings about this book, but it does shed light on a huge societal problem that people shouldn't turn their eyes from. ( )

Too dated. Too much a character study by a journalist moonlighting as poor, rather than a more meaningful exploration. I much preferred Evicted, as the kind of rigorous social science I’m interested in. ( )

So many people say that if people only worked harder, they would be able to afford nice homes, adequate diets, decent schools for their children, and appropriate medical care. In 1999, author Barbara Ehrenreich, who had a PhD in biology, set out to see how true that was.
She traveled to three different cities–Key West, Florida, Portland, Maine, and Minneapolis, Minnesota–and planned to spend a month in each one. Her advance research said she would be able to find low paying jobs and affordable housing at each location and planned her budget with that in mind. She took a minimal amount of very basic clothing, rented cheap lodging and(with a credit card) cheap cars, and a little money to spend for deposits on housing and emergencies.
She found that life was a lot tougher than she anticipated. In most locations, it was almost impossible to find any housing in her price range (that being her salary) and what was available was extremely inadequate: poor maintenance, lack of a refrigerator or stove, etc., and even those sites were difficult to find. Often she ended up in a run-down motel or hotel that cost more than half of her salary. She also found she had to work two jobs just to afford that.
In Key West, she worked as a waitress and a hotel maid. The hours were long and their regulations stifling, In the restaurants, they were not allowed to talk to other servers or spend much time with their customers because it took them away from their other duties: setting tables, preparing dishes, cleaning up, etc. They were also unable to sit down while on duty and their breaks were few and short. They split their tips with the busboys and dishwashers. In both situations, patrons tended to ignore them unless they wanted something and then tended to look down on them.
In Maine, she worked as a member of a national housecleaning crew company and in the dining room at a nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients and being able to eat leftover food in the second. Salaries in both cases were very low and, in the second, the unit was understaffed so she had to do more work to meet the needs of the residents without extra compensation Two benefits were doughnuts and coffee before going to work in the first situation (the company took in more than the workers received).
In Minnesota, one of her jobs was at Wal-mart. After an intensive orientation, she found that she was placed in departments about which she had little knowledge. After having to work overtime without being reimbursed (the time sheets were altered to remove the hours), she tried to get the employees to unionize.
The conditions under which Ehrenriech lived were terrible but she had advantages many lf her co-workers at each location lacked: She did not have anyone else, e.g., child, ill partner or parent, depending on her income and presence and was in good physical condition.
NICKLE AND DIMED is an excellent portrait of what life is really like for low-income people trying to make it in our society. Hopefully, readers will be more conscious of what they are trying to do and appreciate how much they are accomplishing without as much support, financially and socially, as they deserve. ( )