KimElliott.net

Over the last few days I read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, an American journalist who tries to survive on wages of $6 and $7 dollars an hour, documenting the results. Ehrenreich works in turn as a waitress, hotel chambermaid, house cleaner and finally an employee of Wal-Mart.

I knew a lot of the book from a friend who’d read it over and would often quote passages at me until I was compelled to read it for myself. It was amazing. Some of the tales I recognised from my own early working class job experiences, or that of family members, other elements were shocking - like the women who take home salaries so low, they wouldn’t cover the cost of food to replace the calories they’d burnt doing their jobs (cleaning houses), let alone anything else.

I even snuck off from my own comfy office job to sit in the loo and read a chapter. When I finished Nickel and Dimed, I began Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, the next in the series, focusing on the white collar workers of the middle class. However, after tales of Americans sleeping in cars and skipping meals, it’s hard to feel anything for those suffering endless career coaching, networking and another day in front of the laptop, surfing job sites.