Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Negative effects of social classes
Negative effects of social class
Negative effects of social classes
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Negative effects of social classes
In Chapter two of Nickeled and Dimed, Ehrenreich moves to Portland, Maine. She decided to move to Portland because she believed it would be a better place for her to fit in, but soon realized the grass was not always greener on the other side. She encountered many problems in the beginning of her move to a new town including finding a new home without stable income, no references and no address. She visits many places to find a home, temporary or permanent. The first night, Ehrenreich has to stay in a Motel 6 room and recognizes that Portland does not have many places to stay in her budget because the wealthy vacationers stay in Motels and the rates will not drop until after Labor Day. She discovers a motel named Blue Haven which fits in her budget. After her luck in Key …show more content…
Ehrenreich feeds the residents at the nursing home then washes the dishes. She meets Pete and Linda which are two very sincere people that show her around. Ehrenreich soon finds out that the maid service she takes on has a lot of rules, has strenuous work and has a limited time frame to do so many rooms. She meets several other maids who don’t look well and definitely have no money. Ehrenreich works harder to pick up Holly’s workload because she is in such bad health and pregnant but unable to miss work because she has no money. Holly ends up tripping and has to call Ted, the owner. Before Ted said anything about shaking it off, Ehrenreich gets on the phone and tells him she doesn’t care what he says that Holly needed to go to the doctor and he didn’t need to push her around. After the conformation with Ted, Ehrenreich and Marge have a deep conversation about Ehrenreich getting fired for the way she talked to Ted. Marge tells Ehrenreich that she would not get fired because she passed the test and without meaning to insult Marge, Ehrenreich screams that anyone could have passed the
Ehrenreich’s use of statistical information also proves to her audience that she in fact has done her research on this topic. She admits that poverty is a social topic that she frequently talks about. She researched that in 1998 the National Coalition for the Homeless reported that nationwide on average it would take about a wage of $8.89 to afford a one bedroom apartment and that the odds of common welfare recipients landing a job that pays such a “living wage” were about 97 to 1. Ehrenreich experiences this statistic in first person when she set out job hunting in Key West, Florida when she applied to 20 different jobs, ranging from wait tables to housekeeping, and of those applications, zero were responded to.
The author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich, began her experiment in Key West because she lived near there. Then she moved to Portland, ME since it was mostly white. She finished her investigation in Minnesota, where she thought there would be a pleasant stability between rent and wages. From the beginning, she ruled out high profile cities as a result of the high-rent and the lacking amount of jobs. As a secretive journalist, she related the near poverty experience to a life long ago when she was a child or raising her own children, as a result she endured the crushing feeling of anxiety. She knew she had a home to return to and her savings to fall back on therefore, the feeling of anxiety would not be experienced
In the novel Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehnreich, there are many hurtles she must overcome to experience the life of a low income worker. She sets some ground rules for herself, such as always having a car, and starting out with a certain amount of money for her down payment on an apartment. Although the rules are doable, she admits that she broke all of the rules at least once. Even though Barbara didn't hold to her original plan, she was still able to reveal her appeals clearly.
...Even with the pitfalls in Ehrenreich's research, she managed to shine a light on the everyday plight of the low wage worker. She achieved employment at several different low wage service jobs and she also achieved friendliness with the coworkers there. Unfortunately, she could not achieve her goal of making enough money to pay the following month's rent at her accommodations, as she dictated to be her sign of success at the beginning of the project. Without this success, she can truly say that the plight of the low wage worker and the women leaving welfare is an extremely difficult one with great hardship and lack of fulfillment as these participants of the lower class work day to day to keep their chins up and make do with what, even if little, they have.
Florence is in her headquarters at the hospital, she works at. She is writing a letter to a patient's mother. When all of a sudden, Mary, a fellow nurse, walks in. Mary and Florence talk about how nice it is to work with each other and how happy Mary is here. Mary quotes, “ I’m glad I’m here with you Miss Nightengale. Good Night.” at the end of their discussion.Also, they talk about how both of their families don’t really want them there. They talk for a little and Florence seems very at home and happy. Later, after Mary had left, two gentlemen come to talk to Florence. It is Dr. Goodale and Dr. Hall that have come to speak with her. After talking for a while they both leave and let Florence to her work. In the hospital, Florence seemed like an entire new person, she was much more
She sets out to explore the world that welfare mothers are entered. The point was not so much to become poor as to get a sense of the spectrum of low-wage work that existed-from waitressing to housekeeping. She felt mistreated when it was announced that there has been a report on “drug activity”, as a result, the new employees will be required to be tested, as will the current employees on a random basis. She explained feeling mistreated, “I haven 't been treated this way-lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations-since junior high school” (Ehrenreich,286). The other problem is that this job shows no sign of being financially viable. Ehrenreich states that there is no secret economies that nourish the poor, “If you can 't put up the two months’ rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week” (286). On the first day of housekeeping, she is yelled and given nineteen rooms to clean. For four hours without a break she striped and remake the beds. At the end of the experience she explained that she couldn 't hold two jobs and couldn 't make enough money to live on with one as where single mothers with children. She has clarified that she has advantages compare to the long-term
In her unforgettable memoir, Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to explore the lives of the working poor under the proposed welfare reforms in her hometown, Key West, Florida. Temporarily discarding her middle class status, she resides in a small cheap cabin located in a swampy background that is forty-five minutes from work, dines at fast food restaurants, and searches all over the city for a job. This heart-wrenching yet infuriating account of hers reveals the struggles that the low-income workers have to face just to survive. In the except from Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich uses many rhetorical strategies to illustrate the conditions of the low wage workers including personal anecdotes of humiliation at interviews, lists of restrictions due to limited
Ehrenreich notices how troublesome a minimum wage workers life is by her pretending to be a minimum wage worker as well. A strength of Ehrenreich's argument is that she was able to show examples of how some of her coworkers lived poorly. An example that she gives is, “Gail is sharing a room in a well-known downtown flophouse for $250 a week. Her roommate,a male friend, has begun hitting on her, driving her nuts,but the rent would be impossible alone.” (25). Some of her coworkers had to go through tedious situations as can't get out of them because they can't afford to live on their own. This shows a strength in Ehrenreich's argument because it give more credibility. Another strength in her argument is she went to go experience low wage work first-hand. She said, “Maybe when I got into the project, I would discover some hidden economies in the world of the low-wage worker” (3). Ehrenreich realized that the only way that she was going to get the answer was by doing the job for herself even though she didn't want to at first. By her experiencing this first-hand she is able to strengthen the argument because she will be able to effectively convey her message. If someone else were to conduct the experiment then there would have probably been a lot more holes throughout the
During the middle of the book, Ehrenreich writes, "Maybe, it occurs to me, that I 'm getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black (p. 100)." I found this interesting because African Americans continuously face inequality due to race, which correlates with the inequalities that lower classes in society face. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich emphasizes that there are "hidden costs" to being poor, which includes those in poverty who cannot find a way out. The working poor, who Ehrenreich gets to know through work, live in hotels paying daily. These people in the book describe to Ehrenreich that that would rent an apartment, but they cannot afford the security deposit and starting costs. The working poor in the book also must buy unhealthy meals at fast-food restaurants because they cannot afford kitchen appliances or food to cook with. People suffering in poverty often believe they are stuck there and cannot get out, so they
Millions of Americans work full-time, day in and day out, making near and sometimes just minimum wage. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them in part by the welfare claim, which promises that any job equals a better life. Barbara wondered how anyone can survive, let alone prosper, on $6-$7 an hour. Barbara moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, working in the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon realizes that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts and in most cases more than one job was needed to make ends meet. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all of its glory, consisting of
After a decade of not seeing his mother and brother, Howard returns to his hometown in Mississippi. It is evident how thrilled he is. As the train approaches town, he begins “to feel curious little movements of the heart, like a lover as he nears his sweetheart” (par. 3). He expects this visit to be a marvelous and welcoming homecoming. His career and travel have kept his schedule extremely full, causing him to previously postpone this trip to visit his family. Although he does not immediately recognize his behavior in the past ten years as neglectful, there are many factors that make him aware of it. For instance, Mrs. McLane, Howard’s mother, has aged tremendously since he last saw her. She has “grown unable to write” (par. 72). Her declining health condition is an indicator of Howard’s inattentiveness to his family; he has not been present to see her become ill. His neglect strikes him harder when he sees “a gray –haired woman” that showed “sorrow, resignation, and a sort of dumb despair in her attitude” (par. 91). Clearly, she is growing old, and Howard feels guilty for not attending her needs for such a long time period: “his throat [aches] with remorse and pity” (par. 439). He has been too occupied with his “excited and pleasurable life” that he has “neglected her” (par. 92). Another indication of Howard’s neglect is the fact that his family no longer owns the farm and house where he grew up. They now reside in a poorly conditioned home:
In this book, Ehrenreich tries to work in three different places to see what it is like to work as a minimum wage worker. Ehrenreich worked as a server in Florida, housekeeper in Miami, and sales person in Minnesota, and still she didn’t make enough money to live comfortable. As she says, “Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don’t need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rent too high”(Ehrereich’s 199). She notices how hard it is for poor people to try to survive when they have to work with a minimum
Sue, 36, and Tom, 39, present for an initial consultation along with their two children-- Alice, 15, and Ted, 7. Sue does most of the talking, while Alice sits slumped in her chair with a sullen look on her face. Ted looks anxious and stays close to his mother. They have come because Sue is concerned about her children. Alice’s
...ech and articulate language used by the academics. She loves the lifestyle and classy tastes due to the difference to her tedious cyclical lifestyle. Frank clashes with Rita as the things he appreciates these days, Rita has in an abundance: individuality, wit and effacement. He likens the idea of simple work and simple pleasures, in effect he wants to go back a step, Rita wants to advance forward and change thus leaving Frank behind, showing the clash between the two characters wanting to effectively have each other’s lifestyles. This causes comical collisions between them, wanting to change their lifestyles to potentially achieve their dream. The irony is that as a result of Franks lectures, he has turned a once individual and creative student into a pretentious façade. Rita has become everything that Frank despises due to her compliance to conventional education.
Erin comes across some files related to Donna Jensen and PG & E. Erin got confused after seeing the Donna’s medical report and a letter by PG & E offering her 66,000 USD for her house. She starts to find out by visiting Hinkley and discovers the chromium issue. At this point Erin starts to think about people and enters in the stage 6 of moral development.