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Nathaniel Friend

Mrs. Stinespring

AP English

August 1st, 2010

AP English Language Questions for Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, 1011
Answer the following questions in complete sentences. Read carefully. The answers may be found in the
reading.

1. Near the outset, Ehrenreich (speaking of her own sister) employs the term “wage slave.” What
does she mean by this?

Ehrenreich is referring to the hopelessness of going through one low paid job after another. Her sister will
inevitably stay in her lower class position all her life unless she becomes a “skilled’ worker. Jobs like a phone
company business rep, a factory worker, and a receptionist are the only jobs she will ever know being a wage
slave.

2. What are the three rules the author sets for herself at the beginning of Nickel and Dimed? Does she
ever break them? If so, when and why, in your view, does she do so?

Rule #1 “I could not, in my search for jobs, fall back on any skills derived from my education or usual
work.”
Rule #2 “I had to take the highest-paying job that was offered me and do my best to hold it.”
Rule#3 “I had to take the cheapest accommodations I could find, at least the cheapest that offered an
acceptable level of safety and privacy.”

Yes. Ehrenreich breaks her rules. She should have classified her rules as guidelines. Many times she breaks
the rules and lets the infractions remain small. She gets offered a job in a plumbing department at Menards late
in the book that said to offer $10 an hour, but instead, chooses the Wal-Mart job at $7 an hour, breaking rule
number two. I think she chooses the Wal-Mart job for its atmosphere over the plumbing job. Also, she might
have been living too well if she made $10 an hour and would lose valid points in her book. Ehrenreich even
admits, “I tried to stick to these rules, but in the course of the project, all of them were bent or broken…” She
tells an interviewer that she could greet guests with the appropriate foreign language greeting, also breaking rule
number one.
3. Early on, the author tells us that she has a Ph.D. in biology. How, if at all, does this figure into the
narrative? What does Ehrenreich’s scientific training bring to the “old-fashioned journalism” of
this book?

Ehrenreich’s training pointed her attention to living conditions more than someone who might have a
business degree. A person with a business degree would complain more about the businesses’ reputation or
where their money goes towards rather than Ehrenreich, who focuses more on the lives of her coworkers and
the conditions she works in, like when she refers to Jerry’s as a “fat person’s hell” and how she befriends
George, an immigrant who needs a friend. Later, after witnessing a coworker, Holly, break one of her bones,
she prepares a remark for Ted her boss, “I can put up with shit and snot and every other gross substance I
encounter in this line of work. The only thing I’m squeamish about is human pain. I’m sorry, I tried to ignore it,
but it undermines my efficiency when I have to work alongside people who are crying, fainting, starving or
otherwise visibly suffering” (pg 112).

4. Why does Ehrenreich assert in her Introduction that “a story about waiting for buses would not
be very interesting to read”? What are the context and rationale for this remark? And given as
much, do you agree?

Ehrenreich wants her book to be about being in the action rather than waiting to find action. She wants
interesting details to report, not the color of a bus stop’s bench. She’s right. A book about waiting for buses
would not be very interesting to read, but neither would a book about a white female complaining. In the book,
she is starting to list off some untouchable luxuries that she will have at her disposal: driving her own car, or a
Rent-A-Wreck and using her ATM card if the question of food ever became serious.

5. Early in Chapter One, Ehrenreich notes that, in terms of low-wage work, “the want ads are not a
reliable measure of the actual jobs available at any particular time.” Explain why this is so.

Employers will put out a want ad for their job because “nobody lasts more than a couple of weeks” (pg 15).
After three days, Ehrenreich receives no calls from the twenty places she applied off the want ads. Obviously,
they are in no measure, reliable.

6. At one point, Ehrenreich details the living conditions of her fellow workers at the Hearthside.
Reviewing these arrangements, explain how each set-up compares with the author’s own “$500
efficiency” quarters.

Ehrenreich’s goal is to spend $500 or less for rent, whether by month or week by week for four weeks.
While in Key West, she lives in a “cabin” with a white floor and a firm mattress, surrounded by a swamp, for
$675 a month, using the extra money for gas and food (pg 12). Gail shares an apartment with a male friend for
$250 a week. At a $125 a week, Gail spends $500 a month. Many of Ehrenreich’s coworkers are living with
other people to help pay rents. Claude lives with three other people. Pregnant Annette lives with her mother.
Marianne lives with her boyfriend and shares a one-person trailer. Andy lives on a boat and Joan lives in her
van. Tina shares a room in Days Inn with her husband at $60 a night ($1,680 a month). Billy, the wealthiest at
the Hearthside, owns his own trailer, paying $400 a month for the lot. Most of Ehrenriech’s coworkers parallel
with her own $500 a month efficiency or pay more. Living alone, Ehrenriech seems well off to only pay $500 a
month and have a solid roof over her head and a mattress.

7. Waiting tables at Jerry’s, the author meets a young dishwasher named George. Who is he? What
is his story? Why do he and Ehrenreich befriend one another? And why does she not “intervene”
when she learns from an assistant manager that George is thought to be a thief?

When Ehrenreich meets George, he is a nineteen-year-old Czech dishwasher who has been in the country
for a week, asking for a cigarette. He has a crew cut and an earring, but is hardworking and desperate for eye
contact. Ehrenreich knows a little about his home country, which deepens their relationship (She makes a note
about it, and he says “Yes, yes, 1989” but I will note that this book was being written only a decade later, not
two, how current readers might comprehend this). Ehrenreich plans to teach George fluent English,
jumpstarting many conversations. She learns that he was shipped over to Key West to work at the Hearthside,
letting his “agent” take every penny over $5 an hour. George is mistreated as an immigrant and is nonchalantly
referred to as “Joseph” by a coworker who does not mind to correct herself. All throughout the book,
Ehrenreich’s heart cares for the needy people in her environment (ex. Holly when working for the maids, breaks
one of her bones).

Why did Ehrenreich not intervene? Well, she beats around the bush of her own question, but remarks,
“Maybe, in a month or two more at Jerry’s, I might have regained my crusading spirit. Then again, in a month
or two I might have turned into a different person altogether—say, the kind of person who would have turned
George in.” (pg 41) Her job at Jerry’s had changed her. She had lost her crusading spirit and pondered if she
would “regain” it. For some reason, her hectic, monotonous life at work had begun to change her very life (In
the book she tells of how employers do not care as much for the hours your work, they want your entire life).

8. On her first–and last–day of housekeeping in Key West, Ehrenreich is met by a manager who
addresses her as “babe” and gives her “a pamphlet emphasizing the need for a positive attitude.”
When and where else, throughout the book, does the author encounter cheap talk or hollow
slogans in her endeavors as a low-wage worker? What purposes might such empty language
serve? Why is it so prevalent?

At most, if not all times when Ehrenreich goes for an interview or a new job, she is treated poorly. This
is because the low-wage employers she encounters wants their applicants to feel needy or generally lower class.
This happens when she interviews for Wal-Mart and Merry Maids. At Merry Maids she listens to an employer
complain for 75 minutes about finding reliable help and “warning” her to not calculate weekly pay into hours.
Many reasons may be suggested for empty talk between low wage employers and their employees. The boss
may not care. He may not need to be professional. He may want his workers to feel small. He may have grown
bitter in his rise to the top of the company. In view of all these suggestions, Ehrenreich fails to provide any
reliable evidence to this language being actually prevalent, only in the few places she applies. Not once does she
talk about the courtesy of an employer, which would hurt her case for selfish, wealthy corporations. Usually, in
her low-wage work, as Ehrenreich strives to prove, professional courtesy and respect is not prevalent.

9. In an extended footnote in Chapter Two, Ehrenreich explains how “the point” of the
housecleaning service where she is employed “is not so much to clean as to create the appearance
of having been cleaned.” Why is this? Why the deceit? Why does The Maids outfit not clean its
clients’ homes properly?

It is not so much deceit as it is giving the customer what they want. Most wealthy Americans want their
lavish houses to look nice. Their lives revolve around their reputation, what model car they drive, and how big
of a table they gorge at. Ultimately, the employer’s goal is to give the customer what they want in the quickest
amount of time to improve productivity between houses and upkeep finances, and when all that 90 or so percent
of customers want is the “pubic hairs” removed, the cleaners are instructed to divert from removing microbes,
using up extra time, energy, and money, thus hurting the company.

10. “The hands-and-knees approach is a definite selling point for corporate cleaning services like The
Maids,” the author writes. Explain why this “old-fashioned way” of housecleaning is thus
appealing. Why does it seem to, as Ehrenreich puts it, “gratify the consumers of maid services”?

“It is the primal posture of submission…that seems to gratify the consumers of maid services.” It is quite
obvious that in a world of fear (of thievery, the stock market crashing, economy dying) the wealthy like to know
that their money is being put to good use. The “primal posture of submission” (pg 84) is exactly what people
want to see, that the maids doing their work are not being dignified, as they would be if they used a mop, but are
being lowered to an “old-fashioned way” of labor.

11. Buying groceries with a voucher at a Shop-n-Save in Maine, Ehrenreich notes of the checkout
woman ringing up her purchases: “I attempt to thank her, but she was looking the other way at
nothing in particular.” What might such body language mean? Why, if at all, is it telling?

The body language given from the cashier implied that she did not think to notice Ehrenreich, her customer
(or guest), but stared off somewhere other than where she needed to be looking. This might be the start of
Ehrenreich noticing disrespect from other people from being a maid.

12. Looking back on Chapter Two as a whole, what connections would you make between maids and
minorities in the United States? What about between maids and poverty, and maids and
“invisibility”? Refer to the text itself when making your links.

Maids “are not visible” (pg 99). Holly believes that homeowners “think [she is] stupid. They
think [she has] nothing better to do with [her] time” (pg 100). “‘We’re nothing to these people,’ she said.
‘We’re just maids.’ Nor are we much of anything to anyone else. Even convenience store clerks, who
are $6-an-hour gals themselves, seem to look down on us.” Minorities in the U.S. are looked down upon
like this, if not spat on, swept under the rug, and shoved away. The maids believed they were seen as
lower than humans, just as many people see minorities.

Ehrenreich informs that the convenience store clerks make $6-an-hour, doing much less manual
labor than the maids (scrubbing on their hands and knees, etc…).

“But a maids’ uniform has the opposite effect. At one place where we stopped for refreshments,
an actual diner with a counter, I tried to order iced tea to take out, but the waitress just kept standing
there chatting with a coworker, ignoring my ‘Excuse me’s.’ Then there’s the supermarket. I used to stop
on my way home from work, but I couldn’t take the stares, which easily are translatable into: What are
you doing here? And, No wonder she’s poor, she’s got a beer in her shopping cart! True, I don’t look so
good…but it’s the brilliant green-and-yellow uniform that gives me away, like prison clothes on a
fugitive… I’m getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black” (pg 100). The text speaks for
itself.

“No one is going to say, after I vacuum ten rooms and still have time to scrub a kitchen floor,
‘Goddamn, Barb, you’re good!’ Work is supposed to save you from being an ‘outcast,’ as Pete puts it,
but what we do is an outcast’s work, invisible and even disgusting” (pg 117).
13. Who is Budgie? Why does Ehrenreich tell us to let Budgie “be a stand-in”? Also, would it be
accurate to say that the author’s efforts to find a safe and affordable place to live were least
successful in Minnesota? Explain why or why not.

When Ehrenreich arrived in Minnesota, she could stay at an, “apartment belonging to friends of a friend” for
“free of charge” while the tenants visited “relatives back East. Well, not entirely free of charge,” Ehrenreich
remarked. Budgie is a “cockatiel, a caged bird that, for reasons of ornithological fitness and sanity, has to be let
out of the cage for a few hours a day” (pg 122). The bird is active, hopping around on Ehrenreich’s hair,
pecking, and grooming. “When I am home, Budgie wants to be out of his cage, a desire he makes known by
squawking or, what is far worse, by pacing dementedly. When he is out of his cage, he wants to sit on my head
and worry my hair and my glasses frame” (pg 130).

Budgie is to be a stand-in for the “intrusive in-laws and noisy housemates that a person of limited means
crashing with distant family in a strange city might normally expect to endure” (pg 123). Ehrenreich learned
from her “coworkers in Maine—several of whom had spent time in tightly shared space—people who depend
on the generosity of other for their lodging always have something untoward to put up with, typically
incompatible relatives and long waits for the bathroom.”

Yes. The author’s efforts were least successful in Minnesota. She could have taken a job for higher pay, but
did not choose it. While at Wal-Mart, she even started reminiscing about starting a union. She admits that if she
could have afforded to live in Minnesota longer, she could have stayed at Wal-Mart another year and received
her pay raise (pg 194), but she could not afford it, probably because she chose the lower paying job, breaking
one of her initial rules.

14. Paraphrase the brief “story within a story” represented by the character called Caroline. What is
Caroline’s tale? Why does Ehrenreich get in touch with this person, and what does she learn from
her?

Caroline was someone, “who, in real life, [plopped] herself down in a totally strange environment—without
housing, family connections, or [a] job [and attempted] to become a viable resident” in Florida (pg131).

Her story begins in New Jersey with a lousy husband and her children. She moved in with her mother in
Queens but could not make it to work while taking her child to daycare. Her brother moved in to the already
small apartment and things became too crammed. Florida was rumored to have low rents so she traveled down
south. She arrived in Orlando with $1,600 on a mission to find a low priced hotel and a church. Caroline soon
got a job cleaning hotels, but with little time to spend with her children. Caroline went through many physical
hardships as her life progressed: constant thirst, blurry vision, itching privates, and lack of money for rent.
Although, she managed to find a new husband, her poverty remained, including, “bouts of homelessness and a
lot more interstate travel by Greyhound with children.”

Ehrenreich finds this person in the effort to see someone who has done what she has tried to do. Caroline
not only survived, she made it with children as well with many bumps on the way. Now, Ehrenreich knows this
task is possible, but will refuse to underestimate the daunting task.

15. As her stint at Wal-Mart winds down, the author mentions to several of her colleagues that they
“could use a Union here”–only, as she herself readily admits, she is “not a union organizer
anymore than [she is] Wal-Mart ‘management material.’” So why, then, is she making efforts at
unionizing? What has led her to these efforts? What are her reasons, grievances, motivations, and
goals?

Ehrenreich knows that her coworkers need a voice. They are being treated verbally as if they were a
“family” and had “servant leaders” worker over them, but reality is that no one gets paid overtime; health
insurance isn’t worth paying for; Sunday’s are not optional; managers are brutal, and the pay is abysmal. Wal-
Mart’s employees are suffering. Stan dropped out of school to keep his job, and Marlene desperately needs a
car.

“They talk about having spirit,” Marlene said, “but they don’t give us any reason to have any spirit.” In her
view, Wal-Mart would rather keep hiring new people than treating the ones it has decently. Ehrenreich backed
Marlene’s idea up, “It’s not just about money, it’s about dignity” (pg 184).

“The truth…is that I’m just amusing myself, and in what seems like a pretty harmless way. Someone has to
puncture the prevailing fiction that we’re a ‘family’ here, we ‘associates’ and our ‘servant leaders,’ held
together solely by our commitment to the ‘guests’” (pg 185). The author’s goals are to abolish these fictions.
She’s motivated by Marlene, Stan, and countless other’s personal testimonies. Her grievances are shared by all
and her reasons are for the betterment of her coworkers.

16. At the outset of her Evaluation chapter, the author seems to arrive at a new understanding of the
phrase “unskilled labor.” Explain this new understanding. Do you agree with it? Why or why not?

“The first thing [she] discovered is that no job, no matter how lowly, is truly ‘unskilled.’ Every one of the
six jobs [she] entered into in the course of [the] project required concentration, and most demanded that [she]
master new terms, new tools, and new skills—from placing orders on restaurant computers to wielding the
backpack vacuum cleaner.”

This is complete junk. Skilled labor has always been referred to (or in most cases) as someone who is
particularly skilled at his or her job, usually coming from some sort of lengthy education or apprenticeship. I’ve
personally cleaned rooms like maids and “wielded” the horrifying vacuum cleaner. Ehrenreich’s constant,
biting, pinching complaining is uncalled for (except for the fact that, honestly, she does have a solid 40 years on
me). I’ve worked construction, cleaned “shit”, and thrown away countless half-empty alcoholic beverages
whose contents seep out of their containers like long pieces of chewed gum. All this to say, I am unskilled. Yes.
No one compliments you on how fast you are. It’s work. It’s life.

17. Describe the problems that Ehrenreich has with how the “poverty level” is calculated in this
country. Is she correct on this score, in your view? Explain. Also, how does one’s understanding of
the poverty level–Ehrenreich’s or anyone else’s–relate to food costs, and to the author’s assertion
that our “wages are too low and rents too high.”

Ehrenreich points out that there is a disconnect between the housing of the poor and poverty. The official
poverty level is calculated by taking the cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying the number by
three. Ehrenreich argues that food is relatively inflation proof compared to rents. When this method was created
in the 1960s, food only accounted for 24 percent of the family budget, not 33 percent. In the author’s present
day, food only accounted for 16 percent of the budget while housing had soared up to 37 percent. In 39 years,
rent raised a total of 8 percent on average and food dropped 8 percent. The method devised many years ago was
supposed to be implemented to calculate poverty when it would detect it right. In Ehrenreich’s convincing view,
their most certainly is a disconnect.

“Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good heath, a person who in addition possesses a
working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow” (pg 199). Ehrenreich also points out that,
“when the rich and the poor compete for housing on the open market, the poor don’t stand a chance.” And that
might be the sole reason why rents remain high for low-wage workers: their money is not reliable.

18. What is the “money taboo”–and why and how does it function, as Ehrenreich puts it, “most
effectively among the lowest-paid people”?

Money taboo is a, “major factor preventing workers from optimizing their earnings.” Twin Cities job market
analyst Kristine Jacobs pinpoints, “There’s a code of silence surrounding issues related to individuals’
earnings… We confess everything else in our society—sex, crime, illness. But no one wants to reveal what they
earn or how they got it” (pg 206). Ehrenreich suspects that this, “‘taboo’ operates most effectively among the
lowest-paid people, because, in a society that endlessly celebrates its dot-com billionaires and centimillionaire
athletes, $7 or even $10 an hour can feel like a mark of innate inferiority.” With this taboo, nearly everything is
learned by word of mouth. It is why “you may or may not find out that, say, the Target down the road is paying
better than the Wal-Mart, even if you have a sister-in-law working there” (pg 207).

19. Why does Ehrenreich refer to low-wage workers, at the close of her book, as “the major
philanthropists of our society”?

Ehrenreich’s point is that a low-wage worker goes hungry so that someone “can eat more cheaply and
conveniently—then she has made a great sacrifice… They neglect their own children so that the children of
others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they
endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be
an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else” (pg 221). Low-wage workers around the world
are what make the world, the world. Low-wage workers at sweatshops are the philanthropists to the low-wage
workers here in the states. The cycle does not only end here.

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