I'm reading "Nickled and Dimed"

[flygal]

I'm only through the waitressing gig - and it's bringing back a flood of memories from my early twenties waitressing :scared: It's so true. The management watching every move. And the Christian groups - holy shit that's so true. They would come in all decked out with Jesus stuff, run our asses off, complain about everything. And stiff us.

I worked at a Denny's, Sizzler, Chilis, and Holiday Inn. Sizzler was the worst and corporate control. Chilis was cool. The management were pretty nice and it was mostly college kids. Denny's, well, everyone should do that once in their life to get an appreciation of things. I only lasted four months. It was waiting on skin heads that did it. They were so proud one of their friends was on Morton Downey Jr.

[Sweet Freedom]

1. I read that book last year

Quite shocked to learn about no bathroom breaks for waitresses.

I remember the part about the boss being happy that the waitress had to live out of her truck in the parking lot. It put her closer to work. Jerk.

[SmokingJacket]

2. I thought it was a great book.

I've done a few crappy jobs in my time, but this book was still very enlightening. And I loved Ehrenreich as a character: they way she decribed the apartments she lived in and her coworkers.

Waitressing was the worst. I'm bad with being treated rudely. You work your buns off trying to handle so many tables at one time, but the customers don't notice that you're overworked, just that their desserts take a little longer than usual so they give you a frickin nickel for a tip.

:grr:

[PallasAthena]

3. This is a gem!

And I just recently purchased (in the eBay fund-raiser for People for the American Way) a copy of the book that is autographed by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Now..... on to organizing Wal-Mart!!!

[Touchdown]

4. Her thoughts to herself were hilarious.

Wait 'till you get to what she thinks about her boss at Molly Maids in Vt, NH, or Mn (can't remember where...doesn't matter).

Her pissyness at the Hick-Mart customers who trash her clean women's apparel department is gut busting.

I love that book. Read it twice.

[JawJaw]

5. Hard Work

You might want to get hold of a copy of Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee's book "Hard Work" which covers similar ground from a UK perspective. Very thought-provoking stuff from a writer who obviously has genuine empathy with her subject.

[davoarid]

6. I enoyed it.

The time during which she worked as a maid was so dreary.

[sharonking21]

13. As an older student

(I was about 38 then) I tried this for a week to pick up extra money. Not only dreary but much too hard a kind of work for someone who had grown soft like me. Had to quit.

[Patiod]

7. Got my "silver spoon" book club to read it

It may have actually changed some people's thinking! That and "A Hope in the Unseen" - most of these women believe that anyone who isn't rich just isn't trying hard enough.

[DemBones DemBones]

9. Now there's an idea. . . if my book group read it,

the ones who grouse about tipping might learn something. :7

[tsakshaug]

8. Just read it last week

brought back memories.
That work ethic is hard to break, even when you are getting paid nothing

[Bertha Venation]

10. Dammit! I just ordered books w/ a B&N gift card and I FORGOT to

get that one!!

I can't wait to read it. Thanks for the reminder.

[dad]

11. I thought that book sucked

I read it quite a while ago, but I do recall being very disappointed. I don't think the author was telling the whole truth in the book... Like I got the feeling that she was going back home for conjugal visits and never mentioned it. THEN there was the part where she talks about trying to beat the piss test, yet she never mentioned the incident where she was smoking something. hmm. She wants everyone to feel sorry for her because she has had shitty jobs for a few months. Listen, I LIVED THAT for years. So did many of you I'm sure.

[sharonking21]

12. Sorry but

she doesn't want people to feel sorry for HER. She admits she could get away from it when she wanted--a big difference.

She wants middle-class and above people to remove the blinders from their eyes and get off their fat asses and work to change things that cause these conditions.

She wants the working class to organize so they can get some of their previous strength back.

You don't have to like the book as good reading (although I think you are wrong) but I think casting stones at her motives is a bit much.

If I could, I would stuff the information in this book into the minds of the complacent well-off using knitting needles through their left ear, to stuff it in piece by piece. Then I would make them read The Working Poor by David K. Sheplar.

I would also make every teenager thinking of dropping out of school read this first.

And, oh my, yes, I have lived it and worse. My dad was a house painter when I was a kid. I went to 14 different schools before junior college because we moved around the country as he attempted to follow construction work. There were lots of times when he couldn't find work and we had to move in with relatives cross-country and sleep in the car on the way. As an adult had to take low-level clerical jobs until I went back to school at the age of 33 to finish off another 2 years of college.

[Momgonepostal]

14. Agreed

The point of the book is that people who actually have to live that life are really not getting by. The author readily admitted that what she did was NOTHING compared to what actual waitresses, maids, Wal-mart employees do day in and day out.

What freeper types would say (read the reviews of this book on Amazon) are that if people want better, they should plan better, get an education job skills, etc. But regardless, if we as citizens continue to eat at restaurants, hire house cleaners, shop Wal-mart, etc, there will still be a need for these types of employees. Someone who works hard at a full time job deserves a living wage and health benefits, just as much as anyone.

[Lindsey]

15. I read it a couple of years ago and found it to be

exceptional. I think it should be recommended reading for every Sociology class.

[dad]

18. I still say the book sucked

For people who have had the experience of working in low-end jobs, it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know. For those who haven't I'm sure there are better books to educate yourself on the experience.
Plus the author comes off as very phony. .. Like I said, what did she do that caused her to need to beat the piss test? How could she not mention this in her book? What else was she doing that she didn't write about?

[Momgonepostal]

19. She mentioned that she got together with friends and smoked

some pot. She also mentioned that she didn't do these stints back to back. She went home in between jobs. I only read the book once and got all that.

[jwirr]

21. What difference does your point make? It does not

change the basic facts of the book. People are working in needed services that do not get paid enough to live on. And most of them do not smoke pot! They can't afford to. You say there are other good books - a few but they are merely supplemental to this one.

I read the book several years ago and then one of the Bible Study groups in our small town read it. What surprised us was to look around and realize there are people in small town who also fit this pattern. I have failed to get my children to read it because they are too busy reading college texts to realize their own grown up children are having trouble finding good enough jobs to live away from home and go to college at the same time.

[Nikia]

23. I think that it was more for people who haven't

There are a lot of sheltered people out there who either don't see service people as real people or who think that a low wage job means that it is easy. Her point is for them. If more people read the book, perhaps there wouldn't be so much opposition to raising the minimum wage and helping the working poor.

[MsTryska]

24. What does it matter......

having worked my share of crap jobs, i would say being concerned about the pisstest is pretty much par for the course, and definitely adds to the whole "living the life" experience.


why are you trying to discredit the writers work anyways? what value does that have for you?

[deadparrot]

16. I read an excerpt from it in my rhetoric class.

I thought it was awesome.

[La Coliniere]

17. Laughed my...

ass off when she described cleaning rich peoples' toilets in such graphic, yet outrageously funny detail. A great read. her purpose was to illuminate the terrible plight of the working poor, not to make readers feel sorry for her. Loved this book.

[goddess40]

20. I would like to see a high school social studies class read it

I thought it was an great book, I cringe at the Merry Maid commercials and although I have always tipped well it just affirmed I'm doing the right thing.

[Patiod]

22. An update:

My book club (all well off, except me) met at one of the member's beach houses in May.

We were discussing traveling, and everyone said they now tip their maids at hotels ever since reading "Nickeled and Dimed" -- before that, no one else tipped. They even leave notes with the tip, since maids often won't/can't take money that's just left w/o a note.

It's not much, but it's something -- the Main Line is not exactly bursting with Wal-marts, so none of us shopped there to begin with, and everyone has always been decent to their maids and nannies (except me, who has neither, but has tried to be nicer to the hunky guy who does the laundry and takes out the trash at my house).

[MsTryska]

25. you have a hunky houseboy?

i'm jealous.