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Critical Response To Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

732 Words3 Pages

Critical Response: Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich After reading about Ehrenreich's experience one of my first observations was that working a minimum wage job not only had a physical toll on your body but also an emotional toll. While working at both hotels Ehrenreich and her coworkers became emotionally numb to working. It was just a routine, they were going through the motions. Through her observations and her coworkers situations Ehrenreich found that a minimum wage job can barely support one or two people. Most of her coworkers from Hearthside live with other people in less than ideal living situations. They either live in trailers or in a motel like Tina and her husband. They don't live in the homes that most of us are familiar with. Imagine living in a situation like this and …show more content…

At Jerry's one of her coworkers couldn't understand how Ehrenreich could go through the day without smoking. I find smoking disgusting and I've never understood why people do it in the first place. Now I understand for some people it's what keeps them going. It is what relaxes them and keeps them from breaking down from working so much. I found it interesting when Ehrenreich says that her old life is starting to look foreign to her. The life that she was used to living is starting to look like a life full of luxuries, luxuries that a minimum wage job can't afford. One of those being time, when she has two jobs she doesn't have time to sit down and eat, read USA Today or to just relax and breathe. I gained insight from reading this. I realized that a minimum wage job isn't just straight forward calculations on a paper. It's more than that, it takes all of your emotional and physical energy. Having a job doesn't just mean having a decent house, clothes, food and money left over to have a little bit of fun. I think that's how we look at a minimum wage job, like a logical straight forward equation. Ehrenreich's experience

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