Nickel and Dimed. Serving in Florida.

Enrenreich begins her journey of living life in poverty in Key West, Florida. She has mainly one goal in this experiment: to see if someone can pay one month’s rent on nothing but minimum wage. Filling out applications for dozens of employers, she fails to mention her education level, saying she is limited to a few years in college. I found it interesting in the introduction on the fifth page she writes, “No one ever questioned my background, as it turned out, and only one employer out of several dozen bothered to check references.” The standards are quite high for an upper class job rather than a minimum wage job where an illiterate individual could perform the tasks perfectly well.
She finally lands a job at The Hearthside restaurant working from 2:00 till 10:00 P.M. for $2.43 and hour plus tips. She gives great detail about the actual job letting the reader know that the hardest part about being a waitress is the “side-work.” And a fellow co-worker by the name of Gail who we learn has recently lived in her car and did her business in a bottle. Something that I’m sure the writer isn’t use to being around people who can afford a roof over their heads or at least some protection. Gail even says, “You can’t live in a truck in the summer, since you need to have the windows down, which means anything can get in, from mosquito’s on up.” This really puts you in the mind’s eye of one who struggles with life every single day. But Gail isn’t the only one, the author talks about co-worker Joan, whom she admires for standing up for her when she is overpowered. In return, Barbara gives her a chunk of her tips.
This brings us to the notion in this book about the rivalry between the employees and the employers. Page 22 she explains, “Not that managers and especially ‘assistant managers’ in low-wage settings like this are exactly the class enemy. Mostly, in the restaurant business, they are former cooks still capable of pinch-hitting in the kitchen, just as in hotels they are likely to be former clerks, and paid a salary of only about $400 a week. But everyone knows they have crossed over to the other side, which is, crudely put, corporate as opposed to human.” She talks about the complications she’s had with the employers, such as being caught glancing at a USA Today, in which case her consequence was vacuuming the entire floor with a broken vacuum cleaner. Another instance is when they are called for a meeting because of how “disgusting” the break-room is. Or, my favorite, the fact that basically talking to any other employee is considered “gossip.” Stu, one of the managers began to speak rudely about some of the Haitian immigrants working there.
One of the more interesting things about someone living in poverty is their lack of health. Gail, for instance is paying $9 a pop for estrogen pills. But what can really put you into perspective is a co-worker Marianne, whose boyfriend lost his job as a roofer because he missed so much time after getting a cut on his foot. Furthermore about the health issue, on page 35 when she is now working at Jerry’s she mentions that, “Rising stress levels reflect a new system of ‘management by stress’ in which workers in a variety of industries are being squeezed to extract maximum productivity, to the detriment of their health.”
While working at Jerry’s, Barbara meets a cook from the Czech Republic. I found it really interesting that he isn’t even paid by the management there at Jerry’s, but by the “agent” who shipped him over. He gets about $5 an hour minus a dollar or two for the “agent.”
Barbara then decides to walk to the adjoining building and get a job as a housekeeper. She keeps this job one day, quitting Jerry's and leaving Key West.