She concluded that if she could have maintained her two-job regimen, and if she had no dire or sudden illnesses, she could have just barely gotten by. Having satisfied herself with that part of her experiment, she moved on to Maine, where she toiled as a maid, and finally completed her research with a stint in Minnesota at Wal-Mart. Soon, she augmented her job with other work, such as housekeeping.
She worked in Florida as a waitress at a greasy spoon, sometimes for $2.43 an hour, plus tips. At times, a little less dirt and a little more scholarship might have been useful.Įhrenreich conducted a live experiment in which she worked at minimum-wage jobs, living, as best she could, in whatever circumstances those wages would afford. The woman did get her hands dirty, quite literally. Minimum-wage work, rather than sitting in her comfortable study or pontificating from a lofty perch at a think tank. Don’t ever say that academics don’t have a sense of humor.Īt any rate, Ehrenreich must be given credit for at least entering the world of When Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America came out last year, I knew it would be the perfect foil to another book I used in my classes, The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley and William Danko (1996).
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