Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Barbara Ehrenreich seems to have missed the point of her own research. Her proposed plan was to move to a new city with a small amount of capitol, find a minimum wage job and a place to live and try to make ends meet. She was searching for insight into the working poor who represent a large segment of American workers, made larger since welfare reform. She had the opportunity to be their spokesperson, but instead she was too busy complaining about her own discomfort. For starters, Ms. Ehrenreich doesn't give up her health insurance or car during this entire experiment. In fact, at one job she develops an itchy rash and instead of doing what the working poor who have no health insurance would do - go the the nearest drug store and buy something OTC and hope for the best - she calls her personal out-of-state dermatologist for a prescription so she is itch-free in a matter of days. Barb, honey, that's not how it works for people without health insurance! They work sick, uncomfortable, injured and even itchy. Really. She also had the advantage of a car, which she used to drive to multiple employers during the first few days of a new job hunt, filling out applications, having interviews and hunting for an apartment. A car is a luxury many working poor don't have, so they are not able to visit 10 or more potential employers on a single day to put in applications and have interviews like she did. The real working poor use public transportation, bicycles or shoe leather. If the job location or housing is more than a mile from a public transportation route, it's off the radar for many people. I wish Barb had tried this at one of her test cities so that she could see how inconvenient, frustrating and limiting public transportation can be. She seemed to have her pick of jobs at every location, finding work was never a problem, and she berates those who say it is. However, she refused to work more than an 8 hour shift, and complained that at one job she had to go 2 1/2 hours without a break and she didn't think she could make it. Oh gosh, the horror! Would love to see her do farm work, or road work. There is a lot of complaining about the cost of rent increasing faster than the minimum wage scale. This is true, and an excellent point. She failed at all of her minimum wage locations because the cost of housing broke her bank at the end of the month. But never once did she consider having a roommate. That would have cut her expenses by 50%! And when she got to the end of the second week in Minneapolis without a paycheck and without a reasonably priced room, it never occurred to her to sell her car. Barb may have been working with the poor, but she just didn't get it. I was offended by her inappropriate sarcasm and her obsession with ethnicity - describing every single person she saw or met by race FIRST. But I was most offended by her not understanding that people come in a vast range of "normal." There are many people working the jobs she worked who just aren't capable of working as a manager or professional writer and never will be. They have found employers who respect their abilities and they take great pride in their work. The same work that Barbara had such contempt for. In fact, while working at Wal-Mart she describes her work by saying, "I could be a deaf-mute...autism might be a definite advantage." Really, she wrote that, real sensitive, huh? She also seems to think that everyone who is lower middle class is fat, and that fat people are to be disrespected. She writes, "Everyone knows that the lower middle class are tragically burdened by the residues of decades of potato chips and french toast sticks." She refers to Wal-Mart customers as "wide-bodies" and fears if she's standing in the wrong place at the wrong moment she might be crushed by one. She laments over and over, "Why don't they get out of these jobs, find something better, move up in the world?" Just maybe, Barb, some of these employees are already working up to their abilities, are proud of the fact that they have jobs, and a social circle at work of people who respect them. Her true colors show when she walks out on, quits without notice, and even leaves other employees the responsibility of returning her uniforms in every single location. She has no thought for the workers she left short handed, or the bosses who were left under staffed. She might write that her coworkers are important, and she might have done some kind things for them, but she was an irresponsible and thoughtless employee. I give this book two stars instead of one because it is well-written. It is the content that I object to. Barb might write about the lower middle class, but she surely does not understand what it means to live lower middle class. She never really got it. There are many better books on the plight of the working poor listed on this amazon page and in many of the other reviews.