Nickel and Dimed: May 13, 2011. Journal 4

This section begins when the author continues searching for affordable housing and a possible second job for the weekends.  She gets some responses, but like earlier in the book, nothing works out in her favor.  She eventually moves into the Comfort Inn where she hopes to move out of after a couple of nights.  When the author is working in the lady’s department at Wal-Mart she notices the moms that come through with their children in the carts.  She becomes aware that these are the same moms who have to pick up after their kids who leave things laying all over at home.  Now the roles are reversed.  When moms come to shop at Wal-Mart, they are the ones who can pull things off the rack and leave them lying wherever.  Later in this section, while working at Wal-Mart, Ehrenreich starts to wonder “why anyone puts up with the wages they’re paid” (178).  She realizes that so many of the people working at Wal-Mart truly are poor and doing everything they can to make a living.  It’s not long after that that she begins the initial planning for starting a union.  She feels strongly about this so that the Wal-Mart employees might someday have better working conditions. 

As a group, we all agreed that the evaluation was very useful.  It had very helpful statistics that put things into perspective.  We thought that it was important to include how much the wages have increased in the evaluation.  We all felt that minimum wage hasn’t increased enough to compensate for the increases in our daily necessities, the biggest being gasoline. 

We felt it was interesting that companies will easily give their employees “free” meals, discounts, or special treats, but at the same time, they have a hard time giving their employees a raise.  It seems that they will do whatever it takes to avoid paying higher wages because they can’t be taken away unlike some of these perks.  One of our group members can directly relate to this.  She and her co-workers were given free lunches as a perk instead of getting a raise.  Now their free lunches have been taken away.

Our group ran across a book that is very similar to Nickel and Dimed.  Scratch Beginnings, written by Adam Shepard, tells of his experience attempting to live on minimum wage.  Nickel and Dimed was his inspiration for his book so readers interested in Ehrenreich’s book may enjoy Shepard’s as well.  Another similar experience is Morgan Spurlock’s making of 30 Days.  He and his fiancé attempt to live on minimum wage for 30 Days.  They end up getting in several arguments and deal with many misfortunes.  Similar to Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed, Spurlock and his fiancé struggle to succeed living on minimum wage. 
For more information on Scratch Beginnings and 30 Days, check out the links below.
http://www.scratchbeginnings.com/
http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/morgan-spurlocks-30-days-living-on-minimum-wage.html