Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

So one of the most profound lines I found was "PICTURE A FAT PERSON'S HELL, AND I DON'T MEAN A PLACE WITH NO food" (Ehrenreich Nickel an Dimed 29).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2008/02/ndleech.html

"...during a month of poverty and toil, no one recognizes my face or my name, which goes unnoticed and for the most part unuttered" (Ehrenreich 11).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JulianaCox/2008/03/why_would_she_want_to_lose_her.html

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics found full-time 'private household workers and servants' earning a median income of $223 a week in 1998, which is $23 a week below the poverty level for a family of three. For a forty-hour week, our pay at The Maids would amount to $266, or $43 above the poverty level."

-From Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, chapter 2, page 61
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EricaGearhart/2008/03/could_you_live_on_only_281_per.html

“What these tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the ‘right’ answers should be obvious to anyone who has encountered the principles of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders” (Ehrenreich 59).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2008/03/patting_yourself_on_the_back.html

"The residents start drifting in forty minutes before breakfast is ready... If someone rejects the French toast we're offering, Linda and I make toast or a peanut butter sandwich... I make an effort to learn names:... Letty, a diabetic who has to be watched because she sneak doughnuts from other people's plates. Ruthie, who softens her French toast by pouring orange juice over it" (Ehrenreich 62-63)
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KaitlinMonier/2008/03/old_people_sure_are_special.html

"I mumble thanks for the advice, feeling like I've just been stripped naked by the crazed enforcer of some ancient sumptuary law: No chatting for you, girl." (pg. 35, Nickel and Dimed)
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/MadelynGillespie/2008/03/serfs_work_dont_chat_and_doubl.html

” Mrs. W. is in the kitchen, so I have to go down on my hands and knees practically at her feet. No we don’t have sponge mops like the one I use at my own house; the hands-and-knees approach is a definite selling point for corporate cleaning services like The Maids.”(Ehrenreich Chapter 2 p 85)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelicaGuzzo/2008/03/thats_not_fair.html

"Still, it is a shock to realize that 'trailer trash' has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to" (Ehrenreich 12).

Tired of all this trash talk? Go here:
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/LaurenMiller/2008/03/dont_throw_out_the_trash.html

"So why didn't I intervene? Certainly not because I was held back by the kind of moral paralysis that can mask as journalistic objectivity. On the contrary, something new -- somethings loathsome and servile -- had infected me, along with the kitchen odors that I could still sniff on my bra when I finally undressed at night. In real life I am moderately brave, but plenty of brave people shed their courage in POW camps, and maybe something similar goes on in the infinitely more congenial milieu of the low-wage American workplace. Maybe, in a month or two more at Jerry's, I might have regained my crusading spirit. Then again, in a month or two I might have turned into a different person altogether -- say, the kind of person who would have turned George in" (Ehrenreich, 41)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AllisonHall/2008/03/workplace_crusaders_should_you.html

"[...] there are no breaks at Jerry's" (Ehrenreich 30).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EthanShepley/2008/03/no_breaks.html

“True, I take occasional breaks from this life, going home now and then to catch up on e-mail and for conjugal visits (though I am careful to ‘pay’ for everything I eat here, at $5 for dinner, which I put in a jar), seeing The Truman Show with friends and letting them buy my ticket” (Ehrenreich 34).

View my blog at: http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JeanineONeal/2008/03/life_in_a_bubble.html

I responded to a statistic about nursing homes found in the Maine section of the reading with a reflection of my own experiences with nursing homes. Calling them "nursing" homes is an offense to the nursing practice.

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JessieFarine/2008/03/nursing_home_is_a_misnomer.html

COMPUTERS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD!

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DeanaKubat/2008/03/computers_are_running_the_worl.html

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/RichelleDodaro/2008/03/small_jobbig_appreciation.html

"You might imagine, from a comfortable distance, that people who live, year in and year out, on $6 to $10 an hour have discovered some survival stratagems unknown to the middle class. But no. It's not hard to get my coworkers talking about their living situations, because housing, in almost every case, is the principal sourse of disruption in their lives, the first thing they fill you in on when they arrive from their shifts (Ehrenreich 25)."

check out my blog:
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/StephanieWytovich/2008/03/this_sounds_familiar_and_trust.html

Welcome to Giant Eagle - where everyday tastes better!
I've been working for 3 hours and I've fixed all the shelves in the store. I'm going to go on a 15 minute break now, and I'm certain that you, the valued customer, will show me that I just wasted 3 hours on nothing by the time I return. Thank you and have a great day!
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/ChelseaOliver/2008/03/el150_giant_eagleyeah_i_dont_m.html

“If you’re going to do something, do it will. In fact, ‘well’ isn’t good enough by half. Do it better than anyone has ever done it before.” (18 Nickel and dimed)

“ Managers can sit – for hours at a time if they want--- but it’s their job to see that no one else ever does, even when there’s nothing to do, and this is why, for servers, slow times can be as exhausting as rushes.” (22)

"The next piece of business is to comb through the want ads and find a job. I rule out various occupations for one reason or another: hotel front-desk clerk, for example, which to my surprise is regarded as unskilled and pays only $6 or $7 an hour, gets eliminated because it involves standing in one spot for eight hours a day. Waitressing is also something I'd like to avoid, because I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen, and I'm decades of varicosities and back pain beyond that now. Telemarketing, one of the first refuges of the suddenly indigent, can be dismissed on grounds of personality." (Ehrenreich 13)

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KayleyDardano/2008/03/latinos_took_my_job.html

“Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves, as they often do.” (121Nickel and Dimed)