Ehrenreich is in Minneapolis, Minnesota now and she spends more time in this city looking for a place to live than she has in any other city. The vacancy rate in Minneapolis is less than 1% and she has been having difficulty finding an apartment the hotels where also hard to get since some need to be paid every week or month. As time goes on she decides to just get anything she can find and then as time goes by she’ll keep on looking for more. However the only place that she was able to afford wasn’t what she really want it was a rundown hotel that has no bolts on the doors and not only that but it also has no screen on the window. As a result to this she has a lot of difficult sleeping at night she doesn’t feel secure and she doesn’t think her things are secure either so she places her laptop in her car’s trunk instead of leaving it in the hotel.
Ehrenreich finally finds a job at a local Wal-Mart. Her job is to pick up the clothes that have been dropped in the women section and also to take the clothes from the dressing room and put them back on the racks. Unfortunately the job hat she had is really low pay and she isn’t able to afford anything else but to pay rent and she can’t even buy things for her kitchen to cook and she finds herself in the necessity to buy fast food and live out of that. Eventually she also finds a new room to stay at and she sleeps well which makes her feel more relaxed in the morning and during day work.
During the time that she works in Wal-Mart she notices that many of the employees are working too hard for the money that they get. Since she notices this maltreatment she decides to convey the union in to the employee’s minds. SO she starts talking to them about the unions and how it can help them and what not. Her assistant manager Howards is a person who she finds it really hard to work with and the enemy of most employees’. The meetings that they have seem pointless to her. During the time that Ehrenreich works there she meets Melissa, who works with her in the ladies department too. The both think of new jobs in where they can work to make the work easier, but when Ehrenreich leaves Melissa decides to leave too than to stay here and work without her.

Questions:

1. Do you think it was right for her to leave after trying to unite the people at Wal-Mart to see that there probably is a way out of the treatment they are receiving?
   
2. If you where in Ehrenreich’s shoes and you had to go through all that agony in not being able to afford an apartment or a better hotel and live under wage, do you think you will adapt quickly or not?

Part 2 of Nickel and Dimed

In part two of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, she emphasizes how hard it is to work as a maid. Her second choice was Portland, Maine when she worked as a maid. Having the thought that since there was many Caucasian she would probably be able to mix in with other low-income workers. She finds two jobs one as a maid for a housekeeping service during the week and another as a dietary aid in a nursing home on the weekends. The nursing home was pretty much cleaning food items and feeding the residents on the nursing home. However, she is really concerned and scared of that job because many of the patients are diabetic and if they are given the wrong food their health is at risk and it could worsen their health. During the week, her housekeeping job gets really hard having to go through mentally as well as physically challenges which leads to her struggle in working completing her duties as maid. Her boss, Ted, is very strict with the women who work for him he pretty much keeps them on check and many of the women don’t even have time to actually have a lunch break even though some don’t even have enough money to actually bring and eat since they are paid very little. During the time that she worked as a maid she met two other workers- Marge and Holly. Marge was the older women who had to struggle physically because she had arthritis and she needed to keep up with the work she had many back pains as a result to the kind of vacuumed that they used. Holly was much younger who late on finds out she is pregnant one day during her work day she twist her ankle which causes her to have problems in achieving her daily work. Ehrenreich notices how scared Holly is in missing a day since she doesn’t want to lose her job and rejects going to see a doctor. Ehrenreich protests for Holly and Ted gives her a day off furthermore, Ehrenreich reveals her true reasons in why she has each job she had however she doesn’t receive the surprise she expected to.

Key Points:

1. She was able to see with her own eyes the maltreatment that many women have to go through because of their status or just for the simple fact that they are women.
   
2. Ehrenreich witness for herself how hard it is to find a job and to actually keep up with 2 jobs. She witnesses for herself also how it is to live under a couple of dollars and many times not eating or taking a lunch break.
   
3. Even though she spoke out for someone else’s rights no one else backed her up, she noticed that since she has a career she had the courage to speak up since this life isn’t really hers while other women cant because unfortunately this life it theirs.