Tuesday, December 30, 2008

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?

3 comments:

  1. If I were n Ehrenreich's shoes I would not have adapted quickly. The thought of even not having a stable place to reside would have scared me. I do not even think that I could do what Ehrenreich was doing because i do not like being out of my comfort zone. I could not just pck up my life and move from state to state. It would be extemley hard for me to do what she did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I were in Ehrenrech's shoes I believe I would have adapted quickly. I believe I can be placed in any situaton and come out sucessful.It is not very hard for me to adapt to new thngs and get pushed out of my comfort zone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If i were in her shoes I would not be able to adapt that fast. Simply because it is not hard coming from a high paying job to a low paying job within days or weeks. It is not an everyday thing where you get paid differntly and in thee worst part less than what you have been getting paid. So I believe I would not be able to adapt to the change at all. I would rather go forwards than backwards.

    ReplyDelete