Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream
To research Nickel and Dimed Ehrenreich spent three months undercover in the service industry, with stints as a waitress, a cleaning person, and a Wal-Mart “associate.” Though her project was derided by some as a condescending stunt, I thought it achieved its goals admirably. While you could never quite forget that Ehrenreich was just playing at being poor, she married tales of her own frustrating experience with enough hard data to convey the day-to-day struggles of those who aren’t: the physical toll of manual labor, the petty humiliations of mandatory drug testing and servile rules of conduct. Her succinct, accessible analysis of the cycle of working-class poverty has kept the book on the New York Times best-seller list, and it’s been given new legs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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Throughout, Ehrenreich’s tone moves between bemusement and outright scorn. “Who are these people?” she asks herself at one point. She only rarely rouses herself to find out. Instead she relies on speculation–she describes one demoralized job seeker as having “an expression suggesting [he] is accustomed to having his utterances answered with slaps”–and catty comments about the corporate dress code, which doesn’t allow for the “flowing scarves, rumpled linen, and dangly earrings” she’s grown used to in academe. Her disdain is at its strongest when she plunges into the world of Christian networking–at one point she walks out of a meeting, her sensibilities have been so thoroughly offended. The booming evangelical business culture would actually have made a fascinating subject for a book, but Ehrenreich won’t stoop to taking Christians seriously. Nowhere does she pull her fellow job seekers aside and ask them what they’re thinking–whether putting their search for employment in Jesus’s hands is, you know, actually working out for them. In fact, it’s hard for Ehrenreich to muster empathy for almost anyone of any creed; the exceptions are an “effeminate” man she spies smiling thinly at a homophobic comment and a flamboyant young African-American temp she meets outside yet another hotel ballroom. We never hear from either of them again.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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