Nickle And Dimed

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbra Ehrenreich, depicts the truth about low-income living in the United States. But rather than just writing about it, she actually did it. She chose various places across the country to conduct her observation and participation. She did what very few people would have had the courage to do. Hopefully, her book will change the way people look at low-wage work and possibly even change, for the better, the way low-income workers live their lives everyday.

When reading the book, there were many examples of all four principals of McDonaldization throughout. The first principal, efficiency, was the most common example, found very frequently. When she was working as a server at a restaurant called Hearthside, in Key West, she did not only work as a server. Ehrenreich had to do other chores such as sweeping, mopping, consolidating ketchup bottles, etc. By making the servers do other such chores, they are saving money. Hearthside can just have the servers do the cleaning as well as serve tables so they do not have to hire more people. The management at Hearthside does not care about overworking their employees as long as they profit from doing so. Another example of efficiency came from when she was working for The Maids, a cleaning service in Portland. “When you enter a house, you spray a white rag with Windex and place it in the left pocket of your green apron. Another rag, sprayed with disinfectant, goes into the middle pocket, and a yellow rag bearing wood polish in the right-hand pocket. A dry rag, for buffing surfaces, occupies the right-hand pocket of your slacks” (73). By doing this, it minimizes the time spent fumbling with bottles of different kinds of surface cleaners. The employees can just pull the needed rag from its pocket and it’s ready to be used. This also minimizes the amount of effort put into the chore. There is no need to drag around the various cleaning solutions.

The second principal is uniformity. One example from the book that stood out to me was the system that The Maids have for cleaning a customer’s home. “For vacuuming, begin in the master bedroom; when dusting, begin in the room directly off the kitchen. When you enter a room, mentally divide it into sections no wider than your reach. Begin in the section to your left and, with each section, move from left to right and top to bottom. This way nothing is ever overlooked” (73). When first reading this, I thought that it seemed like an unnecessary rule to remember, but after reading about the sorts of houses they clean, it is necessary. When The Maids are cleaning Mrs. W’s house she has to follow the system in order to make sure she does all the rooms, and to make sure she does not do the same room twice. “The Maids’ system turned out to be a lifesaver” (81).

When working at Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, Ehrenreich, and her co-workers, have a very strict dress code. “No nose or other facial jewelry, we learn; earrings must be small and discreet, not dangling; no blue jeans except on Friday, and then you have to pay $1 for the privilege of wearing them” (145). Uniformity is clearly happening here. Employees are forced to look presentable in Wal-Mart’s opinion of presentable.

The next principal is quantification. An excellent example of quantification is the amount of water required for scrubbing the “kitchen and all adjacent scrubbable floors.” They are instructed to use less than half of a small bucket of water. It seems very impractical to me because, like Ehrenreich says, all they end up doing is pushing dirty water around on the floor.

A second example for quantification is the allowed amount of “extras” to be given by servers. At Hearthside, the servers are only allowed to put six croutons on a salad. They are told how many rolls to give per table, how much butter to put on toast, and how many jelly packets to give when a person asks for it.

The fourth and final principle of McDonaldization is automation. Everyone uses technology in their businesses. As long as you can push a button, you’re capable of working as a cashier. Employees are not as valuable because they cam be replaced much easier. The process of de-skilling is in full effect for businesses all over the country. You don’t have to do math in your head when ringing up someone at the grocery store. That’s what cash registers are for!

McDonaldization has changed the way people live in the United States. Because of the de-skilling effect, low-wage jobs have skyrocketed. With the economy increasing, the wages have hardly increased with it, causing people to live in low income communities, and they can barely afford that. The problem is in the way poverty is calculated. People are classified as “middle-class,” purely based on income, even though they can’t pay their bills. They are forced to find homes in low-income areas even though they might work in retail which is in the “rich” part of town. They are forced to live in ridiculously expensive housing just so they can keep their jobs which aren’t paying them enough so they can keep living in their homes. It’s just one vicious cycle. Ehrenreich mentions healthcare when talking about the housing crisis. If the government had a system, like Medicaid, for the housing crisis in the country then that would help people tremendously. Because the housing market has gone up in price, people have retreated from funding public housing.

A living wage is defined as a “wage sufficient for a worker and family to subsist comfortably.” Essentially, it is the amount of money needed to live in a specific area comfortably without struggling with bills and other expenses needed to survive. First, the living wage should be calculated by specific areas, not all in one group. The living wage in New York City is not going to be the same as the living wage in Roanoke, Virginia. Second, such considerations as to family size (how many children), job availability, and the housing market are needed. This is because in different parts of the country different levels of each are available; the only thing that the government has no control over obviously would be family size. However, with affordability for housing in a place like Rhode Island being completely different then a housing market in Kentucky, then obviously the wages cannot both be at the same level for each area. The same reasons can be given for any of the above categories. The minimum wage, and the states ability to raise it if they wish, does not do enough to support this. As was greatly evidenced in this study by Ehrenreich, a person can