In this passage, Ehrenreich describes the way the low-wage workplace crushes the spirit in broad brushtrokes, with nearly cartoonish imagery. There is also a stick.” Ehrenreich (narrator) “The chance to identify with a powerful and wealthy entity-the company or the boss-is only the carrot. Jobs so tiring, so demeaning, so taxing, leave little energy for fighting back. Where is the justified rage of the low-wage workforce? Ehrenreich suggests that those sorts of feelings have been slowly drained by the nature of the low-wage workplace. Ehrenreich cannot accept that premise, and neither can the reader. Browbeaten by Ted and rewarded only meagerly for her exhausting work, Colleen shrugs and implies that it’s only fair-in other words, such is her lot. But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then…if I had to…and still be able to buy groceries the next day.” ColleenĬolleen, one of the employees at The Maids, betrays what strikes Ehrenreich-and, by extension, the reader-as a sad complacency. “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they have. She and Lewis Lapham occupy a rarefied realm, one of “salmon and field greens” where various ideas are pitched regarding one of Ehrenreich’s “more familiar themes-poverty.” Ehrenreich does not evade what is fundamentally problematic about her posing as a member of America’s bottom class, but instead underlines it, draws attention to it, milks the discrepancy for all the irony it is worth. Ehrenreich begins in one world and journeys to a vastly different one. What is significant about the line-apart from the fact that it opens the book-is its deadpan quality, its casual division of “circumstances”. “The idea that led to this book arose in comparatively sumptuous circumstances.” Ehrenreich (narrator)Įhrenreich is referring here to the fancy French lunch she shared with the editor of Harper’s-the lunch at which the concept of conducting an undercover investigation of the low-wage workplace was first proposed.

Nickel and dimed sparknotes