Economic Conditions, Labor & Industrial Relations, Human Resources, Poverty, Political Economy 

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, the author decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job, any job, could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, she left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as a woefully inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce. So began a grueling, hair raising, and darkly funny odyssey through the underside of working America. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors. 

Genre/Form: Creative nonfiction
Material Type: Internet resource
Document Type: Book, Internet Resource
All Authors / Contributors: Barbara Ehrenreich
ISBN: 0805063889 9780805063882 0805063897 9780805063899 9780965187701 0965187705
OCLC Number: 45243324
Awards: School Library Journal Best Adult Books for YA (2002); New York Times Book Review (2001).
Description: 221 pages ; 22 cm
Contents: Getting ready --
Serving in Florida --
Scrubbing in Maine --
Selling in Minnesota --
Evaluation.
Responsibility: Barbara Ehrenreich.