Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Ehrenreich captures the stressful and dehumanizing nature of restaurant work by comparing and contrasting two somewhat different experiences: one at a slower-paced diner and the other at a busy fast-food restaurant. There are many aspects of the experiences at Hearthside and Jerry’s that are similar. For instance, she describes the way low-wage workers are rendered invisible, stating that she is hardly ever called by her name and is mostly referred to as “baby,” “girl,” “blondie,” or “honey” (12). Restaurant workers are particularly vulnerable due to their dependence on tips, and she shows how this alters the relationship between management, workers, and customers, combining her first-person experience with descriptions of her coworkers’ struggles, as well as statistics that provide even more context for the difficulties workers face in the service industry.

Ehrenreich cites the fact that the wages—$2.43 an hour—are supposed to be combined with tips to total a minimum of $5.15, the federal minimum wage at the time. If wages plus tips do not add up to this amount, the restaurant is legally required to make up the difference, but she comments that restaurants are somewhat quiet about this, with this fact “little publicized” (16). The inclusion of this detail illustrates how restaurant workers, and low-wage workers in general, are not informed of their legal rights and are often exploited by their employers in order to increase profit margins.

She also emphasizes that the degrading aspects of low-wage work begin even before the first day. The application process for low-wage jobs is difficult and disappointing. The ubiquity of drug testing in low-wage work is a persistent motif throughout the novel. Ehrenreich notes the irony that, of all drugs, marijuana is most likely to be detected because it will show up even weeks or months after last use, while hard drugs, like heroin and cocaine, cannot be detected after three days. She states that drug testing, ostensibly justified out of a desire to hire people who are safe and responsible, does little to accomplish this goal, as it is not even effective at distinguishing hard drug use from lighter forms of drug use.

When she does not hear back from any jobs, she learns that the “Wanted” ads do not indicate actual job openings. They exist to ensure that there are new workers to fill vacancies because of the high turnover rate of these jobs. The concept of workers being so easily replaceable and quitting so frequently due to the unsatisfactory nature of these jobs emphasizes the sense that the workers are not worth much as individuals. Ehrenreich finds an echo of this in her observations about the inhumane treatment of low-wage workers, as well. 

The relationship between servers and managers is also fraught, and Ehrenreich captures the generally negative view she has of the managers at Hearthside and Jerry’s by describing their behavior with detail and imagery. Two managers at Jerry’s in particular are a source of irritation: one lectures Ehrenreich on not spending time chatting with the customers, and another tells her how to properly handle the tray one-handed. Ehrenreich expresses her strong dislike for the managers who do not allow the workers to do anything but work: she curses at B. J., a manager at Jerry’s, wishing that “the syrup spills glue [her] feet to the floor” (38). Moments of dark humor reveal Ehrenreich’s personality, humanizing the story and giving the audience moments of comic relief from the overwhelming situations and bleak statistics about the lives of impoverished people in the United States.

To further draw the reader into the human aspects of the story, Ehrenreich contemplates why she did not defend George when he was accused of stealing from the dry-storage room at Jerry’s. She wonders if the stressful conditions or the exhaustion have changed her as she contemplates how she typically views herself as a brave person, but she notes that plenty of courageous people “shed their courage in POW camps” (41). The comparison of Jerry’s to POW camps dramatizes the dehumanizing effect of the exhausting labor and, perhaps even more crucially, the terrible treatment of the workers by management.

Ehrenreich also includes lengthy footnotes, a choice that indicates her desire to provide as much sociological, economic, and historical information as possible while not overwhelming the reader by including these facts as embedded in the text. In a footnote at the bottom of page 37, she elaborates on the lack of legal protection for low-wage workers. She states that there was no federally mandated right to bathroom breaks until April 1998. Ehrenreich notes that executives and professionals were stunned to discover the fact that factory workers were not given the right to use the restroom. There is also the shocking anecdote of a factory worker working six-hour shifts who wore a pad inside her uniform (37). In another footnote, she comments on the style of management that she experienced at Jerry’s, drawing on the term “management by stress,” which was coined by Kim Moody to describe workers being “squeezed to extract maximum productivity, to the detriment of their health” (35). Ehrenreich combines these details with historical information to provide further support for the narrative and emphasize that her own experience working at the two restaurants was not unique, but in fact very common among low-wage workers.