Urban Issues and Actions

As a part of my leadership class I was required to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, an ethnography about her experiences actually working and trying to live as a low-wage laborer in America.  She describes her efforts to give up her prior middle-class lifestyle and to authentically live a life like that of other low-wage workers who struggle to keep up with multiple jobs, work for minimum wage, and have to find affordable housing a continually more expensive market.  While she never truly gave up her former lifestyle, due to the fact that she continued to keep her computer with her and brought several thousand dollars with her into the project as a sort of safety net, she did get a taste of what it is to continually live on the edge of poverty.  Her interactions with the other workers were also very telling and interesting and gave a glimpse into the harsh realities that many Americans are forced to confront on a daily basis. 

            Barbara met several interesting characters throughout her experiences.  She started out as a waitress as a hotel’s restaurant and the people who worked here were generally friendly, attentive to the customer, and older in age.  From here, she switched to a more commercial chain restaurant where serving was a mechanical operation and interaction with the customer was discouraged.  In addition, she noted that the servers was so busy trying to wait on their numerous tables that they often had no time to interact with each other either.  Thus, the workers were isolated from each other and their customers and this resulted in a sense of loneliness and alienation.  Barbara commented on this saying how even though she was surrounded by people all day she never really connected to anyone and then after work she was so exhausted that she would just go home by herself and go straight to sleep.  This cycle, she said, resulted in a disconnect between workers and was management’s way to discourage or prevent the workers from joining together to talk which, God forbid, could lead to discussions of higher wages or more flexible hours.

            Barbara also noted this disconnect among workers when she was employed in commercial cleaning service.  While here she worked with another woman who was pregnant and had a severely injured ankle.  Barbara tried to persuade the woman to take the day off, however, the woman was adamant in her refusal to Barbara’s suggestion and, when Barbara told the manager that he should give the woman time off due to her injury, the woman was actually angry with Barbara.  This, Ehrenreich claims, is due to the “every man for himself” philosophy many workers have.  The woman understood that she was disposable to the company and that if she couldn’t make it to work then they could easily find someone else to replace her.  This could have been disastrous to the woman’s finances and to the health of both her and her baby.  In addition, Barbara mentions that many workers actually plotted against each other so that they could advance at the expense of others.  This, again, goes back to the notion that every worker is on his or her own and must look out for herself.

            However, why should the worker feel as though they are alone and alienated?  Our country continues to function because of the work these low-wage workers do and, as such, shouldn’t they be shown a little appreciation?  Barbara notes how she and her fellow workers were seemingly invisible to others, particularly when they were cleaning houses, and when I worked as a plant care person one summer I noted a similar sense of invisibility.  Sometimes I would go into a house to take care of someone’s plants and they would sit and watch TV as I pruned the exotic plant beside the television set without even acknowledging my presence.  It was very disheartening to see the total lack of respect and decency I was afforded simply because of the nature of my job and I could understand how this kind of treatment day in and day out could make one feel invisible and worthless. 

In David K. Shipler’s The Working Poor, anther book I read for my leadership class, many welfare recipient who were currently unemployed expressed a sense of worthlessness and attributed their failure to call work on days they weren’t coming in as a result of their sense of not being needed by the company.  If this is the case, then what role does the company have in making the worker feel valued?  And if companies did value the worker more how would this affect the worker’s future work performance?  I know that if I had received even a smile or a “Hello, how’s your day been?” while working I would not have felt so alienated and ignored.  And, really, how hard is that to manage?        

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Current Events, Poverty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.