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

Gail is a 50-year-old waitress at the “Hearthside,” a restaurant in Key West, Florida. Gail trains Ehrenreich on her first day at the restaurant and is talkative, energetic, and kind. Gail offers support to Ehrenreich when she makes mistakes on the job, and Ehrenreich is impressed by how Gail moves so fast that she can “alight in one place and then another without apparently being anywhere between” (20). Ehrenreich and Gail befriend each other.

Gail’s story provides real-life glimpses of what life is like for women who work low-wage jobs. She experiences chronic migraines but goes without healthcare, spending $9 per pill for her migraines because she cannot get the estrogen supplements she needs to mitigate them. Her boyfriend was murdered in prison, and she was forced to live in her truck. Despite these difficulties, Gail always does her best at her job. She often performs acts of kindness, like purchasing meals for an out-of-work mechanic who is down on his luck.

The instability of her housing is a constant source of worry, and Ehrenreich is concerned about Gail’s safety. Gail’s problems with housing shine a light on the problems that single women who are living in poverty face. Gail initially lives in a flophouse downtown with a roommate, but the male roommate is interested in her and will not stop bothering her, so Gail moves into her car to get away from him. Gail is overjoyed when the restaurant manager Phillip allows her to park in the hotel parking lot overnight, as the lot has security, and she feels safer sleeping there.

The author also highlights Gail’s generosity with the customers. She tells Ehrenreich that it is okay to give the customers extras, such as more croutons or more bread, as happier customers tip their waitresses better. Gail’s strength despite her circumstances adds a human element to Ehrenreich’s journalism, and her story provides insight into the aspects of the low-wage lifestyle that Ehrenreich does not experience directly. When Ehrenreich stops the experiment in Key West after walking out of a waitressing job at Jerry’s, she gives Gail the keys to her trailer and arranges for her deposit to be transferred to her.

In Key West, Florida, Ehrenreich befriends George, a 19-year-old Czech dishwasher at Jerry’s who recently arrived in the US. George practices English with her in the hopes that he will be able to secure a better job if his English skills improve.

George’s experience highlights the bad treatment of immigrants in low-paid wage work. George does not receive his wages directly from the restaurant; instead, a portion of his wages goes to his “agent,” a person who brought him to the US. Ehrenreich also finds out that George lives in squalor in an apartment with many other Czech immigrants; he does not have his own bed and has to wait for others to leave before he can sleep.

An assistant manager accuses George of stealing from the pantry at Jerry’s. Ehrenreich does not know whether he actually stole something, but she believes that if he did it was out of desperation due to hunger. She feels guilty when she does not defend him to the accusing manager. In addition, George’s lack of English skills means that George cannot effectively defend himself against the accusations. Because of her failure to intervene, Ehrenreich wonders if the exhausting and servile nature of the work at Jerry’s is causing her to become more cowardly and less moral.

George’s story highlights the fact that even working people experience hunger if their wages leave them with too little money to buy food, and that immigrants in particular are vulnerable. Ehrenreich never finds out what happened to George, and she feels guilty that she walked out of Jerry’s before she could give him her tips for the final day. 

Ted is the franchise owner and boss of the branch of The Maids in Portland, Maine. Ehrenreich discovers on the very first day that The Maids charges its customers $25 per hour per person, but only pays the cleaners $6.65 for each hour they work. Ehrenreich wonders why anyone would choose to work for a corporate cleaning service when they can earn much more working as an independent cleaner, and her exploration of Ted’s personality provides some answers for this question. The character portraits of Ted illustrate the ways that management exploits low-wage workers.

When one of the cleaners, Holly, suffers from an injury on the job, Ehrenreich asks Ted if Holly will be paid for the day off due to her injured ankle while working, and his slightly evasive and nervous chuckling suggests that he did not plan to pay Holly. Ehrenreich tries to understand the hold that Ted has over so many of the other cleaners and chalks it up to the lack of gratitude they receive for their hard work: they are desperate for the small morsels of praise that Ted offers. In addition, Ted is the representative of the middle-class life that the cleaners all desperately desire for themselves, even though the truth is that his middle-class “luxury” is only possible because of how much he underpays them.

She observes the strange power that Ted has over his employees, perceiving the house cleaner’s inability to stand up for themselves, leverage, or negotiate for higher pay due to the dynamic they have with Ted, who they view with awe. When she mentions to the team of cleaners that she works with that the want ads have “millions of jobs,” in exasperation, she thinks, “Don’t they realize that the sheer abundance of [jobs] means they’ve got Ted by the short hairs and could ask for almost anything—like, say, $7.50 an hour, reckoned from the moment they show up in the morning to the moment they finish processing rags at the end of the day?” (113) Ehrenreich also comments on the gender dynamic at play between Ted and the cleaners, who are all women. She compares him to a “pimp” (115) because of how he treats the women, who even clean his home when they are out of homes to clean.

Holly is a team leader with one of the cleaning teams at The Maids. Holly is especially hardworking to the point that she endures injuries, hardly eats, and neglects herself constantly in order to work. Holly’s character presents insight into the desperation that low-wage workers feel and why they struggle to advocate for themselves due to a lack of self-worth and the constant fear and abuse they experience from their managers. Holly’s physical suffering frustrates Ehrenreich, who wants Holly to take care of herself.

Ehrenreich notices that Holly hardly eats and is extremely pale. One day at work, Holly feels nauseated and admits that she should not have shown up to work, but she insists on staying with the team and working. Ehrenreich becomes livid that Holly is working because she is pregnant, but Holly refuses to leave work, so she gives Holly a protein bar. Later on, she sprains her ankle after cleaning a home and hobbles around the next home, cleaning the bathroom.

When Ehrenreich asks Holly about the relative wealth of the people who own the next house that they are cleaning, Holly tells her, “If we’re cleaning their house, they’re wealthy” (55). While Ehrenreich sometimes notes that the homes are solidly middle-class homes and not especially luxurious, Holly does not view any of the homes this way. This emphasizes that social status is relative, and from Holly’s point of view, anyone who has the extra income to pay for someone to clean their home is rich.

Full of anger about the injustice and Holly’s unwillingness to stand up for herself, Ehrenreich peevishly vacuums, then argues in the car with Holly, telling her that there are so many better jobs out there. She berates her and the other team members for not asking for higher pay or demanding to be paid for their entire workday. After having this outburst at Holly, she feels guilty, realizing that Holly feels a sense of value from her job with The Maids despite the unfairness of the low pay she receives.