![]() ![]() The Goodreads reviews of ‘Nickel and Dimed’ are very polarised with the one-star reviews primarily by those who fundamentally disagree with the experiment itself. More worrying still is that conditions will only have got worse for those earning minimum wage since the global economic crisis in 2008, especially where healthcare insurance is concerned. Worryingly, some aspects hardly feel dated at all, particularly the problem of finding affordable housing which touches on many of the issues raised in Evicted by Matthew Desmond. ![]() ‘Nickel and Dimed’ was recently featured in the Guardian’s top 100 books of the 21st century at number 13, so hopefully a reprint will happen at some point, maybe for its 20th anniversary (I found a US edition of the book in a charity shop). ![]() The book is split into three parts: ‘Serving in Florida’ sees Ehrenreich working as a waitress and housekeeper, ‘Scrubbing in Maine’ is about her experience as a cleaner and ‘Selling in Minnesota’ where she folded clothes in Wal-Mart. Barbara Ehrenreich undertook a similar experiment almost 20 years earlier in the United States and ‘Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America’ first published in 2001 is now regarded as a classic of narrative non-fiction reportage. I read Hired by James Bloodworth in 2018 which is the author’s eye-opening account of working undercover in Britain as an Amazon warehouse picker, Uber driver, call centre worker and carer on zero-hours contracts in the mid 2010s. ![]()
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