Ehrenreich Vs Eighner

The amount of time spent with something will change your views and thinking, that is what Barbara Ehrenreich and Lars Eighner share in their papers. Both had low status jobs after having a college education and their work is similar, yet opposites in some ways. The difference is that in Ehrenreich’s, “Serving in Florida”, she believes that restaurant waitressing jobs are degrading to workers because she only had one experience for research and had to stick with it for a short time that she chose, it was unnecessary work to her. While in Eighner’s, “On Dumpster Diving”, he thinks of them as a privilege and enjoyable because he had no other choice than his line of work, he had to put up with being homeless for 3 years to survive without any help.

Ehrenreich chooses to share her bad experiences working at her restaurant, Jerry’s, which shows how degrading the work was to her and other staff members. One short experience she had at her old work was when she tried to eat on her lunch break she was told she couldn’t, basically screamed “No eating!” because the boss didn’t want her to be seen by customers. She didn’t understand why it would be so horrible to be seen eating, so she quit that job and stayed with Jerry’s. It wasn’t like Jerry’s was any better though, she worked hard every day and no matter how exhausted she would be she was told to continue because the customers need to be served. Everyone at Jerry’s was chugging ibuprofens to relieve the physical strain put on their body. Throughout “Serving in Florida” there is minimal acknowledgement of the positives because Ehrenreich believes there wasn’t many to share, the staff wasn’t that great to make memories with, the customers were rude, and the work was difficult to accept and keep up. She thought that no one with a degree should sink so low to work at a place like Jerry’s because it was expected that you should be working at a fancier, quality job. Eighner’s experiences were different from Ehrenreich’s, his work was more difficult, yet he believes it to be privilege to be good

Throughout Ehrenreich’s paper you can find negative words such as “…sinister…”, “…painful…”, “…ugliness…”, and “…unfortunate…” All words chosen to prove how terrible working with food can be whether dealing with tasks, staff, or customers. The reader may be under the impression that this is how they would be treated everywhere and look down upon anyone who works in fast food. While, Eighner uses more positive words to describe his feelings and line of work such as an “…art…”, “…tempting…”, “…rich…”, “…accomplished…”, and “…pleasant…” He shows that he appreciates it by using positive words when describing most and this contributes to his purpose of showing being homelessness can be enjoyable. This shows the reader that anything can be enjoyable, it just depends on your mindset not others’ opinion and that it is normally what people agree with. So anyone that reads “On Dumpster Diving” may start to look at life optimistically and take a chance on any line of work because they see that anything can be thrown your way but you’ll make it