Nickel And Dimed Reflection

Before reading “Nickel and Dimed: On (NOT) Getting by in America”, my perception of blue collar Americans is much different. I had figured that blue collared workers in lower paying jobs were not very hard working people, and that they still made enough money to have decent living conditions. Before reading Nickel and Dimed I thought that if you had a job and were not making enough to get by that you were probably a lazy person. Reading Nickel and Dimed really opened my eyes to the quality of life workers in these jobs have made me realize that you can be employed at a Walmart or as a hotel maid like Barbara Ehrenreich was and still be living in poverty. I learned pretty early into Nickel and Dimed that only having one job at this level of jobs

But when you hear a story like the one told by a lady who Barbara met named Caroline, who is a lady who had two kids to take care of while working at a low paying job like Barbara was, you realize that they have a hard road ahead of them. Not having enough money led Caroline to have bad anxiety and led to the onset of diabetes and she was commonly homeless. Her children stayed at a local church a lot of the time. Stories like Caroline’s really open my eyes and make me feel think that there should be more programs to help out people with low incomes. I now realize the types of housing that can be afforded by these blue collar workers is usually not very nice at all. For lots of them it is probably similar to the Housing in Old Orchard Beach. This is housing that Barbara checked out because it was only 65 dollars a week. She saw that it was a place with horrible living conditions and was probably illegal. She passed on staying there, but it is sad to think that with the wages many blue collar Americans are making they would have no other choice but to stay at a place like