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

by Barbara Ehrenreich

So if you wonder why Americans are so obese, consider the fact that waitresses both express their humanity and earn their tips through the covert distribution of fats.

When you enter a house, you spray a white rag with Windex and place it in the left pocket of your green apron. Another rag, sprayed with disinfectant, goes into the middle pocket, and a yellow rag bearing wood polish in the right-hand pocket.

“Cleaning fluids are less expensive than your time.” It’s good to know that something is cheaper than my time, or that in the hierarchy of the company’s values I rank above Windex.

Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditchdiggers, changers of adult diapers—these are the untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society.

Hair provides another class cue. Ponytails are common or, for that characteristic Wal-Martian beat-up and hopeless look, straight shoulder-length hair, parted in the middle and kept out of the face by two bobby pins.

Maybe this is what you get when you weed out all the rebels with drug tests and personality “surveys”—a uniformly servile and denatured workforce, content to dream of the distant day when they’ll be vested