Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich

Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich: At the beginning of June 1998 I leave behind everything that normally soothes the ego and sustains the body - home, career, companion, reputation, ATM card - for a plunge into the low-wage workforce. There, I become another, occupationally much diminished "Barbara Ehrenreich" - depicted on job-application forms as a divorced homemaker whose sole work experience consists of housekeeping in a few private homes. I am terrified, at the beginning, of being unmasked for what I am: a middle-class journalist setting out to explore the world that welfare mothers are entering, at the rate of approximately 50,000 a month, as welfare reform kicks in. Happily, though, my fears turn out to be entirely unwarranted: during a month of poverty and toil, my name goes unnoticed and for the most part unuttered. In this parallel universe where my father never got out of the mines and I never got through college, I am "baby," "honey," "blondie," and, most commonly, "girl."