Even with the jobs, she struggles to afford housing, and resorts to living in a trailer park in which despair and crime abound. Her situation only grows bleaker as she travels to Portland, Maine, where she works at a nursing home on the weekends, and for a housecleaning service full time during the week. There, she again faces staggering financial obstacles, and when, one weekend, it appears a standard meal will become unattainable due to an absence of funds, she moves on to her next and final destination: Minneapolis, Minnesota. The experiment culminates in Ehrenreich finding employment at a local Wal-Mart, where she observes and endures what she considers to be highly unethical treatment in the workplace, raises the possibility of forming a workers’ union, and eventually leaves the job. Though through her experiences and descriptions Ehrenreich does provide readers with insight into the lives of the working poor, I must admit I was initially wary of the credibility of her conclusions because of the inherent bias
Petunia’s Dilemma Conflict Scenario Comm 2110 A little more than a year ago, Petunia was single mom raising 2 teenage boys in a quaint little beach town in Florida. She was basically stuck there; upside down in the mortgage on the little house that she and her late husband, Frank had scraped together a down payment for just before he died. With no formal education, she was driving 10 miles each way to her fast food job in the next county and still unable to make ends meet, she received government assistance as well. Her primary focus is her children. She would move heaven and earth to see to it that they get a college education, heaven forbid they ever have to struggle financially, like she did.
She gives examples that were advertised in her local newspaper such as $19K a year as a social worker. She talks about working 70 hours a week for $1103 a month after taxes with no health insurance or benefits. 3) O’Keefe establishes ethos in the first several paragraphs by talking about her low paying salary as a PR director for an arts organization and stating how she connects with the unemployed and low-wage workers by understanding their desire or will to make any sacrifice necessary even moving to another location to find work. She then adds to the above statement with telling of how she’s been trying to save up money to move herself and her mother to where the employment is better. She
Jennifer High Class to Low Class: Argument Analysis of “Serving in Florida” Barbara Ehrenreich in “Serving in Florida” embarks on a month long journey of living in “poverty and toil” (762). She gives herself an initial start up bank of $1,300.00 which gives her enough money for deposit on an “efficiency,” some groceries in the fridge and a small cushion of cash. The town she is doing her research in is a small town just outside of where she lives in Key West, where she is nervous that someone she knows might recognize her and then she would have to tell them about her experiment. In the low wage job market, she finds that it seems that the job posting are always running with no actual job openings, due to the high turnover rate. (761-74) This article seems to be building empathy for people who work jobs that pay there employees next to nothing and treat them as they are disposable.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Project Book The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Chapter 1-The Girl Who Lived The first chapter of this book was very informal in many different ways. It informed us that the working hours were brutal with little or no time for breaks. Rose Rosenfeld, the girl who the chapter is written about, was about to be 18 working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. She was “…making blouses called shirtwaists from 7am to 8pm, with only 30 minutes for lunch…Rose and the others would not get dinner or receive overtime money” (Nobleman 4). This chapter describes the events occurring on the day in a personal matter.
Part of my earning was going toward helping my mother. So that let me with a few dollars in my pocket to enjoy with my friends. Being a prep cook was not easy to enjoy. After two years of working at the local supermarket being a part-time prep cook, I had decided it was time to move on. This was my worst job experience I have held so
Essay on the changing role of women as a consequence of WW1 Before 1914 Many women stopped at home and worked by doing the washing, sewing, and looking after their families, which were the normal activities of a housewife. Before WW1 just over half of all single women and one in seven married women worked outside the home to make money. The men were the breadwinners of the family, and were basically the boss; this was the way the hierarchy in the family was before 1914. Women in paid work weren’t treated the same as the male workers. There was a lot of sexist employers as most of them thought a ‘women’s place’ was in the home.
Women struggled to make money, which affected their home life and the things they did in their free time. Eleven million women were unemployed (Beach). Only twenty-four percent of women were employed (Ware). This means that many families were forced to give up possessions and things they enjoyed doing because they were just struggling to find enough money to meet their basic needs. The women were at a disadvantage, because not only were they struggling to find jobs when they did find jobs they did not pay very
Indentured servitude called for many immigrants to work under unfair policies and unreasonable conditions. In document 8, a letter from Ramana (taken from Documents of Indentured Labour) she writes: “I have to commence work at 5:30 in the morning and finish off about 8:30 p.m. daily. I am overworked and the wages paid me is not sufficient. When I stop away a day in a month, it is deducted from my pay and I am told by my master that I will have to make up these days at the expiration of my indenture.” Ramana, a hard-working indentured servant is being treated very unfairly and is working under absurd policies. Being that most, if not all of the indentured servants were being treated similarly, her letter is indeed very reliable.
Teresa Graham English 111-0DJ Oct. 19, 2011 Teresa Graham English 111-0DJ Oct. 19, 2011 Working but Still Living in Poverty Many Americans work full time jobs but are living in poverty because of the recession, rising food cost, and government cuts. These situations are making it hard for Americans to make it in everyday life. They have to even sometimes beg for food for their families. So many people living in the United States have full-time jobs but the pay is minimum wage. With the economy in the shape it is, it makes those full-time jobs seem like only part-time jobs.