 January 20, 2002
Dear Dr. Ehrenreich:
I have just finished Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, and have felt strongly compelled throughout the book to write to you to say, "Amen!" Despite the fact that I have a Ph.D. in XXXXXXX (from XXXXXXXXXX [Ed.: a prestigious university], no less), my comment springs not from academic interest but from personal experience. What you wrote about so pointedly in Nickel and Dimed reflects my experiences at least in kind if not in degree, even though I am among the privileged few to get a higher education. And the only one to achieve this level of education in my rather large extended family. That, in fact, is what has made my experience all the more bitter in some ways.
I'm afraid that what follows may come across as petulant and self-pitying, given my educational privilege and relatively better economic situation compared to those you worked with and write about in Nickel and Dimed. Nevertheless, I want to write it. Indeed, I need to write it. I tried to do so, at one time early last year, as an article for a local paper. My first draft began thus:
The Other Face of Poverty
Probably the worst thing about the whole situation was that it seemed like the only rational solution, at that point, was suicide. And I wasn't suicidal. Which of course made me even more angry and depressed. Because then I was stuck, and there was no way out. I would just have to struggle on, helplessly, against the forces arrayed against me.
Whatever those were. I suspected they were as much divine as mundane. But after two years of struggling - or fifteen years, depending on your point of view - continuing the fight hardly seemed like a winning strategy. I began to understand the apathy - and the anger - of the poor.
I had never taken too seriously the comments from social conservatives about how much people on welfare like being on welfare because it's easy money and a reasonably comfortable life - no job, lots of free time. I had always suspected that, given a chance to make a decent living in a respectable job, the majority of welfare recipients would rather work than loaf. Because, I imagined, people on welfare were probably human beings about as decent as the rest of us who did have jobs, and they were probably motivated by the same dreams and desires.
What I didn't know was what it actually felt like to be that poor. The power of poverty. The helplessness of being subject to the crushing absurdities and irrationalities built into the social welfare net - which, as a poor person, you must try to use if you are to have any chance of survival at all.
As it turns out, I was kidding myself about the level of my despair. Within a few weeks I was suffering from a classic clinical depression, complete with suicidal ideation. My first -- and I hope my only -- such experience in my 48 years. I didn't get to the point of making plans to kill myself, but I desperately wanted to die. It seemed to me that I had no future, because I had no job, no reliable income, no means of survival, no way to take care of myself. Suddenly my comment about being frustrated because I wasn't suicidal when it seemed the only rational response, didn't seem so ironic and slightly funny any more. Suicide became not just a metaphor for desperation and hopelessness, but the reality of it for me.
Flashback: At the age of 30 I had become forcibly separated from a very conservative fundamentalist church at about the same time that my marriage of nearly 10 years was collapsing along with my fundamentalist theology. I decided to go back to college to get an accredited degree so that I could do something besides be a secretary. I had two young children, one of them with mild developmental disabilities. With the help and support of my parents, student loans, work-study funds and Pell grants (plus child support), I managed to get a four-year degree from the local university, but (to make a long story short), the subject that captivated me -- try though I might to deny it -- was XXXXX and not something "practical" that I could earn a living with. I decided to follow my heart and go on to graduate school so that I could study XXXXX and then teach it at the college level.
When I was 34 I bundled my two kids into the new VW Golf that my parents had bought for me and we set off for XXXXXXX where I matriculated as a student in the XXXXXXX program at XXXXXXXXXXX. I had a Mellon Fellowship (which lasted for only two years) and the department's best fellowship, as well, since I was a single parent and without any kind of family to help and support me here. After the Mellon Fellowship support ended, I earned money by doing editing and being a TA. I also took out student loans to the max and found myself becoming more and more reliant on credit cards for survival. Since I was a single head of household, my tax burden was almost nil and I got earned income credit most years, too. That helped. Rent for our large 2-bedroom apartment was $475 a month (in 1987). It was tight, but we got by, even though my car was always breaking down and costing me money (the warranty having expired far too soon) and rents were skyrocketing in this area.
For a variety of reasons, the most important being a difficult advisor, it took me 11 years to complete my program. At the end I was living in a cheap condo that, when we moved in, had filthy, threadbare wall-to-wall carpeting, a refrigerator that at first did not work and spoiled my food, and a double-oven range with only one "working" oven and a tilt to it that made it impossible to fry or saute anything because the oil would all run to one side of the pan. The windows had no screens until I complained. The wallpaper in one bathroom was peeling off. The paint job was coarse and sloppy. Turns out, too, that it was built on a flood plain. Fortunately, the builders had had the good sense to build the actual units up on earth berms, so we residents never actually lost anything in the periodic floods. Though sometimes we did have to go out in the middle of the night to move our cars to higher ground.
But it was cheap, at $775 per month. And the person who managed the unit for the owner was, shall we say, "flexible" about things, when it served her interest to be so. (After I moved out the owner charged her with embezzlement. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the charges were true. A neighbor who knew the owner told me that $2000-worth of repairs had been put into the unit before I moved in. I found that hard to believe, given its condition when I got there. I often wondered where the money had actually gone.)
I think that was when I first realized that I was descending inexorably into poverty -- when I had to move into a place with threadbare carpeting. "So this is what I'm reduced to?" I thought glumly. "This is what my life and efforts have come to. I'm living in a place where you can see the carpet backing." My graduate program had already worked a number on my self-esteem. My living conditions didn't help me to envision myself as a worthy individual with something to offer the world.
Meanwhile, I was scrapping and struggling for financial survival, the only thing that mattered being finishing the degree. Because without it, I thought, what would I be able to do? With it, I could teach. Without it -- what? Be a secretary again? And I had accumulated enough student loan debt by this time that it was clear to me I would have to be a professional if I hoped to pay it off. Why didn't I quit before then? Or at least by then? "In for a dime, in for a dollar." I had invested so much of my time, my life, my energy, and my (borrowed) money -- by the time I realized just how deeply "in" I was, it made more sense (to me) to try to see it through than to abandon my effort. Plus, I did -- and do -- truly love my subject.
It was during these years that I began to get first-hand experience with the joys and delights of trying to access social services designed to help the poor.
Item: One summer I was desperate to relieve my economic distress, so I decided to apply for food stamps. The wait just to make an application was interminable. (What do you do if you can't wait for hours just to apply? What if you have some low-paying job you have to go to?) When my turn with the social worker finally came, she determined that I made $10 per month too much money to get even the minimum amount of assistance. I was incredulous, as I was surviving on credit cards and odd jobs and had no student loan money (for the summer) to help me. I had to pay the rent that month by using a credit card. But according to the tables that she had to use to judge who would qualify, I made $10 per month too much. I went out to my car feeling very discouraged. But my car wouldn't start. It took a couple of hundred dollars to get it fixed. (Which went on a credit card, of course.)
Item: Getting housing assistance vouchers to help you pay your rent (I discovered) takes planning. There was a one-year waiting list for the available vouchers. What does one do in the meantime?
Item: My son was finally diagnosed as being a high-functioning autistic person, which entitled him (given my low economic status) to receive SSI payments while he was a minor and under-employed. SSI payments are keyed to the income level of the individual being compensated, but because he was still in school, his work hours and thus his income at his Voc Ed job were variable and thus the appropriate amount of each SSI check should have varied accordingly. His case worker said that rather than asking us to report every week, we could give an accounting of his earnings once every quarter (like most SSI recipients did) and future SSI checks would be adjusted to reflect any over- or under-payment that had occurred.
This did not work as smoothly as it seemed that it would. If my son was sent a check for, say, $450 and it was later determined that the check should have been for $400, his future checks would have 10% of the over-payment deducted until that amount was repaid. Thus, since he was overpaid by $50, he would have $5 taken out of each subsequent check until he had repaid the $50.
However, they would invariably estimate the amount of these subsequent checks at too high a rate, and when our next accounting period came up it would be decided that the amount of the award on those checks had been too high and the overage needed to be repaid. For instance, he may have been awarded a check for $400. Less the $5 to repay part of the first overpayment, meant that he actually received $395. When the SS office later determined that the $400 award was also too much and should have been $350 instead, they would calculate that he owed them another $50 of overpayment based on the amount of the award rather than the amount he had received. If he should have received $350 and he received a check for $395, he was only overpaid by $45 on that check, not by $50. But the SS office said he had received another $50 too much. I calculated his overpayment as $50 plus $45 = $95. They calculated it as $50 plus $50 = $100.
When that kind of bookkeeping goes on month after month, the "lucky" recipient of SSI benefits winds up deeply in debt to the system! At one point, in exasperation, I told them to just keep whatever benefits they felt he was entitled to and apply them all to reducing the (alleged) overpayment. Much to my surprise, the amount that they said he/we owed continued to grow, even when he received no actual payments, but only awards that were ploughed back into repaying supposed overages. It was at this time that I decided to bite the bullet and do the difficult work of sorting this all out.
Fortunately, the SS, being a bureaucracy, lives and breathes on paperwork, and over the course of the couple of years that my son received SSI payments they sent a veritable blizzard of it to us. Also fortunately, I have certain pack-rat tendencies, and I had kept one copy of every letter (which they usually sent in duplicate). It took me 10 hours to do it, but I sat down and made a table delineating the date of a communication, the essential statements of that communication, and all awards compared to all checks/receipts. If a benefit was calculated at one level one month and at another level later on, I adjusted my figures accordingly. Not surprisingly, I found that rather than us owing the Social Security Administration about $1500, they actually owed him about $100.
My attempts to appeal their claim of overpayment at the local level got me nowhere. I sent copies of my detailed but clear table to them, along with carefully worded and succinct descriptions of my essential findings, and received no acknowledgement of the points I was trying to make, and no rebuttals of my figures. My appeals were just denied. Ultimately, I appealed to a SSA judge in the matter. Before the formal hearing started, I was offered an opportunity to look through the official SSA file on my son's case. I was outraged to find that his case worker at the SSA had characterized my table and communications with him as an attempt to "confuse the issue."
The judge decided in our favor and the alleged overpayments were wiped out. But it took two years of my time and attention. Had I not needed the extra income so desperately, I might have foregone the pleasure of this entanglement with the Social Security Administration.
Item: The good news is that in this period I also finished my dissertation (long story) and was awarded my degree. I went on the academic job market, broke but hopeful. Three years later I was still looking for a job, and by this time I was casting my net far and wide. According to my records, I had applied for over 300 jobs ranging from traditional academic positions throughout the U.S. to (as desperation became keener) editing jobs to project management jobs to high-end secretarial jobs. The job market here in this locality has been exceptionally good for many years. Still, I received a only handful of interviews and no job offers.
Rents continued to increase. Right after I got my degree, I was informed that the owner was going to sell my condo and I had to find another place to live. Both of my sons were living at home at the time, and we agreed to look for a place to share. The cheapest and smallest (and most dangerous) places cost about $950 a month. We ultimately found a (small) top half of a house in the country for $1200. The manager at the condo never returned our deposit, though, and if it weren't for my parents we couldn't have come up with the deposit for this new place. We would have been homeless. Instead, we got lucky. (I got a legal judgment against the condo manager, but she had all but disappeared and the judgment has been unenforceable.) We were cozier than we preferred to be, but it was do-able for us. Then my younger son moved out, which is of course quite proper for a young man to do. But it left me saddled with his share of the rent.
Item: I had some trouble making rent and paying my share of the utilities after I became "Dr. XXXXX," since I was working low-paid temp secretarial jobs. At one point it became critical, though, and I had to find help. So I applied to the local Interfaith-Council for assistance with my utility bills, but for reasons that I don't remember, I was told that I didn't qualify. They referred me instead to area churches. When I contacted various churches for assistance, they consistently referred me back to the IFC. Finally, one minister said that she could help with $100. I was deeply grateful.
Item: During the three years after I received my degree, as I said, I was not successful at finding any kind of permanent job. Each year I have had to return to this minister and ask for assistance. The last time was a year ago. She seemed exasperated that I was still not on my feet financially and agreed to help me one last time. I explained to her that our electricity was going to be cut off on a certain date ten days hence, and gave her the information to pay $100 toward the bill and prevent interruption of service. I emphasized that we had a disconnect notice and that prompt payment was essential to keep our power on. She assured me that she would get a check right out. However, ten days later I came home to find we had no power. I called her office to see if the check had been sent, and it had. The day before.
Item: For the nine months prior to this incident, I had been making ends meet by working three jobs. I worked part-time as a secretary and office manager, part-time for the Census Bureau during Census 2000, and part-time in the copy center at Staples office supply store. The office manager job and the census job were both temporary, and they ended in late summer of 2000, leaving me with only my Staples income. I continued to apply for permanent jobs, but also applied for unemployment benefits. The small but welcome checks I received ended, however, after I was fired from Staples in late November when I called in sick. As I now know, prednisone that I had taken for poison ivy late that summer had made an old health condition flare up, causing me to become increasingly fatigued after only minimal exertion. Standing on my feet behind a counter for 8 hours was becoming impossible for me. (I paid for the prednisone by getting on the state hospital's "Indigents" program for low-income people so that my co-pay was only $1 for each prescription I got filled at the hospital pharmacy.)
Because I was let go from Staples, the unemployment office decided that I should be penalized by not getting to draw my benefits for the next nine weeks. And much to my surprise, I found that it wasn't like I was being denied access to those monies for nine weeks, but afterward I could continue to draw on them. No. The amount of the checks that I would have received would continue to be withdrawn from the total amount of benefits that I had available to me, as if I were receiving them. Not only was I not going to get unemployment support for nine weeks, the amount that I would have gotten for that period was going to be deducted from my total available benefits.
Of course, I appealed their determination that I was substantially at fault for having gotten fired, and thus that I deserved to lose my benefits. Of course, they denied my appeal, citing XXXXXXXXX General Statutes to support their denial. And of course, I appealed their denial and prepared a 7-page paper in support of my case, using those same General Statutes to show how I was in fact in compliance with them rather than in violation. I then prepared a one-page summary of the 7-page document. At the hearing, no one showed up to present the Staples side of things. I had rehearsed a succinct statement to make before the adjudicator, and had ample opportunity to do so. (I know that at this point you don't believe I can BE succinct…but I can!)
In the end, I won my appeal and got my withheld benefits in one nice, big lump. But not before I had had my electricity turned off and an eviction notice served upon me. With the help of my parents, whom I paid back with my benefits check, I was able to avoid eviction.
Item: Although I was being denied benefits for nine weeks, I still had to report once a month to the Employment Security Commission office to show how and where I had been applying for jobs. One day when I left the office my car suddenly quit moving. The engine was running, but the wheels weren't turning. As I pushed the car to the side of the road and tried to figure out what I was going to do, I felt suddenly light-headed and giddy. "This can't be happening," I thought. It was the feeling of shock before depression. And that wasn't "the" depression. Only its precursor.
There were half a dozen things that I knew were about to fail on my car, and when one of them went I wasn't sure what I was going to do, because the car was so old that it seemed hardly worth trying to repair any more. I had spent literally thousands of dollars on it since I'd had it, anyway. At this point in my life, I didn't know where I'd get the money to fix it, even if it was worth fixing. And I didn't know how I'd be able to get anything else to drive, either. The thing that broke on the car, however, was nothing that I had known about before. So even if I managed to fix this problem, there were still those other half-dozen things waiting to go wrong. Everyone I asked said it was better not to try to fix it. So I didn't.
Fortunately, I have a friend who loaned me one of his cars. For three months, no less. I had been taking evening classes at the local community college, trying to learn some new skills that might translate into a permanent job for me, and one of my classmates offered to give me an old van that she and her husband hadn't been able to sell a year earlier. It's a Toyota cargo van with 250,000 miles on it, but it's mine. She runs pretty well (thank God), though I have to keep a close eye on the fluid levels. I bought stick-on letters to put on the bumper. They read "GIFT HORSE." But it was hard to pay for it even though it was free. Tagging and titling a vehicle will set you back somewhere between $75 and $100. I had to figure out how to come up with that kind of money.
I also had to figure out how to get it past emissions at the safety inspection. Let's just say that I got by with a little help from my friends, and leave it at that, shall we? I don't know what I'm going to do with the safety inspection matter this year. You can impose on friends too much, sometimes. I've already had a brake job done on it and put new tires on. The brakes were down to nothing, and the tires had the steel belts showing through. It was a matter of safety. Ideally, emissions control is a matter of safety, too. But it's a more distant concern than the immediate need to ride on safe tires. I wish I could afford to be as ecologically conscious as I'd like to be.
Item: As I have mentioned above, I found myself relying on credit cards in order to meet basic survival needs more and more often through the years. Then borrowing from one credit card in order to pay another, back and forth in a slowly escalating spiral of debt that eventually reached about $35,000 (not including student loans). My father pointed out that he could see no way out for me but to file bankruptcy. This I did in 2000. I shopped around for an attorney who could do this simple Chapter 7 (no asset) case for a minimal fee, and one who would do it locally rather than forcing me to drive to my "assigned" bankruptcy district an hour away.
I guess you get what you pay for, though. My attorney was not prompt and organized. He would assure me that he had filed something, but when I called the courthouse to check on the matter I would find that nothing had in fact been filed in my case. I had to stay on his butt in order to get the bankruptcy petition filed at all. In a meeting a week before our court date, my attorney had me sign blank forms which he assured me he would fill in using the table of creditors that I had provided him with. On the day we went to court I didn't have an opportunity to look the papers over before we came up before the judge. The trustee in my case looked over the documents and seemed perplexed that I had filed when most of my debt was student loan debt that would not be erased by the bankruptcy. I had to swear that the papers were an accurate representation of my indebtedness. I did.
When I got home, I looked carefully at the copies that I had been given that day. Much to my horror, I realized that two pages of the table of creditors that I had given my attorney were simply not reflected in the formal petition. Not to worry, my attorney said. We'll file an amendment to the petition. But before I could get that kind of paperwork out of him, the judge had ruled on my case and closed it.
Although technically none of my former creditors can collect from me because I filed a no-asset case, the fact that they did not receive formal notification of the case from the court has meant that my credit report continues to reflect my bad payment history rather than reflecting a "clean break" via bankruptcy. I've been working for a year now to convince the credit reporting agencies and my former creditors to change their records -- with only partial success. The battle continues.
Item: Of course, part of the problem with my credit report is the fact that it also notes my student loan indebtedness. It is frightening. I've been in economic hardship forbearance since I finished my degree. If interest were accumulating on the loans right now, however, it would be accumulating at more than $750 per month. Because of my financial condition, I have signed up for the lowest possible repayment plan -- income contingent. According to that plan, I will have to pay $250 a month on my loans, because my Adjusted Gross Income has been hovering at around $20,000-$23,000 per year. As you can see, this doesn't add up. And, I might add, it's laughable to me to contemplate paying $250 a month when I'm driving a freebie van with 250,000+ miles on it because I can't make car payments.
On the advice of a senior vice-president of investments for a large investment firm, who also happens to be a friend, I have tried to contact the student loans note holder, a federally sponsored corporation, in order to make more do-able arrangements. I was trying to confront this impending crisis head-on rather than go into default on the loans and THEN try to talk to them. They won't talk to ME, though, until I have gone into default. Then I can try to use the services of an arbitrator.
So sometime this summer the calls will start. Again. I went through it once when I realized that I couldn't pay my credit cards any more. I'm going to have to face it all again. It's my own fault, though.
Or is it? I can't escape some culpability for being in the bleak survival condition that I'm in. But because I have the education and background that permits me to do so, I am constantly trying to figure out what it all means -- what are the larger social, political, and economic factors that go into making my situation what it is today? Is it all my fault? Or have I become trapped in a social and economic location that is built into the system and MUST be filled by someone? And if so, why me? Especially since one of the reasons I got an advanced degree was so that I could hope to make a somewhat better life for myself and my children and grandchildren.
As it is, I finally did manage to get a permanent job -- as an editorial assistant. That's kind of fancy talk for "secretary" in many ways, but I try not to think about that any more than necessary. I make $14.91 per hour. That works out to just over $30,000 a year. By the time taxes and mandatory retirement are taken out, though, I lose 30% of my income before I even see my paycheck. I hadn't anticipated that the tax bite would be this large. The result is that I'm still struggling for survival just as hard as I was before, only now I'm employed 40 hours a week while I do so. The "extra" income I have acquired on paper doesn't actually help me survive. My living income has remained the same, while taxes and retirement takes the rest.
I am living on about $20,000 a year, which is not all that much more than what I was pulling in 11 years ago when I was a new graduate student, rent was $475 a month, bread was well under a dollar a loaf, milk was nowhere near $2.00+ per gallon, and gasoline was dirt cheap by comparison. I still fall delinquent on my share of the utility payments and occasionally on my share of the rent. This, of course, costs me money in late fees, but I'm doing the best I can. I still go to the post office to buy stamps and have to calculate how many I can afford at any one time. I still decide whether I can go some places by figuring out how much gas it will take to get there and whether I have enough money to put more gas in the car before next payday gets here. I pray that the car holds out without major problems. I pray that I can get it past safety inspection again somehow. I pray that I don't get dreadfully sick and miss a lot of work, because although I have sick leave and health insurance now, I haven't accumulated much sick leave and health insurance doesn't pay 100% of your costs.
I work 40 hours per week as an editorial assistant and I do freelance editing. And still I must carefully calculate for my daily life the ebb and flow of the dollars that spell survival in this world. My financial advisor friend asked me if I had considered finding someone to marry, again. The short answer was that no one suitable has come along. The longer answer is, in other contexts that kind of thing is known as prostitution.
I won't even tell you about the struggles my young adult children are having in trying to get themselves established in life. And I can't help them. And how I feel about that. I won't tell you how often my aging, retired parents have sent me money. I hang my head in shame, though I am grateful that I have someone who can and will help from time to time. But I know that I worry them.
Although in some respects my educational attainments disqualify me from any right to complain about my financial struggles, in another respect they make those struggles more bitter. Last June, around my 48th birthday and the third anniversary of getting my doctorate, I fell into "the" depression. I wanted to be dead, very badly. Nobody wanted me. Nobody wanted to hire me and pay me a living wage. Nobody wanted to marry me. Even "God" seemed to have abandoned me. My student loans would be paid off if I died. I am worth far more dead than alive, at this point. But I lacked the courage to plan and carry out my demise. I don't know what would become of my dog and cat, and I didn't want to do something like that to my children. I thought that I should probably go into the hospital, but I realized that it would only mean that I'd miss work at my part-time job (lose income) and I'd then have a hospital bill (incur more expenses).
So I struggled to keep putting one foot in front of another. To go to work every day. To not make any major decisions, because I knew I was very, very sick. I got on an antidepressant -- acquired under the indigent's program, of course. I read a book on orthomolecular psychiatry (on the advice of a friend who has also suffered severe clinical depression) and began taking some supplements to support neurotransmitter function. I sought out short-term counseling at the local public mental health center. But the vitamins and the counseling cost money. Besides, since my depression is entirely related to my lack of ability to survive financially, there's only so much good that counseling can do. I did counseling for quite some time when I got my divorce and again after I had started grad school and was all by myself with my kids in XXXXXXXXX. There are no more "old" issues to process. Only this current, ever-abiding issue of not having enough money to survive.
I wonder what the meaning of life is. Why is life like this? And if it's like this for ME, with the relative privilege that I've had, then what is it like for those who have been less fortunate? Your book begins to answer that question, and it does so very well. But it doesn't answer why. And I mean the big, cosmic why. I often feel adrift in an empty and meaningless cosmos where survival is a brutal matter and No One cares. And I'm not brutal enough in return to take what gets dished out to me and spit it back in the face of the Cosmos. Yes. I am sometimes bitter.
There are bright spots, however. My dissertation has been published by the XXXXXXXXX Press. In fact, they snapped it up, and I've received a very nice review in XXXXXXXXXX. (The book just came out.) That's all very nice and makes me very pleased. It vindicates me in thinking that I really am a smart person and that, at least once in my life, I've had something worthwhile to offer the world. I'm very proud of my work. Of course, there's no reason to think that this book will substantially alleviate my financial woes, but it is a bright spot in my life. And I was invited to contribute a chapter to another book to be published by XXXXX in London. The volume editor was very, very pleased with what I sent him. Again, that makes me feel very good. But it doesn't translate into the hard currency of survival. (At three years out from finishing my degree, my chances of landing an academic job now are exceedingly slim. So these publications aren't likely to mean much in terms of a job search and professional advancement.)
I enjoy walking with the dogs (my son's and mine) in the woods, and reading good books (mostly non-fiction), and being outside in the yard with my boys when they're working on different projects and we're all just talking and enjoying each other's company. I enjoy the devotion of my animals, and watching them play and have fun. I enjoy two cups of General Foods International French Vanilla Café each day. I enjoy lying down to rest when I've done a good day's work and I'm really tired. I enjoy watching Frasier. I enjoy visiting with my friends from time to time. I enjoy it when my parents come to visit, or when they pay for me/us to go there to visit. (It's the only way I can afford to go home.) I enjoy cold, rainy days like yesterday, when you can fall asleep over a book in the middle of the afternoon without feeling like a slacker. I enjoy the fact that I did get that degree and I am Dr. XXXXXX, even if that lofty title is pretty meaningless otherwise. I like being able to say to a detractor, "That's Dr. Bitch to you!"
You write early-on in your book that poverty smells too much like fear. That fear you speak of is what made me want to die last June. I was tired of living with it. That fear is something that I still do battle with more often than not. I try to keep an up-beat attitude, to do what I can to make today work and plan reasonably for tomorrow. But I thought I was doing all of that when I went back to college, when I decided to go to grad school, when I decided to become a college teacher. How can I really trust my plans, seeing that they have gone so horribly awry and landed me in my current situation?
Thank you for writing Nickel and Dimed. Thank you for living the life of poverty for awhile and reporting on it with such wit and candor. I have wanted to write the story of poverty from a first-person perspective for a long time now, but it overwhelmed and depressed me, and I didn't know how to de-personalize it enough to make the story more suitable for public consumption. Because it was very, very personal. You've done that for me, now, and I feel relieved of a burden. Doubly so because I have written you this overly-long letter, whether you have actually read it all the way through or not.
Onward with hope,
Dr. XXXXXX
13 March 2002
Dear Ms. Ehrenreich:
I've no idea if you actually read mail at this account or have the time to answer it personally; I hope so.
Having just finished "Nickel and Dimed," I wanted to write and thank you (also having read some stupid, reactionary criticism of the book, I felt compelled to do so). When I lost my cushy high tech job a year ago, I went on unemployment. It was ok, but since I couldn't disabuse myself of the notion that my self WAS my job, I went looking for work. What I found was a job at an upscale grocery store who openly discourages, no, threatens employees not to unionize. I didn't even last the week. It wasn't the standing or the shelving, it was the blantant bullshit, the carrot management held in front of those it deemed worthy: training for the "management track." That, and the fact that most of the "important" people in the organization were men.
I'm sure that when you conceived your book, the idea was novel: someone educated and well read, working at The Maids or Walmart. Sadly, I don't think that's the case now. In my state (MA) alone, unemployment was up 1.2 percentage points in January over the previous year for a loss of 81,100 jobs. (Nationally, employment decreased 0.9 percent.). And I know, I'm luckier than most; I'm white, well-educated and don't look my age (another Pandora's box). Since losing my job, I'm a lot more patient with salespeople, even telemarketers. I hear a lot of stories, and remember Arabella in "Jude the Obscure." When the pig killer can't come, she slaughters a pig and says, "Poor folks must live." You've known this, of course. Thank you again for articulating it so clearly.
Audrey Borus
Newton, MA
April 9, 2002
My experience at Wal-Mart was both eye-opening and confusing at the same time. I went to the store looking for a summer job while on break from the college I attend, and Wal-Mart said that they would be willing to "work around" scheduling problems that I might have. I took the same test that you referred to in Nickel and Dimed, where there were "no wrong aswers," but they asked me to comment some of my answers that might have been controversial.
After passing their drug screening and completing a set of mindless Computer Based Learning Modules necessary for my "job training," I was given a rather simple job with an impressive name, Inventory Control Specialist. Basically, I looked at numbers on a sheet and took the matching products out onto the store floor. Despite the annoying song and dance we were forced to do every morning, the first week or so wasn't too unbearable.
It was about two weeks into the job that I began to see what was happening right under my very eyes. Wal-Mart's main claim to fame was how much its employees "enjoyed" their work. I found very few people that enjoyed their work at all and a large reason for that was the way that they were treated. The store I worked at would not allow overtime. This meant that 40 hrs a week was the maximum anyone was allowed to work. If someone had to work longer one day, they were expected to leave early the next. I thought that this was extremely unfair simply because if Wal-Mart needed you to stay longer one day you were obligated to do so. It was also "funny" when the store would shift its seasonal isles, school supplies to halloween etc., they would need a handful of workers to work overtime. All of the sudden overtime was ok. Many of the workers wanted to work overtime simply because their wages were around $7 an hour and overtime meant that they would make a little over $10 an hour. This was a major source of tension between the workers and managers for the time that I was there and I would speculate that the situation hasn't been resolved.
I had the leisure of only needing employment for a few months so I was able to make it through telling myself I only had a few weeks left. I cannot imagine how the people feel who have worked there for years and rely on Wal-Mart for survival.
Sincerely,
Bill Windle
4-16-02
Dear Mrs Ehrenreich
I am very moved by your book and bought 2 copies. My experiences were so similar to your experiences in the past. Now I am in mid management at a store like Wal Mart. Most managers have no business being managers, you are correct. In my case I want to be a philanthropist for awhile and your book empowered me that my perceptions are more than valid. I perceive the greed and the superiority so many managers feel; the lack of integrity. I have been unpopular in my job although only with the people listed above. I believe that perhaps mid management is irrelevant, as you observed. Fortunately in my case I have made "major differences" which resemble quite divine miracles, like help from above.
Although you were very frustrated by religious people I am very fascinated by how much you cared about people and it reminded me how frustrated Jesus was with the Pharisees. I was very touched by the things you thought about in the cheap motel rooms.
Special things will occur as a result of your book. It is haunting to recall a time of poverty but it also gave me a confidence that I could survive. Please do a kind of sequel or more writing on social issues.
[Indiana, USA]
Received by email, May 13, 2002
Dear Barbara:
I just got done reading your book "Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America." Wow!! Thank you for the fruits of your labor. I am of the "working poor." I am employed at Burger King. I have one child and I have a housing voucher and medical assistance. I work 6 days a week there. I work various hours, some days they only need me for a few hours, some days they need me for more hours. I don't usually get 40 hours in a week at $7.15 an hour. Somehow I still make ends meet even though it is very hard. My daughter's Grandparents on her Father's side baby-sit for me, thankfully! I go to the library a lot for books, videos (good movies for free!!) and magazines. I came across your book. I saw you on Oprah one day, and it moved me that you were talking about the working poor. I was so happy to see that a story was being done about us. We are becoming invisible. I have been telling everybody about this book.
I have worked some pretty decent jobs, but the wages were still very low. I don't have any college education, I did graduate high school. I took some adult education classes at night through the town. I got some basic computer knowledge through these classes and worked at some offices. One office that I was temp (not through an agency, but by word of mouth, someone knew I had office experience) at was the Housing Authority. It was a generous $9.00 an hour, but the job was only for 3 months. Everyone asks me why I don't work in an office, still. I don't feel that I have a decent enough wardrobe, my car is not dependable and I feel bored when I am at a computer or filing. I work at Burger King because I am constantly busy. The time seems to go by faster. I do feel a lot of pain by the end of my shift. We only get a half hour break with free food if we work more than 6 hours (RI bare minimum meal break law). Anything under 6 hours we don't get a break, but we can have food for half price before or after a shift. If people smoke, they get smoking breaks pretty often. I do not smoke, so I don't usually get breaks. Sometimes, I have nice managers that will let me sit down for 5 minutes and have a drink. They schedule us for 5 1/2 hour shifts all the time, so that we cannot have a break. I have been asked to be a shift supervisor ( I call it a glorified baby-sitter). That position only pays $8 an hour and there is so much responsibility. I told my manager that I wouldn't even do it for $9, maybe $10 I would think about it. He just laughed at me.
I wish I had enough money to buy a few copies of your book. I would hand them out to a few people I know. The store manager at Burger King for one. And the women at the Housing Authority that think that people making the wages that they do should be able to get by. They have no concept since most of them are married and been in their jobs for many years. They work 8 AM - 4 PM Mon-Fri....they take an hour paid lunch break and they take many coffee breaks. They take calls when they feel like it. It must be great to work for the government, see the poor people and still close their eyes to them after 4 PM. We had people who were homeless come in and we told them our lists were closed, to go seek out a homeless shelter. It is crazy. Then the housing authority women laugh and say that a lot of the people that they see in there are not very smart, some are very lazy, and some are very dirty. I think they should work a low wage job just for one week. Let's see if they could do it.
Thanks again for such a great book. Thanks for all of your labors that went into such a great book. I wish that more people would take the time to read it. The rich, middle class and poor alike. I even tell teenagers about it that I work with. They need to know the harsh realities of life that they are about to enter into. And hopefully, they will opt for getting ahead any way they can. Hopefully, they will put off having children too young, so that they can get themselves situated in life first.
[Signed] One of the invisible "working poor"
May 21, 2002
Dear Ms. Ehrenreich,
This letter is to say thank you for your book Nickel and Dimed. I read it last year, and the woman who owns the book store gave me a copy last week from "advanced reader's edition not for sale" she gets for free. She knew I liked the book so she gave this to me. I read it again and now have the address to send you the letter.
On page 155 you say you could do the work in Wal-Mart and be a deaf-mute. I am deaf, not mute, but people don't understand my voice sometimes. I promise you Wal-Mary would not hire you to do that job if you were deaf. They will only hire deaf to stock and they want it at night so no customers or not so many customers, the 11 to 7 shift. I have two friends deaf who stock at night, and one deaf Godson stocker. You are right, they have roommates or live at home with their parents because not enough money to have their own place.
There were pages you wrote when I laughed to read it! So funny when you were thinking "mean" thoughts and other places were very funny. The book is not about a funny topic so it was nice to laugh sometimes. Most of the time it is sad to read because it is all true. People are hungry at work, live in crummy places, work when they are sick and hurt, all of your words are true.
When my son was a baby I cleaned houses so I could take him with me because he was nursing. I did not work for a big company, just myself. The people let me bring him and the little playpen and I worked to clean their houses. He was a very good baby always calm and play, sleep, eat. I did this for one year. I always bought baby food for him, he was never hungry. But I did not always buy enough food for me. After rent for my trailer, gas for the car, bills, you know, there was not a lot of food money. Sometimes the minister at church and his wife gave us food from their garden, or meat from their freezer, pretend they have too much. Other people at church did it sometimes and I was embarrassed. But I took the food because I needed to eat so I could work and take care of my son. My husband had left when I was pregnant.
Even to buy clothes and shoes for children is hard when you don't have money extra. My son did not have shoes until he was almost one year. A lady in the trailer park bought him some little brown shoes, so cute. I still have them, his first shoes. He was not walking and I put on two pairs of socks, but I wished for shoes for him. That lady did not have a car so I always took her to buy her groceries and errands for her. Lucky we had a car!
One time my son had pneumonia. Or trailer was cold and he got sick. The doctor wrote a prescription a I went to the drugstore to get the medicine. The man there showed me the amount, wrote it down. Oh, I didn't have the much money. So I told him I would come back in two days when I get paid. But the man so nice. He shook his head, gave me the medicine, wrote to pay him later, no hurry. Well, that was a small town, I was lucky, and of course I paid him later. But in the big city, that would not happen.
I will not make you bored with more stories. I just want to add, tell you if a person has a disability it makes it more hard to get a job. Even if you have skills, people prefer hearing people. Two men did sue Wal-Mart because they applied for stocker and were not hired because they were deaf. They won the lawsuit and Wal-Mart hired them.
Lucky for me, I have a great husband now who takes such good care of us. Not everyone gets lucky. I wish all the people who own the big companies would feel the shame like you said and make the wages more, pay better money so people can live, have food, houses, medicine, clothes, gas, shoes.
But I think those people don't care. You say the workers will get tired and cause the changes. I hope this will happen soon.
Thank you for writing a good book. I hope you are well and happy.
P.S. I think it is popular to have deaf cleaning women. At my church (deaf church) almost all women are cleaners. Then one cleans at McDonalds, one mows lawns, two at Wal-Mart.
[name withheld by request]
July 9, 2002
Dear Ms. Ehrenreich,
I have just finished reading your book. This is truly an accurate report on people at the bottom end of the wage scale. You say what I always tell friends -- people with no education and training do work hard and never get ahead, especially in a world of affluence. (They are not always lazy.)
I am presently out of work and having a hard time making ends meet and can truly relate. I have had some pretty good secretarial jobs (laid off from an engineering company in January.) In addition to looking for full time work, I am considering part time or weekend work to supplement my unemployment benefits. (and maybe continuing after landing a full-time job.) The average pay is $8/hour. I tell people I am "living my book." I do have skills and know something will eventually come up for me so I am better off than your characters.
I would appreciate it if you would not use my name.
[name withheld], Massachusetts
Kudos on a great book!
September 23, 2002 via email
Barbara,
I just picked up a copy of Nickel and Dimed. I'm highly educated, having 38 years of continuous schooling, 11 in a Ph.D. program (although never finishing the thesis). I've taught at Vassar.I've worked for IBM Research for almost 19 years.
About 15 years ago, while working at IBM Research, I got divorced. Having 3 kids, an ex-wife with a spending problem, a house and a half-dozen max-ed out credit cards I ran into a cash crunch. I got a second job working nights and weekends at a bowling alley for $7/hr. At 40 hours per week I was generating $280/wk extra. I did this for 7 years. In the last two of those years both jobs were not enough. I lived in my car for 3 months during that summer. I found a third job driving a bagel delivery truck driving from Fishkill, NY to New Haven, CT with a dozen stops in between totaling an additional 26 hours per week, starting at midnight and ending 6.5 hours later. For my efforts I received $10/hr or $260/week. I worked a total of 106 hours per week for 2 years.
During that time I broke a bone in my foot while working the truck. Because I couldn't afford to miss work I kept my shoe on and tightly tied for 3 weeks. I had health care thru IBM but couldn't afford the loss of pay that a cast would cause nor the pay loss for time taken to visit the doctor.
Now my kids are grown and, except for my daughter in college, all of the bills are paid and life has returned to one full time professional job.
While working thru this nightmare of the divorced years, I did get to work with dozens of people who live on a minimum wage. I still see them occasionally working counters at my coffee shop or bookstore. They survive but I can't imagine how. Every penny counts. I'm a heavy tipper now.
I think one of the best things we could do is exempt anyone who makes less than 40K per year from taxes of any kind; not just wages but sales taxes, property taxes, etc. That would make a $7/hour wage a REAL $7/hour. Clothes would be more affordable, housing would be more affordable, etc.
Another effect of having been homeless is to try to figure out how to increase the number of available homes or, at least, places that a person can go to keep the rain off his head, clean himself properly, and rest safely. I've thought about the question and keep coming up with the answer of "prefab" housing. Unfortunately I suspect that such a solution will end up concentrating the poor into "projects" like the ones in NYC that tend to breed crime. I wish I had an answer.
While I was homeless I would sleep in my car hidden in the woods. Or I'd park where you expect cars to be (like on a Ford sales lot as I drove a Ford Escort or in an all-night supermarket parking lot). I woke up one really hot night and realized that there was someone sleeping in the car next to mine. Since then I've noticed homeless people sleeping in cars more often. I lived in Fishkill, which is a fairly rich, white, upperclass neighborhood and I was amazed that such a problem existed and was never obvious to me before.
All is not rosy for the future and the minimum wage job may yet come again. I lost all of my retirement savings in the Worldcom bankruptcy as well as my job at Worldcom last June. On top of that Worldcom failed to pay my promised severance due to the bankruptcy. I'm employed again at a professional job but still not set up to retire anytime soon. One or two bad breaks could still put me back on the street.
Your book is excellent and I'll certainly recommend it to my friends. However, most of them have not had a minimum wage job and probably won't find the book as compelling as I did.
Your book brought back memories I'd forgotten, even though they are only 5 years past. The meek will inherit the earth but the poor are destined to service and maintain it.
Tim Daly Page 2 |
