The author sets rules for herself at the beginning of Nickel and Dimed as a guard toward the steps she is yet to take; plunging herself into the real working world and its fates. She decides on the parameters and rules in the spirit of science after all she has studied it at depth. The first rule the author sets was on the type of job to look for, and the obvious thing was that she could not in her jobs’ search rely on her acquired skills in education or usual work. The reason was that there were not as many advertisements for essay writers at the time. The second …show more content…
She would also have to do her best at it and fully devote her time to the job without finding time to read novels at ladies’ rooms or Marxist rants. The final and third rule concerned her accommodation; she would take the cheapest available. She, however, had her reservations on standards like the cheapest had to be considerably safe and private and were subject to change over time.
The author did try to abide by her set rules but through the project the rules eventually got bent or broken. She may not have considered the bearings of the new environment and made her rules only basing on an ideal/normal platform. Her examples quoted; “In Key West, for example, where I began this project in the late spring of 1998, I once promoted myself to an interviewer for a waitressing job by telling her I could greet European tourists with the appropriate Bonjour or Guten Tag, but this was the only case in which I drew on any remnant of my actual education”. (Barbara Ehrenreich, pg 10, 2001) Here she broke the rule on her choice of work by not …show more content…
Each city she though before going had an advantage like housing affordability or number of English speaking people. However on her arrival to each of them she realizes there are challenges she has to bear with for instance in Florida she has trouble finding a suitable job as all turn out to be mentally and physically exhaustive with an unfriendly employee reception by the employers despite the low wage the job earned. From Key West she moved to Maine where she had previously conducted an interactive official duty and had received a great deal of participation and turn out of the residents. She therefore feels this would be an ideal venue for eye witness. The drawback that she meets in this city however is finding an appropriate place to live. Still in that summer she arrives at Maine and settles for Motel 6 which would be her base before she finds a home and the prospective job. Deep down she is aware that this is a risk for a real woman in the low income wage level trying to dare and figure a way out and lucky for her it is an experiment but still a risky one. She has no clue of a way around the town, not even the basics of weather let alone ideal food joints. This gives her even better justification for the experiment as it is what the ordinary person has had to endure over their years thus their statistics as poor. They face the social problems and furthermore have faced a