Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Barbara Ehrenreich decides that taking various jobs such as waitressing and housekeeping will help her to understand what it really is like being someone with a working-class lifestyle. Working two different waitressing jobs at once, then doing housekeeping and working at Jerry's definitely was more than she could handle. Going straight from one job to another with 10 minutes in between and commuting 45 minutes to Jerry's wasn't a quality of life she wanted to be living. Residing in a trailer park and only eating whenever managers couldn't see took a toll on her emotionally, physically and mentally. She talks about the stuggles she faces when trying to "plunge into poverty".
Write a paragraph about your worst job ever. How did your experience compare to that of Ehrenreichs? What, if anything, have you learned from that job?
Ehrenreich ordinarily lives much more comfortably than she did as a waitress, and of course she had an escape hatch from her experiment- she would not serve food or clean rooms forever and could have gone back to her usual life if necessary at any time. Explain the effect her status as a "tourist" in working-class culture has on you as a reader
What is the point of Ehrenreich's experiment ?
What do you think that she was hoping to learn by stepping down the economic ladder, and what can you learn as her reader?