Example Source and Notetaking:

 

Excerpt from Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America.

Sample Notes

 

Serving in Florida

Mostly out of laziness, I decide to start my low-wage life in the town nearest to where I actually live, Key West, Florida, which with a population of about 25,000 is elbowing its way up to the status of a genuine city. The downside of familiarity, I soon realize, is that it's not easy  to go from being a consumer, thoughtlessly throwing money around in exchange for groceries and movies and gas, to being a worker in the very same place. I am terrified, especially at the beginning, of being recognized by some friendly business owner or erstwhile neighbor and having to stammer out some explanation of my project. Happily, though, my fears turn out to be entirely unwarranted: during a month of poverty and toil, no one recognizes my face or my name, which 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."

Ehrenreich, Barbara.  "Chapter One, "Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America. The New York Times on the Web 2001. New York Times. 25 Sept. 2004 <http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/ehrenreich-01nickel.html>

[Author narrates the beginning of her research, in Key West. The transition is difficult but for reasons other than those expected: no one recognizes her, no risk of her cover being blown.  She enters a "parallel universe."

>>The lowering of status, on account of her gender and new low-wage occupation seems to strike the author.  She writes--"I never got through college, I am "baby," "honey," "blondie," and, most commonly, "girl." "--in a way that implies this lack of respect troubles her.<<

 
My first task is to find a place to live. I figure that if I can earn $7 an hour—which, from the want ads, seems doable—I can afford to spend $500 on rent or maybe, with severe economies, $600 and still have $400 or $500 left over for food and gas. In the Key West area, this pretty much confines me to flophouses and trailer homes—like the one, a pleasing fifteen-minute drive from town, that has no air-conditioning, no screens, no fans, no television, and, by way of diversion, only the challenge of evading the landlord's Doberman pinscher. The big problem with this place, though, is the rent, which at $675 a month is well beyond my reach. All right, Key West is expensive. But so is New York City, or the Bay Area, or Jackson, Wyoming, or Telluride, or Boston, or any other place where tourists and the wealthy compete for living space with the people who clean their toilets and fry their hash browns. Still, it is a shock to realize that "trailer trash" has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to. [Basic tasks include finding an apartment, choosing location, and seeking available positions. In one case, she describes the foul conditions of an available "flophouse," only to surprise the reader in showing that the real problem is not the lack of amenties but a monthly rent of $675, which is more than she projects being able to pay. She brings this point home, saying "it is a shock to realize that 'trailer trash' has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to."

 
  So I decide to make the common trade-off between affordability and convenience and go for a $500-a-month "efficiency" thirty miles up a two-lane highway from the employment opportunities of Key West, meaning forty-five minutes if there's no road construction and I don't get caught behind some sundazed Canadian tourists. I hate the drive, along a roadside studded with white crosses commemorating the more effective head-on collisions, but it's a sweet little place—a cabin, more or less, set in the swampy backyard of the converted mobile home where my landlord, an affable TV repairman, lives with his bartender girlfriend. Anthropologically speaking, the trailer park would be preferable, but here I have a gleaming white floor and a firm mattress, and the few resident bugs are easily vanquished. [Explains her choices and compromises of cost, versus commute time, versus safety/cleanliness as typical of women living on low-wage jobs. It seems possible to have at least a clean place.]

 
The next piece of business is to comb through the want ads and find a job. I rule out various occupations for one reason or another: hotel front-desk clerk, for example, which to my surprise is regarded as unskilled and pays only $6 or $7 an hour, gets eliminated because it involves standing in one spot for eight hours a day. Waitressing is also something I'd like to avoid, because I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen, and I'm decades of varicosities and back pain beyond that now. Telemarketing, one of the first refuges of the suddenly indigent, can be dismissed on grounds of personality. This leaves certain supermarket jobs, such as deli clerk, or housekeeping in the hotels and guest houses, which pays about $7 and, I imagine, is not too different from what I've been doing part-time, in my own home, all my life. Possible jobs have their problems, if they involve standing or the personality of a telemarketer. Remaining options are positions like working in a supermarket or deli, or cleaning the rooms in various tourist resorts.
    So I put on what I take to be a respectable-looking outfit of ironed Bermuda shorts and scooped-neck T-shirt and set out for a tour of the local hotels and supermarkets. Best Western, Econo Lodge, and HoJo's all let me fill out application forms, and these are, to my relief, mostly interested in whether I am a legal resident of the United States and have committed any felonies. My next stop is Winn-Dixie, the supermarket, which turns out to have a particularly onerous application process, featuring a twenty-minute "interview" by computer since, apparently, no human on the premises is deemed capable of representing the corporate point of view. I am conducted to a large room decorated with posters illustrating how to look "professional" (it helps to be white and, if female, permed) and warning of the slick promises that union organizers might try to tempt me with. The interview is multiple-choice: Do I have anything, such as child care problems, that might make it hard for me to get to work on time? Do I think safety on the job is the responsibility of management? Then, popping up cunningly out of the blue: How many dollars' worth of stolen goods have I purchased in the last year? Would I turn in a fellow employee if I caught him stealing? Finally, "Are you an honest person?" [Job application is tedious but easy enough, requiring multiple applications but raising no problem for the author, since the main criteria are being a citizen with a clean criminal record.

 

[The Wallmart process of hiring is given special attention.  Reliability, availability and loyalty seem to be emphasized over skills or anything else.]
   Apparently I ace the interview, because I am told that all I have to do is show up in some doctor's office tomorrow for a urine test. This seems to be a fairly general rule: if you want to stack Cheerios boxes or vacuum hotel rooms in chemically fascist America, you have to be willing to squat down and pee in front of a health worker (who has no doubt had to do the same thing herself.) The wages Winn-Dixie is offering—$6 and a couple of dimes to start with—are not enough, I decide, to compensate for this indignity. [Author emphasizes that while the process is fairly loose--"apparently I ace the interview"--, the drug test is often mandatory;

>>With witty remarks about "chemically fascist" corporate "America", Ehrenreich  gives a critical picture of the hiring process. Employees are treated more like objects, to be weighed and measured that colleagues or "associates", which the author wants to depict as problematic.  The theme of indignity is prominent.  ??Does this bear upon all low wage work, as experienced by most low-wage workers? ? >>>It could very well be that the author notices this because as a "journalist" her own self-worth is challenged in the ways that a more typical Wallmart worker might be accustomed to or have accepted.<<<

 

>>>>OVERALL EVALUATION: A useful picture of the process of setting oneself up in a new situation, with housing and work. Shared focus upon the material problems and conditions of balancing salary, rent, commuting.  However, as it focuses on the outset of the experiement, much of the real information --can she survive, etc. are not detailed here.<<<<