a walmart sales clerk. her personal account of her experience as part of the rank and file low-wage work force eliminates the darker side of our -- illuminates the darker side of our economy and makes it impossible to think of those who work to provide services for us dismissively. "the boston globe" says the scorn withers, her humor stings, her radical light shines on. "the chicago tribune" calls her passionate, hotly lucid and politically engaged. finally, "the new york times" raves about "nickel and dimed" calling it captivating and just promise you'll read this explosive little book cover to cover and will pass it on to all your friends and relatives. ms. ehrenreich is a frequent writer for "time" magazine, also author of the critically-acclaimed "fear of falling" and "the new york

times"' bestseller, "the worst fear of our lives." now, a little bit of housekeeping. c san's taping this for booktv. i'm not sure when it's going to air, but it will be on tv someday. [laughter] as it turns out, y'all have wiped us out of all of our copies of "nickel and dimed," but i tell you, we are only too happy to take reservations for a copy, and we'll do everything we can to make sure you can get a signed copy. also i have a few of these index cards left, but their getting precious in number. so if you'd like to ask a question tonight of ms. ehrenreich, because of the sheer number and because this is being taped for television, we'll be handling this via note card. so if you'd like a note card to ask a question, please, hold up your hand as she begins to talk, and i'll come around and give these to you as long as they last. right before she's finished up, i'll collect the note cards, and she'll read your questions from them and answer them.

now, the last little bit of housekeeping is we've got to get her out of here by 9 because she's got a flight to catch, so i know as much as we'd like to bend her ear a little bit, we've got to move things along as quickly as possible during the signing. so with all of that said, please, warmly welcome barbara ehrenreich. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. thank you for the nice introduction, susana, and i hope there's not some mistake. there's so many people here, i just want to be sure nobody was misled by the title, this is not an investment seminary, okay? is. [laughter] i mean, yeah. i've been trying to write about poverty and especially issues having to do with women in

poverty for many years now, and i want to say i'm just really thrilled that i have gotten a whole book on this subject because it is not easy to interest the mainstream media in these sorts of issues. and i will tell you one anecdote to illustrate my frustration over the years. this is something that happened, um, a few years ago. i was taken out to lunch by the editor of a well known national magazine which will go unnamed here in the interests of my having a future writing career. and these lunches are really important to freelance writers because very often the cost of the lunch is more than you're going to be paid, you know, for the article. [laughter] so you eat a lot. and i was pitching him an idea, a story idea that had to do with women and poverty, and i had a nice twist to it, and i thought it was a good idea and so on. and this editor was so obviously bored, you know, he was kind of

rolling his eyes as we work our way through the gourmet meal we're having until finally we get to the, you know, death by chocolate dessert and the decaf espressos, and he says, all right, barbara, do your thing on poverty. only make it upscale. [laughter] so this is the attitude there. so anyway, susana, i think, explained the idea of this book which arose in a conversation, actually, with a much better editor, and that is louis lapham. and i did not suggest i do it, and he said, you, and there i was stuck. the idea was, basically, to see if it was possible to live on the wages i could get as an entry-level worker. and this means -- meant leaving home, finding a cheap place to

live in, the cheapest possible consistent with some kind of level of safety and cleanliness, and then to find the best paying job i could, although, of course, i couldn't use my -- not using my real resumé or whatever skills they may be. not that i ever saw a help wanted ad for political essayists. anyway -- [laughter] so i don't want to ruin the story for you, the ending or anything for you, but i'll tell you the result right now. um, which i sort of knew when i left home just by trying to sit down and do the math. and i could see that particularly in the area where i first started out, this was key west, the town nearest to where i live, and it's a tourist industry town, could see the wages were going to be in the $6-$7 an hour range in 1998 when i started. and i, you know, could see what the represents were, and it looked like it would be very, very hard to put these things together. and i think you should bear in

mind that i have a lot of advantages in understand taking this venture and trying to support myself. for one thing, i didn't have my children with me. they're grown up, and they didn't want to come live with mom in a trailer park for a month. [laughter] i mean, and whereas the average low-wage worker is much more likely to have children to support and take care of. i'm strong and healthy, and i always had a car or a rent-a-wreck if it was in a city, a strange city. so those are advantages compared to a lot of people. so the book really turned out to be a story of how hard it is to not get anywhere in america. how hard you have to work to remain, to be part of the working poor. and for me this was much of a discovery. susana told you the kinds of

jobs i had, and i'll talk this is minneapolis and the site of one of my attempts to support myself, i'll tell you about, more about my life as a wal-martian, that is, at wal-mart. [laughter] i should explain first it is not, it's not that easy. not everybody can get a job at wal-mart, you know? there are things you have to get through. there is the personality test, for example. [laughter] this is mostly these personality tests are pretty easy. you get questions like, and this is a proposition you have to respond to, in the past year i have stolen -- check dollar amount below -- worth of goods from my employers. [laughter] you can figure that one out, right? how to answer that one. or my favorite question which, oh, comes up on every

personality test somehow, quote: true or false, it's easier to work when you're a little bit high. [laughter] um, the -- you know. but my policy, my strategy in taking these personality tests was always to, you know, i could usually tell the right answer but not to be so blatantly right every time that it would look like i was faking out the test. but always, you know, modify it a little bit. so i came, you know, actually i got some wrong for that reason here in the twin cities' area. the personnel manager had given me the test, and she said, don't worry, there's no right or wrong answers, just whatever you think. [laughter] then she goes off to grade it, mind you, on a computer. and comes back and says that i got some things wrong. and one of them was, this proposition was all rules must

be followed to the letter at all times. and i did not agree totally, i only agreed strongly, you know, again, not wanting to look like too much of a cyclops. well, she said, the answer is totally. [laughter] you can never with too much of a suckup to walmart. [laughter] [applause] now, there's more. you have to pass a drug test. that's an interesting little ritual of humiliation, you know? can you pee for us, please. anyway, i passed that one with flying colors, and i got the job, $7 an hour in ladies' wear which i thought was going to be very genteel. i thought i was going to be giving fashion tips to ladies. [laughter] it turned out to be total drudgery. the challenge was to learn where every single one of hundreds of items went, and, you know, and

they're on the floor, they're all over the place. and, of course, then they would be rotated every three or four day just to give you the feeling you were slipping into alzheimer's. [laughter] and i, um, i think i will just give you a little, read here a little about the orientation for walmart associates. remember, there are no employees at wal-mart. and walmart is interesting, it's the largest employer in the united states. there are no employees, associates. and the customers are often called guests. [laughter] so i'll just give you a little sample of this experience. for sheer grandeur, scale and intimidation value, i doubt if any corporate orientation exceeds that of walmart. i had been told that the process will take eight hours which will include two 15-minute breaks and one-half hour break for a meal and will be paid for like a

regular shift. when i arrived, i find there are ten new hires besides myself, mostly young and caucasian, and a team of three headed by roberta, the personnel manager i got in trouble with to do the orr yen tating as she calls it. we sit around a long table in a windowless room each with a thick folder of paperwork in front of us and hear roberta again give us a pep talk about being a people person and how important that was to work at wal-mart. we begin with a video about 15 minutes long on the history and philosophy of walmart, or as an anthropologist might if they were observing it call it, the cult of sam. [laughter] first, young sam walton in uniform comes back from the war, starts a store, sort of five and dime. he marries and fathers four attractive children. he receives the medal of freedom from president bush, the earlier one. after which he promptly dies

making way for the eulogies. but the company goes on, yes, indeed. and then we go, you know, it goes through, we go through this long video about all these milestones in the corporate expansion, you know, when sales topped $100 billion and is on. each landmark date is accompanied by a clip showing throngs of shoppers, swarms of associates or scenes of handsome new stores and their adjoining apartments. over and over we see in graphic display the, quote, three principles which are maddeningly, even defiantly, nonparallel; respect for the individual, exceeding customers' expectations, strive for excellence. [laughter] um, and anyway, you know, all is not -- skipping a little bit here -- all is not total harmony. we learn a lot about how important we associates are. we learned it was actually an associate who invented the idea of the people greeter.

that's what we're told, you know, the person who greets you as -- the real function of the people greeter, by the way, is to see that you don't shoplift, to put you on notice for that. all is not total harmony, we're told, by the way, that managers are servant leaders, they're not bosses, they're servant leaders. [laughter] but then we have a video on associate honesty which shows a cashier being caught on videotape as he pockets bills from a cash register. drums beat ominously as he is led away in handcuffs and sentenced to four years. covert tensions overcome by positive attitude continues in a 12-minute video entitled, "you've picked a great place to work." [laughter] here various associates testify to the essential feeling of family for which walmart is so well known, quote, leading up to the conclusion that we don't need a union. [laughter] once, the video explains, long

ago unions had a place in american society, but they, quote, no longer have much to offer workers which is why people are, quote, leaving them by the droves. and then it goes on and on about the evils of unions until you have to wonder, and i imagine some of my teenage fellow orr yen tees may be wondering white now, why such thieves as these union organizers, such outright extortionists are allowed to roam free in the land. [laughter] there's more, much more than i could ever absorb, um, you know, we go through this handbook for a long time. barry, the 17-year-old to my left mutters that his butt hurts. sonya, the tiny african-american woman across from me seems frozen in terror. i have given up on looking perky and i'm fighting to keep my eyes open. no nose or facial jewelry, we learn. earrings must be small and discreet, not dangling.

no blue jeans on friday, and then you have to pay a dollar for the privilege of wearing them. [laughter] no grazing, that is eating from food packages that somehow have become open and no time theft. this last idea, time theft, sends me drifting off in a sci-fi direction. [laughter] and as the time thieves headed back to the year 3420 loaded with -- [laughter] with weekends and days off looted from the 21st century -- [laughter] finally, someone asks a question. the old guy who's being hired as a people greeter or wants to know, what is time theft? [laughter] answer: doing anything, anything at all except for working during company time. theft of our time, however s not an issue. there are stretches amounting to many minutes when all three of our trainers wander off leaving us to sit there in silence or go to take a chance to fidget a little bit. ..

around the puddles. you don protective grofs. i can't stop from trying to envision the circumstances under which these pools of blood might arise. an associate uprising? a guest riot? i go through six modules in a day and pride away from

the computer and allowed to leave and that was the beginning of my career at walmart. so the book, it is very much about the work as i experienced it. it was to a lesser extent but certainly very important to me, it's about also the people i worked with. i was not in a position to interview people but i learned a lot just, you know, in the course of working with people. and these are people who did not have, do not have the escape hatch i had. i always knew, you know, that i was really a journalist and really going home and going back to a physically easy, rewarding kind of work, work that i love as a writer and some of the people who left the real impression on me and you would meet in the book are gail and joan as i called them. these are very funny,

fast-talking, hard-working, middle-aged women who it turned out were homeless, actually homeless but didn't think they were homeless. did not consider themselves homeless because one of them had a van to sleep in. the other had a pickup truck to sleep in and that's puts you in a higher strata somehow. people also like rosalee and holly as i called them who were hungry, actually hungry during the course of our workday. this was with a housecleaning service. and i must say in, with my middle class blinkers on, for a long time i thought they were just dieting and that's why they weren't eating lunch and i had to really haven'tly deduce they just did not have the money or the food at home for lunch. or people like george, a 19-year-old immigrant from the czech republic, worked as a dishwasher in the

restaurant and returned from that job at night to a dormitory where he slept in a bed that had just been vacated by another man who slept during the shift while george was working, something i thought only happened in the 19th century. so there are not a lot of polemics in this book but there is a message i hope. that is, there is something really wrong, something very fundamentally wrong when people can work so hard, full time, year-round and never make enough to live on at any kind of level of comfort or dignity. so, let me stop here and turn to your questions or comments and, let's see. where are they? >> [inaudible]. >> oh, okay.

yeah. okay. i can skip the ones i don't know the answer to. that's what i'm doing here. [laughter] can't answer that one either. those are easy questions. what do you think of the role of convenes foods, restaurants and stores and their premium prices for minimum quantity and quality? how do you think this impacts people living on the margins? well, i will tell you when i was in the twin cities area i was unable to find an apartment, at all. you know, there was nothing below, seen available under 800 or so a month. i'm talking about, you know, i would take anything at that point. i asked around. i asked rental agents, what do i do? they said you live in a residential motel. that's what you do. so i ended up doing that for

a while. it was outrageous. $250 a week for a room in this truly, creepy motel which i will not name again. but one of the, main points about that, there was no fridge, no microwave, no hot plate. and that plenty i was totally dependent on convenience stores and fast-food places for food, which is a very expensive way to eat, never mind, healthy or unhealthy. the rest of these motels were filled with, families squeezed in into same sized room that is my comment. a lot of people are stuck with those things. let's see. in minnesota you worked at walmart. let's see, seems working at low-paying jobs like walmart

leads to shopping at walmart because of the cost. so it's a circle, it is a vicious cycle. how can we beat it? this is from three people, nathan, dane and victoria. where are you? hi. yeah. that's a good question. i don't think i really know the answer but that's true. it's very cheap and very cheap not only because the retail workers are paid so little but because the people who make the products are paid so little. you know, you look at those clothing labels, you won't find anything made in the usa. you know, they're made in the third world. and walmart has been caught, kathie lee, she is one of their brands, with sweatshop labor. that's where the cheapness comes from. all i can say is when, you know, the workers start organizing or something, respect that effort and help and that's, but, you're

right, the prices are low. all right. here's one. you mentioned on radio, on the radio that the fact that you were told to work in many places to report to work before discussing the pay. do you think that is a problem nationally or just in minnesota? i have had similar experiences with white-collar positions. yes. this was an interesting discovery to me that in jobs like this and not only walmart, you go through this application process, all the tests and everything. and then there is no point which they call you up and say, barbara, we would like to offer you a job at x-dollars an hour. will you take that? no. it is lucky, you, barbara. you passed the test. show up tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. and i thought that was so interesting to just zoom right by that discussion, that little matter of pay, and make you feel like you were really lucky. you passed the test. you get to work for us.

i don't know if that is national but i suspect it is, these are large corporations. let's see. what do you think of the chicken or egg theory on speculation about poverty? that is that crime, mental illness, depression, homelessness, chemical dependency, police profiling, et cetera, can we really say which comes first? that is are people, you know, really suffering from all these things? i can't, i can't give a full answer how much depression, mental illness, et cetera, there is. i can certainly, homelessness is, is well-known among working people. that is, 20% of the homeless population are people who are job holders. i don't know how much it works the other way around. as for chemical dependency

and the other things i can only say it seems to be firm belief of management in low, especially with low-paid workers, but not only low-paid workers, that every single one of these employees is a druggie, a slacker and a thief. you know, that's the assumption. on day one in one of my jobs it was a restaurant job, a fellow worker warned me, your purse can be searched at any time. ah, how can that be? it can be. that is entirely legal. they just, they're assuming there is something wrong with you. was anyone or any organization helpful in your search for housing in any of the cities? this is a question. i, i will give you the answer for the twin cities. i did go to a private charity at one point. i partly, i wanted to see, you know, what kind of help there would be and the recommendations of the

social worker when i told her what my wages were and i worked at walmart was, you should go to a shelter. that was it. so that was kind of depressing. question. did any people you spoke with think a union might help them? what were your fellow workers opinions of unions? i can't answer. i didn't, wasn't able to poll about opinions about unions. i am a afraid in situations like walmart sometimes the only thing people know about unions might be from that anti-union tape they were shown. except that one very interesting thing happened. this was a year ago when i was here doing this and that is that the hotel workers went out on strike in minneapolis. [applause] and, and that was very exciting and, i think it got

people thinking because they, the hotel workers were actually earning more than the average walmart workers when they started and it did, you know, so i think defiance or people standing up for themselves is contagious, potentially. you they, it -- you know it could spread. looking for answerable questions. how, the question is, how did you get the jobs, i.e., how did you hide all of your talent? [laughter] that's very flattering because, the truth is the big thing me was that i had no experience for the jobs i was applying for except for working in a restaurant which of course i had done as a teenager and college student. but i did, i did not put my entire education down on job application forms. i thought a ph.d in cell

biology, no, it would not look good. they would say, what's wrong with her? [laughter] you know, the only thing that stood out about me in any of these jobs was that i had to learn. i was inexperienced and i would make the point right here and with all the authority of my ph.d behind me that there is a lot to learn in any job. i mean i will never use the word unskilled again in my life to describe anything. [applause] there is so much and, you know, it was a struggle in every single job to learn the things that i had to. as well as a struggle physically to keep up because, you know, there are jobs that don't have breaks for example. jobs that don't have bathroom breaks. okay. question, there seems

to be a trend in the u.s. over the last 20 years towards less compassion for those living in poverty. for example, welfare reform, large tax cuts, if i may edit this question, tax cuts for the rich, put that in and anti-union trends. why is america moving in this direction? what does our future hold? i can't do the last point about what our future holds. that's up to all of us, right? we decide on what we do but why, we've been moving in this direction? well, when anybody makes the kind of complaints that i'm making here, anybody raises these issues, they're usually told by someone on the right side of the political spectrum, what are you doing? that is class war when you say those things. well with the truth is, that class war was declared by the other side way before.

you know and -- [applause] it has virtually, it has been minimally opposed, i mean, unions have been weakened. union-busting has become an art form. even democratic president who brought us welfare reform that pulled the rug out from under many, many, poor women and their children. and you know, let's not have this class war be so one-sided all right? that's, give it a little fight. okay. i'm constantly looking for simple questions. [laughing] okay. here's a question. by my estimate the cost of living has risen five times since 1974 when it was 2 per hour. now, wait a minute, you mean minimum wage this person means. why is there no organized movement i know of to raise the minimum wage to at least

$10 an hour? well there is, there has been some of the more liberal democrats have been pushing to raise the minimum wage from its present 5:15 an hour. there are also movements and i'm sure this is true here to get a living wage locally. you have a living wage movement in the twin cities area, right? is there a representative of it here? huh? >> [inaudible]. >> okay. but you know, $10 an hour would not do it. there was a report released today by jobs now in st. paul, actually you need $16 an hour to live in this area. that's not to live in luxury. that is not to live in a middle class standard even. that is a bare bones type of budget. to live in this area. so that's, i know, that has to be the target, in living wage fights. let me see.

hard to read all these. and let's see. quote, question, how do you respond to critics who said you did not report in your book about fellow employees who worked with you who are white and had chosen to quit high school and other things which kept them from working in better jobs and moving up, et cetera? i didn't know of these people, i'm sorry. nobody told me that they had just chosen to quit high school, et cetera. and i, you know, i want to address this, something that is associated with this question which i sometimes run into which is people saying what is wrong with these people? why don't they go to school and raise themselves up? well, first there are a lot of obstacles to that. when you get stuck in a trap, it is expense to be poor.

you have, for example, you're living in a residential motel, for example. you often don't control your hours. you might want to go to night school but then suddenly you're working the night shift, there that goes. but the real, what i feel most though about this question though is that, we need too realize that people in our lo-wage job force in the united states are doing work we depend on. it is not, somebody has got to do these things. i worked in a nursing home briefly in maine. that's important work. i felt good about that. i mean, somebody has to work in the store. somebody has to serve the food. why do we say what is wrong with these people to do it when we need it done? why not pay them and respect them for it? [applause]

okay. well, sorry. what are my hopes for the book in terms of policy changes? i will, i think this, you know, the things that we would need to do in terms of social policy are very familiar to this crowd. i would just, you know, some things that just struck me very strongly coming from this experience of course the need for national health insurance. i mean in so many -- [applause] is that, you know, other countries have it? why can't we? canadians have it? are they so different, you know? that is not a strange exotic country. [laughter] they survive. but a lot of these employers will offer health insurance but the amount the employee has to contribute is so

great that it could be hundreds of dollars a month with a family, that it's not possible. you know, it is not a possibility. we need that. we need subsidized child care for working parents. you know, again, other countries have that. [applause] high-quality child care too, by the way. we need, we need to make, to bring some reality to the right to organize and bargain collectively. that is a right, you know. it sits on paper but it is not enforced by the government. you can be fired for anything. that is one thing that was really brought home to me in these experiences how easy to be fired for breaking a little rule, like a walmart. you can't say damn, or hell. you can imagine the other words you can't say either [laughing] and you know, and i have read, i did not experience it, that people who were involved in union organizing have been fired from walmart

but that is illegal. so what they're fired for is saying damn. all those little rules. afl-cio estimates that 10,000 american workers are fired every year for union activity. that is, that means we're not, that right doesn't really exist. so those would be some of my policy changes. let's see. here's somebody. who says, corbin, somewhere is here. he says wonderful, thank you. then he says next time, do it without a car? corbin? [laughing] you do it without a car, all right? [laughter] i would see these people, you know, standing at the busp sos, at the see these jobs are often in the periphery of the twin cities.

some of the cheap housing is in the center, would have a hour commute each day. i can't imagine how i would have done that. let's see. you mentioned some of the advantages you had in seeking and maintaining employment. did you notice any differences in people of color? i can't say i was in a position to survey that. i would say what i think i did notice, when i was initially applying at these big discount hotels for hotel housekeeping jobs, for some reason i thought that was going to be easier than waitressing i would always be steered toward waitressing. i think that was because way was white and english-speaking. and actually, if it had been a better season i would have been working it would have been more lucrative to be in waitressing. but that was the extent to which i was able to note

that sort of bias. let's see. no, i don't know any mexican american men in the building trades. not yet but, would like to meet them. [laughter] question, to what extent did financial illiteracy contribute to the dilemma of your fellow workers and what do you think our culture would look like if we all left high school knowledgeable and skilled in financial matters? ah, i don't think you had to be very financially literate -- when you have $7 an hour to play with, there is not a lot of big, high-powered mathematical things to deal with. you know, you just can't spend money. i don't, i don't know. i did meet people who had gotten caught up in credit

card debt and, that goes into the middle class. i mean that is not just a problem of poor people but that, you know, that is a really sneak can i, ad -- sneaky addictive kind of thing and i'm very disturbed by congress's recent changes in the bankruptcy law will of course penalize the poor and not the credit card companies which act like drug dealers really in the way they, you know, recruit people. let's see. looking for easy ones. well, what has your work history been besides the recent jobs for this book prior to becoming a journalist? well, i did waitress and do things like that when i was a teenager. perhaps i should add that in

my extended family and in my immediate nuclear family are plenty of people whose lives have been in these kinds of jobs. so there was not a new, it wasn't a new category of for me of people. you know or something. it wasn't a strange social environment or should i say, this is a good point to say something that i would, toward the end of every job i would always tell somebody or group of people that i knew particularly well what i was really doing there, you know. i would be nervous about that. because i hadn't said i'm not doing this for the money. i'm on a mission. and so i would get up my nerve and i would say, look, i got to tell you something. and they would say, i'm really a writer. and the response was always like, yeah?

and you know, what i finally realized was, everybody's a writer, you know? [laughter] as if, no, i met people who are writing poems, who are writing, keeping journals, writing a book even in some cases and i think that's important to realize. it's not like some different sort of people intellectually speaking who are in our, you know, in the low-wage workforce. would i consider living with a roommate? why, or why not? i didn't really know anybody. [laughter] and you know, that i couldn't figure out how to do that but, still open to possibilities there. let's see. what do, question, what do you advise for workers stuck

in the downward mobility of constant job loss and reemployment? and this is from wendy who talks about having short-term jobs, holiday rushes, and then seasonal jobs, et cetera. i don't, i don't know how you get out of that but i do think ultimately, you know, if you're in one job for a while, it's a matter, even, you know, however you do it, making connections with other people there, building some kind of solidarity, some kind of network of friendship and support, whether it will lead to your approaching a union. maybe it will lead to you as a group being able to say to management, we need some changes here? but i don't think it is really possible all alone.

i love that. old union word, solidarity. sometimes we do, we do have to band together to make change. and one more. okay. oh. question, how did the research and writing of nickel-and-dimed change you as a person? i were say has made to me is that i see people differently. i don't think that was ever completely oblivious to all the people who make my life possible. say the hotel cleaners and the serving people and everything. not that i was completely oblivious but now i see them in a different way. when i, for example, go into a foodmart and a gas station and see the woman behind the

counter, now i'm thinking, how long has she been on her feet today? what is she going home to? is she going home to feed children at the end of the day? and what will it be? will it be a trailer? will it be a motel? will they be crammed into a house with other people? so i think, yeah, i see things differently, and some of that is uncomfortable because it means seeing the pain but we all have to see that pain if we're going to bring about the change. thank you. [applause] >> for more about barbara ehrenreich and her work, visit, barbaraehrenreich.com