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Show if u aJf jty' ,Aafc- a. DE AAtiat. .. - w - OIKD TIIE DOO - ' ''" Kr. i.1 lV iaw ..' fe irlh .hik-- T v &t& mp uL Underpaid and undercover: surviving on seven bucks an hour BY BARBARA EHRENREICH 1 didn't want to write this book; just wanted someone to write it. The whole n editor who was thing started with a lovely $30 lunch paid for by a interested in my ideas about welfare reform. How are all these former welfare moms supposed to support themselves and their children on workers? Someone, I sugthe wages available to entry-levgested maybe because I was already deep into my second 1 1 kind of journalism Pellegrino ought to do the , f and get out there and try it for themselves. Great idea, was his i response: How about you ? I I I I put the project off as long as I decently could. After all, my idea of research is a nice long day in a library supplemented with a few Starbucks breaks. Nothing, that is, involving my physical self. But with this project, I needed every single muscle I had ever nurtured on a Nautilus machine. In short order, just by taking whatever job I could find in the d ads, I became a waitress, a hotel housekeeper, a 'associate. I home aide, a house cleaner, a nursing ran. I lifted. I sorted, I crawled around on my hands and knees scrubbing the crud otf of toilets and floors. At first I was vain enough to fear that someone would recognize my name: "Not the Barbara Ehrenreich, the author and essayist! one ever did: in fact, once hired, I seldom had a name at all, other than "girl." "babe" or, at best, Barb." I had also worried about appearing Ux articulate or educated for the jobs I applied for (although on application forms I slimmed down my resume to "divorced homemaker returning to workforce.") Again, no danger: The only question most employers had for me was: When can you start? were similarly banished on the first Any fears of appearing day of work. You think waitressing is "unskilled" labor? Try handling five tables while struggling to master the computerized ordering system and finesse the waitpersoncook relationship. You think only morons take those $7 an hour jobs keeping the stock organized? Try memorizing the locations of several hundred clothing items (e.g., White Stag clamdiggers with front pleats") only to see those locations cunningly switched around every three or four I I 1 Wal-Ma- rt ever-delica- te Wal-Ma- rt - T to''' ss I have a lifetime's experience in, has been transdays. Even housecleaning, which formed into a science by the nationwide cleaning chain I worked for Mentally divide each room into sections no wider than your arm s reach, proceed from left to right and from top to bottom within each section and around each room, leave outwards. II jars and shampoo bottles with their labels facing Not to complain or anything, but the whole thing did serve as an exercise reduction. I got reamed out by superviand in me I at sors. had fixxl thrown by nursing home residents. I screwed up monsome precious objet in a to time from lime, smashing umentally we were cleaning, and flaming out catastrophically as a waitress. Worst of all, I never did manage to make ends meet, even though I tried working two jobs at once and limiting my diet to Wendys combos and string cheese. at most of these jobs, at least after a week The sad fact is: I wasn't half-ba- d I was cheerful, so or of experience. energetic, obedient, but I still found, as already knew, that S7 an hour just doesnt pay the rent, even my when you're living in a trailer park. Now I face something very few former cleaning ladies ever experience a book tour. Last time I went on one, I , whined the whole way, even threatened to call Amnesty International about the horrors of sleep deprivation and all k interviews. Now I know better. Its a great day, however briefly, in a room that someone luxury to sleep, else has cleaned, and a huge privilege to be listened to, even when the interviewer hasn't read the book and is busily multitasking as we speak. Doing Nickel and Dimed and housekeeper changed me: I chat with every and waitperson and porter with whom I have a language in common. And I tip big. really big, like a welfare mom who's just won the lottery. ft m vanity-abateme- mini-mansi- Nickel JDimea , : i - 4 4 tf jt r V I f back-to-bac- 'door-open- er inning pohtii id essasist and one of the nation 's most insightful siK'ial critics. Barbara Ehrenrehh took a ninety ofjobs waitress, maid, salesclerk to see u hat life is as like for people at the bottom of America's economic ladder. She shares her stars in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Boom-Tim- e America (Metropolitan, $23. ISBN 0S050638S9). An award-- u "s L The sea at its worst. Men at their best. SPUTNIK SWEETHEART o. By Haruki Murakami Knopf, $23 ISBN 0375411690 THE SINKING OF THE USS INDIANAPOLIS AND THE EXTRAORDINARY strange if you think about it, she thought. Here I am in love for the first time in my And the other perlife, at age twenty-twson just happens to be a woman. When Miu invites her new protege to accompany her on a whirlwind business trip to Europe, Sumire happily agrees. On an unnamed Greek Island off the coast of REVIEW BY BRUCE TIERNEY STORY On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union e launched the first satellite. Sputnik I, into space. It orbited the earth for three months before the atmosphere and burning up. Widely regarded in the West as a military threat. Sputnik I n simply sent a signal back to earth, each beep heralding the dawn of the space race that would dictate relations for two decades. Half a lifetime later, Haruki Murakami brings us Sputnik Sweetheart, a wise, sad and loving look at how we are each satellites in sometimes decaying orbit around one another. Three characters dominate the book: the unnamed male author, a teacher in modem day Japan; Sumire, the object of his unrequited affection, a he has known since his college days; and Miu, a glamorous and successful businesswoman who has rather unexpectedly captured Sumires heart Sumire sighed, gazed up at the ceiling for a while, and lit her cigarette. Its pretty man-mad- OF ITSlSURVIVORS static-lade- East-W'e- st BarsaaQ5i mss t miiKan$!u'ias fttmastwittnistr tftaifliHflti iDtsmm iiiim a vi grade-scho- 35130110215 o ranisnr. ttflJE tin tn tnjstiflur gbdxcei an cornui tmi 3'tl s. zm tiffin ijjD fJO ' mmso .S' a n post-beatn- Turkey (Lesbos?), however, things go horribly awry. The teacher awakens to a frantic phone call from Miu summoning him to Greece in search of Sumire, who has gone missing in the wake of a cataclysmic evening. The teacher establishes a tenuous yet intimate bond with Miu as they ransack the beach cottage for clues. Bit by excruciating bit, pieces of Sumires last days float to the surface as the police and her loved ones distry to make sense of her appearance. In Sputnik Sweetheart seventh novel translated his I into English, Murakami again displays the minimalist craftsmanship that has made him a critics darling both in Asia and the West Perhaps better than any contemporary writer, he captures and lays bare the raw human emotion of longing. An interesting factoid picked up in the held reading: the ominous Sputnik, which the world in paranoid thrall for months, was about the size of a beach ball, ft Bruce Tierney is a Nashville-base- d writer. BookPage.pom |