Nickel And Dimed
...n the same position as her co-worker Holly, yet Barbara is at a completely different need based sanity because she knows she is provided for. Holly’s struggling is visible: “But the relevant point about Holly is that she is visibly unwell - possibly whiter, on a daily basis, than anyone else in the state. We’re not just talking Caucasian here; think bridal gowns, tuberculosis, and death. All I know about her is that she is twenty-three, has been married for almost a year, and manages to feed her husband, herself, and an elderly relative on $30-$50 a week, which is only a little more than what I spend on food for myself. I’d be surprised if she weighs more than ninety-two pounds before breakfast, assuming breakfast is even on her agenda”(Ehrenreich, 95-96). Holly is ill, both mentally and physically. She is overwhelmed and overworked only to struggle for meager wages that cover everyone she must take care of except herself. In a life like this, the basics are the priority… and once, and only once, those needs are taken care and there is no question as to where one’s next meal will come from, will the human mind find the next level of need…safety. Safety needs appear when the basics are taken care of and the brain begins to focus on insecurity. However, this too is something usually taken for granted by the majority of Americans. What many don’t understand is the incredible number of people all over this “land of opportunity” that have never known the safety so many expect, and are sleeping in cars, streets and are traveling from sidewalk to sidewalk every day. Of course it was nearly impossible for Barbara to leave cases like these undiscovered, and right at the start of her experimental life she ran into a co-worker by the name of Joan. Ehrenreich mentions the “zero effort” required to find out the living situations of her co-workers, since that is the biggest issue on most of their minds many are eager to worry out loud. She reveals what she has gathered on Joan, the least accommodated so far, “Joan, who had fooled me wit her numerous and tasteful outfits (hostesses wear their own clothes), lives in a van parked behind a shopping center at night and showers in Tina’s motel room. The clothes are from thrift shops” (Ehrenreich, 26). She has no real home, no one to live with, and most likely no way to keep herself healthy is she doesn’t even have her own cleaning resources. In her own embarrassment, it seems, Joan is trying to hide her insecurity and lack of safety with clothes to fool …possibly so as to avoid being asked so many questions. Having no real shelter is essentially having no real safety, which although unfortunately very common is the hardest level of need to come by. What seems to be the most constantly desired need is the need for love, affection and belongingness. This need involves both giving and receiving to attain a sense of want and being wanted, and without that one can experience what has been called that “empty feeling”… something like a “hole in the heart”. The more Ehrenreich is around Melissa, her co-worker at the Minnesota Wal-Mart, the more the reader is able to see the hole in her heart. She needs a place to belong; there has been some “disorganized patches in her life-an out of wedlock child, a problem with alcohol and drugs- but that’s all over now that she has given her life to Christ”(Ehrenreich, 154). It’s obvious that her troublesome life is not over, and her abusive marriage is forcing her to search for a place to cling on to. She wants somewhere to go, it seems, and she finds friendship in Barbara as soon as it is offered, “I tell her I’m quitting, possibly the next day. Well then, she thinks she’ll be going too, because she doesn’t want to work here without me”(Ehrenreich, 189). Once Barbara is gone, Melissa’s worry will come back, hence why she will quit with her… and once again she is on the hunt for love. The last need a persons must have to obtain a healthy mentality before finding “self-actualization” is the need for self-esteem. Usually achieved by respect others give, self-confidence and the realization that one is needed and of value in the world can gives people the esteem they need to go through life strong. In this book, as Ehrenreich encounters the lifestyle of the low-class worker and all that accompany her, it is easy to assume that no one made it to this level. No co-worker or Barbara’s, with all the basic worries in their lives day to day, has anything to worry about that is as unimportant as self esteem is. Self esteem only becomes important, according to Maslow, once the other need levels have been satisfied, and clearly none of the characters introduced have climbed that high. Self-actualization, as the final stage in Maslow’s theory, is finding the path one belongs in. To find what one knows he/she was “put on this earth to do” is the most satisfying and healthy place to be in life according to Maslow. The most important thing to remember, however, is that many times this stage is unattainable. To the lower class in which Ehrenreich focuses on in Nickel and Dimed, self-actu...