Nickel and Dimed: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Barbara begins her project near her real home, in Key West, Florida. She first attempts to find a place to live, assuming that if she can earn $7 per hour, she can afford to spend $500-600 in rent and still have $400-500 for food and gas. In Key West, this means she is looking at trailer homes like the one fifteen minutes from town without air-conditioning or a television—but at $675 a month, it’s too much.

Barbara admits Key West is expensive, but notes that like New York City, the Bay Area, or Boston, tourists and the wealthy are competing with the people who serve them. So she makes a choice many low-wage workers must make between affordability and convenience, and chooses a $500-per-month trailer thirty miles up the highway—a forty-five minute drive. It’s a depressing drive, but the place is a quaint kind of cabin in the backyard of her landlord’s convertible mobile home.

Barbara looks through want ads, hoping to avoid certain jobs, like waitressing, because she remembers how tired it made her as an eighteen-year-old. She’s left with supermarket jobs and housekeeping. She fills out application forms at various supermarkets and hotels. At Winn-Dixie, she has a twenty-minute computer “interview” (ensuring that the corporate point of view is represented) and is left to wait in a room with posters warning about the ways union organizers will try to trick you. The interview asks if she has any problems that might make it difficult to get to work on time, how many dollars’ worth of stolen goods she’s purchased in the last year, and if she would turn in a fellow employee caught stealing.

Barbara is told to go to a doctor’s office the next day for a urine test: drug testing is a general rule for low-wage work, she discovers. She thinks the $6-an-hour wage is not enough to compensate for such an indignity. She has lunch at Wendy’s, an unlimited Mexican meal for $4.99, and fills out an application form to work there, also for around $6 an hour.

At one hotel, Barbara notices that the housekeepers look like her, “faded ex-hippie types” with long hair in braids. No one talks to her except to offer an application form. At another Bed & Breakfast a man tells her there are no jobs but to check back soon, since no one lasts more than a few weeks.

No one calls Barbara back for three days, and she realizes that the want ads do not necessarily mean jobs are available: they are how employers account for the constant turnover in the low-wage workforce. She has to simply be flexible enough to take whatever is being offered, which finally happens at a discount chain hotel. She goes there for a housekeeping job and instead is sent to apply for a waitress job at the dingy attached “family restaurant.”

The manager, a young West Indian named Phillip, interviews Barbara without much interest, mainly wanting to know what shifts she can work. He tells her to show up the next day in black pants and black shoes—he’ll provide the polo shirt embroidered with “Hearthside” (the name she’s made up for this place).

Barbara works there for two weeks from 2pm until 10pm for $2.43 an hour plus tips (a footnote explains that employers are legally allowed to pay less than minimum wage as long as the wage plus tips equals minimum wage per hour—but Barbara never heard this law mentioned or explained to her).

When Barbara arrives, a red-faced, long-haired man is throwing frozen steaks against the wall and cursing: the middle-aged waitress named Gail assigned to train her says that that’s just Billy, the cook. Gail mixes pieces of instruction with personal confidences, like the fact that she misses her boyfriend who was killed in a prison fight a few months ago—he was only in prison for a few DUIs, she explains.

As she learns about the job, Barbara no longer fears being overqualified—instead, she misses being simply competent. While she understands the procedural aspects of writing, as a waitress she simply has to deal with requests from all sides. She has to master the touch-screen computer-ordering system, and must take up her non-serving time in invisible “side work,” from sweeping and scrubbing to restocking in order to be ready for the 6pm dinner rush.

Barbara is surprised to realize how much she cares about doing good work—a philosophy given to her from her father, who pulled himself up from the copper mines of Butte to the Northeastern suburbs. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she thinks not of her missed writing deadlines but of the table where she screwed up a kid’s order. She’s had the “service ethic” kick in, making her want to serve the customers, who are working locals like truck drivers, as if they’re in a fine dining establishment. There’s a sewer repairman who relaxes in the air-conditioning for a half hour before eating. There are German tourists who actually tip when Barbara uses her basic German—Europeans, coming from high-wage “welfare states,” often do not know they are supposed to tip.

Barbara and other servers are indulgent to customers, often sneaking on a higher amount of croutons than the amount mandated by management (six). Gail uses her own tip money to buy biscuits and gravy for an out-of-work mechanic. They use their small pieces of autonomy in assembling the salads and desserts and giving dollops of sour cream and butter. Barbara suggests that American obesity is due at least in part to the fact that waitresses show their humanity, and earn their tips, through these kinds of covert extras.

Ten days in, it seems like a livable lifestyle. Barbara likes Gail and Lionel, the teenaged busboy from Haiti, as well as the older Haitian dishwashers. She especially likes Joan, the hostess, who is a feminist and tells Barbara that they women have to stick together. Joan stands up to Billy after he curses the female servers. Barbara finishes up by 10pm or 10:30, gets to bed by 1:30 or 2am, is up by 9 or 10am, reads while she waits for her uniform to be washed, and heads back out.

What makes this lifestyle far less sustainable is the management: the constant surveillance for signs of laziness, theft, or drug abuse. In the restaurant business, managers are often former cooks, and don’t make that much more money, but are now firmly on the side of making money for the corporation—a theoretical entity which is based far away. Managers try to prevent any downtime, meaning that Barbara drags out little chores so as not to be exhausted during slow periods. On one slow day, Stu catches her glancing at a USA Today and assigns her to vacuum the entire floor with the broken vacuum cleaner, which can only be done on her hands and knees.

At her first mandatory employee meeting, Phillip complains about the messiness of the break room, reminds them that their lockers can be searched at any time, and says that gossip among the employees must stop. Four days later, they are all brought into the kitchen at 3:30 p.m., and Phillip announces that there’s been some “drug activity” on the night shift. Now, all new hires will be tested, and current employees could be subject to random drug tests. Barbara finds herself blushing: she hasn’t been treated with such suspicion and felt so ashamed since junior high.

Some start to gossip that Stu, who has been in a worse mood than usual, is to blame. Barbara is ready not to trust him, since he doesn’t seem to have a clear role and he has tried to get into Barbara’s good graces by complaining about Haitians taking over the country.

Housing is the top source of difficulty in most of her coworkers’ lives. Barbara learns that Gail is sharing a room in a flophouse (a cheap boarding house) for $250 a week, and though her male roommate has started hitting on her, she can’t afford the rent alone. A Haitian cook shares a two-room apartment with his girlfriend and two other people. A breakfast server pays $170 a week for a one-person trailer with her boyfriend. The wealthiest of them is Billy, who makes $10 an hour and pays the $400 per month lot fee on the trailer that he owns. Joan lives in a van parked behind a shopping center and showers at a friend’s.

For Barbara, some of these living arrangements don’t seem to make sense. Gail tells her she is thinking of escaping from her roommate by moving into the Days Inn. Barbara is shocked that she’d be paying $40-60 per day, but Gail is similarly shocked that Barbara would think Gail could afford a month’s rent and a month’s deposit for an apartment, even if the apartment might cost less long-term. Barbara had allotted herself $1,300 for start-up costs, so she could afford to pay for a deposit.

There are no secret economies or tricks for the poor, Barbara realizes: if you can’t afford a deposit, you end up spending far more for a room by the week. If you only have a room, you can’t cook big portions of food to freeze for the rest of the week—instead, you eat fast food or convenience store food, which is more expensive and unhealthier. Without health insurance (which, at the Hearthside, kicks in only after three months) you pay the price for the lack of routine care. Gail ran out of money for estrogen pills, and the Hearthside health insurance company said they lost her application form, so now she has to spend $9 per pill until they complete her paperwork.

Barbara’s tips usually cover her meals and gas, with a little bit left over. But as the tourist business slows, her tips go down and her wage amounts to about minimum wage or $5.15 per hour. She will be $100 short by the end of the month. She makes her lunch every day, and eats dinner at the Hearthside for $2. She’ll have to find a second or alternative job.

Barbara starts making the rounds again at hotels. Almost all the working housekeepers she sees are African Americans, Spanish-speaking, or Central European refugees, while servers are almost all white and native English speakers. Her search leads her to Jerry’s (not the real name, and part of a national hotel/restaurant chain) which, like the Hearthside, offers her a job as a server rather than housekeeper. Jerry’s has about four times as many customers as Hearthside does—she accepts.

Jerry’s only seems to offer artery-clogging meals, which come from a massive kitchen above the grimy, foul-smelling garbage and dishwashing area. Sinks are clogged with food, and counters are sticky with spills. Servers use their hands for everything, even though there’s often no soap in the bathroom. There is no break room since there are no breaks for the six- to eight-hour shifts. Almost everyone smokes constantly, from the servers and cooks to dishwashers. Often customers come fifty at a time from their tour buses. Rarely does Barbara have time for conversation with fellow servers or customers.

For two days, Barbara manages to work both the breakfast/lunch shift at Jerry’s and the later shift at the Hearthside. But when she finally has a chance to sit down and eat something, Stu yells at her. She tells Gail she’s just going to quit. Gail, in turn, tells her excitedly that Phillip is letting her park overnight in the hotel parking lot and sleep in her truck.

Barbara finds she can only survive at Jerry’s by treating each shift as a one-time-only emergency. She starts to be in constant pain, and takes four ibuprofens before each shift to deal with spasms in her upper back. In her regular life, she’d take a day off with ice packs and resting, but can’t afford to do that now.

Barbara does take breaks sometimes, but increasingly her old life seems strange and distant, her emails and messages from people with odd worries and too much time on their hands.

Management is generally calmer at Jerry’s, except for the manager, Joy, whose moods vary wildly within a shift. On Barbara’s third night, Joy pulls Barbara aside abruptly only to tell her she’s doing fine, except she’s spending too much time chatting with customers and is letting them “run her” or ask for too many minor changes in their orders. Barbara feels chastened. She realizes that she doesn’t get to express a positive service ethic like the college servers at the fancy downtown restaurants. Her job is just to move orders between the tables and kitchen, and customer requests are just interruptions to this transformation of food into money. Barbara actually starts to see the customers this way, against her will. The worst, she says, are the “Visible Christians,” who are needy and difficult and then leave a $1 tip on a $92 bill.

Barbara makes friends with the other “girls” on her shift, including the fiftyish Lucy, who limps towards the end of the shift because something has gone wrong with her leg, which she can’t figure out without health insurance. They talk about all the usual girl things, though not potentially expensive topics like shopping or movies. No one is homeless, usually thanks to a working husband or boyfriend, and they tend to support each other if someone’s feeling sick or overwhelmed.

Barbara’s favorite is George, the 19-year-old Czech dishwasher who has been in the States for one week. When she suggests he grab a cigarette from someone’s pack lying on a table, he is appalled. Barbara tries to teach him a little English, and learns that he is paid $5 an hour not by Jerry’s but by the “agent” who brought him over, with the other dollar of his salary going to the agent. He shares an apartment with other Czech dishwashers and can only sleep when one of them leaves for a shift and a vacant bed is left.

Barbara decides to move closer to Key West, because gas is costing $4-5 per day, and tips at Jerry’s average only 10 percent, meaning that she’s averaging about $7.50 an hour. She also had to spend $30 on tan slacks, the uniform, far out of her budget.

Everyone who doesn’t have a working husband or boyfriend seems to have a second job, from telemarketing to welding. Barbara thinks she can get a second job if she doesn’t have a forty-five minute commute, so she takes her $500 deposit, the $400 she’s earned, and her $200 for emergencies, and pays the $1,100 rent and deposit on a trailer in Key West. It is eight feet in width and a few yards from a liquor store, bar, and Burger King. The park has a reputation for crime and crack, but it is mostly quiet and desolate, filled with other working people.

At Jerry’s, an announcement on the computers used for inputting orders states that the hotel bar is now off-limits to restaurant employees, due to a twenty-three-year-old who had snuck out one morning and returned to the floor tipsy. Everyone feels the chill and suspicion. The next day, the dry-storage room is locked for the first time: Vic, the assistant manager, says that one of the dishwashers was trying to steal something, and he has to keep him around until Vic finds a replacement. He’s talking about George.

Barbara wishes she could say she stood up to Vic and insisted George be given a translator, or that he’s honest. But she admits that she’s been infected with a new caution and cowardice, and worries that in a month or two she might have turned George in.

Barbara isn’t to find out, since near the end of the month she finally lands a housekeeping job. She walks into the personnel office at the hotel attached to Jerry’s and insists that she couldn’t pay the rent without a second job. The frazzled personnel lady marches her back to meet the housekeeping manager. The job pays $6.10 an hour, from 9 a.m. till “whenever,” so hopefully, she thinks, before two. Carlotta, a middle-aged African-American woman missing all her top front teeth, will be training her.

On this first day, Carlotta or “Carlie” and Barbara move through nineteen “checkouts” (rather than “stay-overs”), which require more work. They work four hours without a break, with Barbara covering the beds and Carlie the bathrooms. They keep the TV on, especially the soaps, which keep them going. Barbara feels like an intruder into the tourist’s world of comfort and leisure, though with backaches and constant thirst.

All Barbara learns about Carlie is how much she is in pain, making her move slowly—while the younger immigrant housekeepers finish by 2 p.m., she isn’t done until six. Though they pay by the hour now, there’s talk about moving to pay by the room. Carlie also becomes upset and hurt at slights, like the rudeness from a white maintenance guy.

Barbara asks to leave at about 3:30, and another housekeeper warns her that no one has yet managed to combine housekeeping with working at Jerry’s. She rushes back to the trailer and swallows four Advils before spending the rest of her hour-long break trying to clean ketchup and dressing stains off her tan slacks.

At Jerry’s, George is distraught. Barbara resolves to give him all her tips that night. She takes a short break for dinner before the rush—only one, new cook is on duty. Four of her tables fill up at once, all clustered around each other, and each has her running constantly. Table 24 consists of ten British tourists who each order at least two drinks and an array of food. One of them sends hers back and insists that the others’ go back as well while she waits. The other tables grow restless, and table 24 rejects their reheated main courses. When Barbara returns to the kitchen with the trays, Joy confronts her, asking if it’s a “traditional, a super-scramble an eye-opener?” Barbara has no idea what she’s talking about, but at that moment a customer barges into the kitchen to yell that his food is late, and Joy screams at him to get out of the kitchen.

Barbara simply walks out, without finishing her work or picking up her tips. She is almost surprised to find that she can simply walk out the door. Though she went into this project with a scientific mindset, it has become a personal test, and she feels that she has failed. Plus, she’s forgotten to give George her tips, which makes her feel even worse. For the first time in many years, she is on the verge of crying.

Barbara moves out of the trailer park and gives her keys to Gail. Gail tells her that Stu had been fired, apparently for ordering crack while still in the restaurant and trying to pay from the register. Barbara never finds out what happens to George.