She meowed all night. I called Judy to say that I didn't think I could care for her, but Judy encouraged me to give the cat time to adjust, because she was in a new surrounding.
I was a little scared, and I did not know what to do because it looked different from the common cats that I saw. I stood a while and looked at the cat. After that, I knew this behavior was one of the symptoms of estrus, and I thought if that cat was a feral cat, how it lived. Cats are adorable animals, and they are one of my favorite pets. From the moment that I hung up the phone after agreeing that I would be there at I had the same sick feeling I always got when I was nervous about something.
All I could think about was all the other interviews that I had gone on in the past and never got the job, so that had to be how this was going to turn out too, that was my self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophec About five years ago, the health department was successful in banning smoking in public places and smokers needed to go outside unless companies set-up a designated area for smoking.
Now, in Pierce County, smoking is banned in all public places such as restaurants, bars, casinos, hotels and taverns. This has caused an up roar with the business owners losing customers and money because of this ban. Within the health department satisfaction is in the environment because the workers will finally have working conditions that has clean air.
Coke passed the blame to just about everyone during this debacle. During this controversy, the main ethical issue was the lack of social responsibility shown by Coca-Cola. One of the most effective solutions would be that Coke take on all publicity issue Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. The chapter, Selling in Minnesota, had some disturbing information about the low wage life. For Menards, she is sent to a suburban hospital, where, after forty minutes, a nurse arrives and tells her to go into a bathroom to wash her hands and pee while the nurse waits with her purse.
Barbara describes in a detailed fashion a process that, most likely, few middle- or upper-class readers barring professional sports players would have experienced. The major lessons she takes from the experience deal with how much drug testing allows employers to exert control over workers, not only in their mobility but in their privacy and personal lives, which are interrupted in order to apply for a job at all. Mountain Air is really looking for a self-disciplined, money-motivated, and positive attitude—nothing about healing the sick, Barbara realizes.
Barbara completes a personal 3-minute interview, and says she wants the job to help people with asthma. Barbara is only now realizing how vast Minneapolis is, and that her two job possibilities are about 30 miles apart.
The rental agents that Barbara does reach recommend finding a weekly motel until something opens up. Once again, Barbara has to do her best to juggle competing concerns—affordability, safety, gas prices, and ability to commute to work, among other factors.
Everything she looks at, she realizes, has its own disadvantages. On the job front, though, Barbara is told to show up for orientation at Menards on Wednesday morning. The Wal-Mart orientation, which Barbara believes is unrivaled in grandeur and intimidation, is supposed to take 8 hours. Once again, Barbara goes through an orientation in which the corporation at large, rather than middle management, instructs employees in how best to fulfill its own policies and philosophy, complete with an origin myth of the Waltons.
Barbara writes all these phrases between quotation marks herself, showing just how skeptically she regards the special vocabulary and rhetoric employed by management.
For her, such language is no more than muddying or hiding the truth. Another video talks about the feeling of family for which Wal-Mart is so well known, meaning that there is no place for a union—in fact, it says, unions have been targeting Wal-Mart for years to greedily collect dues money. Employees could lose their voice to the union organizers and even their wages and benefits would be put at risk, the video warns.
Barbara makes it clear here that the videos seek to bias employees against unions before they even begin working: unions sometimes serve as a tool for employees to demand higher wages, so the dire warnings make sense for management. Barbara drinks a caffeinated coffee—rare for her—and finds herself wired for the next steps: creating name cards for themselves, participating in Computer-Based Learning on topics like what to do if pools of human blood should appear on the sales floor.
That night is a sleepless one. Budgie the cockatiel has gone haywire and refuses to return to his cage. For Barbara, caffeine exacerbates this stress, but here caffeine also stands in for the constant stress and anxiety many low-wage workers feel when anything minor goes wrong.
Now Barbara is unnerved. Barbara shows how easily this can happen to any low-wage worker. She realizes that employers are clever with their hiring process: one moves from application to orientation without ever meeting the potential employer as a free agent able to bargain.
Even in a tight labor market like Minneapolis, the potential employee is made to feel like a supplicant.
Related Quotes with Explanations. The Clearview Inn may well be the worst motel in the country—not an easy feat. She switches to another room with a bed, chair, drawers, and a TV fastened to the wall, with a single overhead bulb. She can see through the other motel windows to rooms with a woman with a baby, two bunches of teenagers, and various single men. If her view is any indication, the working poor in Minneapolis are just as likely to have to live in close quarters in less-than-ideal apartments in order to make things work.
Without a bolt, shades, or screens, Barbara feels vulnerable and is afraid to sleep. She dozes on and off, realizing at one point in the night that poor women really do have more to fear than women who live in houses with double locks, dogs, and husbands.
Another, less mentioned aspect of low-wage working life is the likelihood of a lack of safe living conditions, which is only exacerbated by issues faced by women. There are dozens of each kind of item, and the layout suddenly changes every few days.
At Wal-Mart, customers shop with shopping carts filled to the brim, often leaving about 90 percent rejected. By describing her daily tasks down to the number of minutes it takes to clear a cart, Barbara gives the reader some insight into the monotony of the job.
She and Melissa attempt to deal with this monotony by working together when they can, though the tasks are clearly not set up to facilitate relationships. When Barbara arrives at the Clearview, the sewage has been backed up in her room and is all over the floor. She only has a few possessions with her, the most expensive of which is her laptop, but with temperatures in the nineties she hesitates to leave it in the car trunk during the day.
As Barbara deals with monotony at work, her home life has its own difficulties, as even a motel beyond her budget fails to satisfy basic needs of cleanliness and safety. A small issue like where to leave her laptop grows complicated as a result. That evening, Barbara scopes out the low-priced food options in Clearview—only a Chinese buffet or Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Another example of how both price and proximity make it far easier for low-wage workers to eat fast food rather than venture out to distant produce markets. Of course, as the humorous Survivor scene reminds us, Barbara is only a visitor to this world. She wakes up at night to hear a woman singing sadly against the sound of trucks on the highway. The mention of a mournful song against the sound of trucks seems straight out of a movie, but Barbara uses it to make a point about the general atmosphere of quiet desperation that pervades a place like Clearview.
The next morning, Barbara buys hard-boiled eggs at a convenience store and takes out the trash. Barbara pictures the wife as a product of an arranged marriage and a move from her native village to Clearview, Minnesota, with a husband who may not even speak her language.
Barbara has been experiencing low-wage working life as an English-speaking American. Here she tries to imagine a different kind of struggle — in addition to economic difficulties, the need to adjust to a vastly different culture and language. Barbara attempts to cling to her dignity by looking presentable. What has led her to these efforts? What are her reasons, grievances, motivations, and goals? If not, why not? If so, where and when have you seen evidence to support this claim?
And were there instances where you thought her wisecracks went too far—or fell flat? To this end, the bulk of its criticism might well be directed at the Wal-Mart empire. Is this appropriate, in your view? Do you agree with it? Why or why not? Is she correct on this score, in your view? What does this record tell us?
Where was she most successful in her experiment and where was she least? What could she have done differently, and what would you—in her shoes—have done differently? What about your own community? How would Nickel and Dimed be different—or similar—if it included the area you call home? Why does she keep doing so? What did reading this book tell you about how we eat and how we work in America? And what about the correlations that may or may not exist between low-wage American workers and their use of cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol?
Look back over the full range of her low-wage experiences when responding. In a short essay, identify and discuss a certain individual or two from this book by whom you were particularly touched.
In your essay, explain your choice s.
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