Barbara Ehrenreich makes her second attempt at living on minimum wage in Portland, Maine. When she first arrives she sets up her base for operations at the local motel 6. After her first experience in Florida, Ehrenreich has figured out that she needs apply to as many jobs as possible. Just because companies are putting up help wanted ads doesn’t mean help is actually wanted. She gets jobs at two places, an Alzheimer’s home and a maid service.
The Alzheimer’s home is a lot like a waitressing job because Ehrenreich is in charge of feeding the elderly. However, it’s a lot easier. The elderly have simple orders and there are no where near the amount. She doesn’t even have to bring lunch to work because the employees get to eat the leftovers from the shift. Ehrenreich briefly has a conversation with one of the looks from the home, and finds out that the dining services there run a lot like a restaurant. The cook can make or break the waitress.
After her first shift at the Alzheimer’s home, she goes looking for cheap housing. There is none in the immediate area, but some efficiency housing is located about 30 minutes away. All of the places she finds are either too expensive, or almost unlivable. Eventually she finds apartments on the cheap at a motel. However, she can’t move in for a few days.
In the mean time, Ehrenreich begins working for a maid service. She finds out quickly that being a maid is a lot harder than she imagined. There are multiple training videos instructing new employees on the “right” to clean (left to right, top to bottom, what room to start in, etc.). The houses are filled with a variety of owners. Many of whom keep an extremely watchful eye on the staff. Some will leave extra dirt in hard to reach places to ensure that the maid service is cleaning everywhere. Other owners will tape the cleaning staff to ensure no theft occurs.
In one particular case, an owner stood in the kitchen and watched Ehrenreich scrub a floor on her hands and knees with no knee pads. The author commented that this gave the owner of the house a superior look on his/her face as she watched Ehrenreich dripping with sweat. After Ehrenreich was done, the owner’s only remark was to ask if she could scrub the breezeway.
I think that in this section of the book, Ehrenreich displays the lack of status maids have. She remarked that every where she went after work she was looked down upon, even when she was the customer. At the diners she ate at, the waitresses would not even pay attention to her when she asked for refills. At the convenience store she would get stares saying, “What could you possibly need here.” At her job, Ehrenreich comments that the owners of the houses would act as if the maids were simply there because they had nothing better to do with their time, when in all actuality they were barely getting by.
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