Surviving Lower Class America

The question of the lower class self-esteem is not a very important question to some; however, self-esteem is the main driving force to many. How a person’s views themselves and their importance to the world they live in can affect their lives greatly. It is the belief in yourself that makes you work, that you have a belief somewhere deep down in yourself that you can even just make it through a week. As Norman Vincent Peale once said, “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” (http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/confidence/).

In the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author subjects herself to living as a lower class American. One thing that she constantly does through out the book, perhaps subconsciously, is to try and give her new self self-importance. This is most evident in the “Scrubbing in Maine” chapter, where Barb works for the cleaning company that she names “The Maids”. When one of her fellow maids is injured badly on the job she tries to console her, and help her out. The other maid is almost insulted by this, because it would eventually hurt her job, and her overall quality of life (which is already pretty low). Barb even goes so far to say that they should hold a strike, something that can be very detrimental to a lower class work place. She tries to be the enlightenment in these peoples’ lives, thus giving herself importance, and the feeling that she is doing well by helping another human being. She finally discovers the importance of self esteem later on in the chapter when Ted drives her to another job site. The significance of such a small compliment like “good job” gives you a serge of energy that would previously not have been there. Morale is always an important factor to how any business is run, however it is crucial to the lower class jobs in which there is already low self-confidence. Barbara asks narrates the problem clearly saying, “The big question is why Ted’s approval mean so much. As far as I can figure, my coworkers’ neediness- because that’s what it is- stems from chronic deprivation. The home owners aren’t going to thank us for a job well done, and God knows, people on the street aren’t going to hail us as heroines of proletarian labor. […] Hence the undeserved charisma of a man like Ted. He may be greedy and offhandedly cruel, but at The Maids he is the only living representative of that better world where people go to college and wear civilian clothes to work and shop on the weekends for fun.” (Ehrenreich 117).

When analyzing Barbara’s stint at Wal-Mart later on in the book, I find the same problem. While Wal-Mart tries to boost morale on the surface in reality it’s not really any different than any other low-class job. In the cleaning job the maids weren’t allowed to use mops they had to scrub, thus the image of the lower class, versus the owner who easily has the means to mop, but would rather watch the cleaner on their hands and knees. In Wal-Mart it’s the same with the customer-employee relationship. Ehrenreich describes it perfectly when she says, “most of the people I pick up after are mothers themselves, meaning that what I do at work is what they do at home—pick up the toys and clothes and the spills. So the great thing about shopping, for most of these women, is that here they get to behave like brats […] which is where I come in, constantly re-creating orderliness for the customers to maliciously destroy.” (Ehrenreich 177). Again we see the image of the servant made to do clean up after the higher classes simple pleasures.

After reading this book I see why more lower class people don’t take the initiative to go out and look for better jobs. They simply just don’t have the confidence or the time to do so. Thus the lower class stays the lower class.