Nickel and Dimed

Can a middle-aged, middle-class woman survive, when she suddenly has to make beds all day in a hotel and live on $7 an hour? Maybe. But one $7 an hour job won’t pay the rent. She’ll have to do back-to-back shifts, as a chambermaid and a waitress. This isn’t the first surprise for acclaimed author Barbara Ehrenreich, who in the late 90’s set out to research low-wage life firsthand, confident she was prepared for the worst.