One of the best ethnographic works I've read.

I appreciate the levity in Ehrenreich's writing about her experience/experiment working at minimum wage. The humor didn't feel inappropriate because she never ridiculed or made caricatures out of her coworkers. The targets of her humor are mostly her own ignorance and the absurdities of capitalism. (With that said, some of these lines haven't aged well. e.g. A white writer should never joke that she understands what it's like to be a black person.)

If you don't have patience for the tomfoolery, then I would still ask for your patience to read through the last chapter, "Evaluation." It's really good. It packs all the insights of Elizabeth Anderson's [b:Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives|32889465|Private Government How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)|Elizabeth S. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493686891l/32889465._SY75_.jpg|53504520] and Shafir and Mullainathan's [b:Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much|17286670|Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much|Sendhil Mullainathan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1392470177l/17286670._SY75_.jpg|23906728]. Consider this passage:

So if low-wage workers don't always behave in an economically rational way, i.e. as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it's because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic. When you enter the low-wage workplace, and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well, you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of your shift. The consequences of this routine surrender go beyond the issues of wages and poverty. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy after all if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to dictatorship.

Or this passage on poverty as a continuation of acute distress:

It is common among the non-poor to think of poverty as a sustainable condition. Austere, perhaps. ... What is harder for the non-poor to see is poverty as an acute distress. The lunch that consists of doritos or hot dog rolls leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The home that is also a car or a van. The Illness or injury that must be worked through with gritted teeth because there's no sick pay or health insurance. And the loss of one day's pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle ... ."

And finally, these powerful words on how the rest of society eats on the poor:

But Guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough. The appropriate emotion is shame, shame at our own dependency on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on, when she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply, then she has made a great sacrifice for you. She has made a gift of some part of her abilities, her health. The working poor, as they are approvingly termed, are the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for. They live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect. They endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor to everyone else. As Gayle, one of my restaurant coworkers, put it, "You give, and you give."