Central Claims

Central Claim of Nickel and Dimed: To find out if she could "survive" on minimum wange, and to "find out how it really feals to be a long-term low wage worker".

In the ironic introduction of the book, while eating at a 5 star restaurant, Ehrenreich mentions the difficulty of living off low-wages that many people earn everyday. Having said this she decides to conduct her research while abiding by three rules: she is not allowed to fall back on skills she learned from her usual work; she must take the highest paying job; and she must accept the cheapest housing she could find. Although throughout the story she "cheats" and breaks all of her rules of living a low income life.

Almost all of the book is dedicated to show how pitiful the working conditions are in the common low paying jobs and, in layman's terms, how much they sucked. While she worked as a waitress she befriends her co-works, but at the same time ridicules their lifestyle; at one point she even compares working at the restaurant to "drift[ing] along... in some dreamy proletarian idyll." She makes working at a restaurant sound like it's the worst job in the world, even though any person would endlessly list reasons as to why their job is the worst in the world; an example of this is "Office Space".