The American middle class is slowly disappearing. Over the past few decades, the average American's ability to afford a living wage has deteriorated, with many citizens forced to work two or even three jobs at a time just to make ends meet. In the nonfiction book Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, writer Barbara Ehrenreich presents these struggles as she goes undercover and lives her life despite the low wages many Americans have in order to survive in three different cities in America. for a month each, with the goal of earning the next month's rent during that first month of work. Throughout her efforts, she discovers many difficulties with both her own situation and that of the many colleagues she meets along the way, showcasing the real-life occurrences of social conflict theory, both at through class interactions between employees and their employers. and through immersion in the relationships between the collaborators themselves. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Nickeled and Dimed, Ehrenreich immersed herself in the world of the poor working citizen, establishing a low-rent living situation and working for low wages. a salaried job and tries to find out if she can acquire the funds necessary to live in each region. She lived in each area with the goal of finding the highest-paying job she could keep, the cheapest housing available, and not falling back on her previous job skills. She presented the process as a sort of experiment, and although she simply wanted to see if she could find a way to pay the rent for low-wage jobs, her experiments led to a solid sociological analysis of the effects of class systems about low-wage workers.Barbara Ehrenreich starts Nickeled and Dimed in Key West, Florida, a town close to her home. She first rents a caravan to live in and gets a job as a waitress in a small restaurant in the neighborhood. Ehrenreich discovers that waitressing work alone would not be enough to support her and gets a second job as a housekeeper at a nearby hotel, but she soon finds the job too physically demanding and leaves. After 2 weeks, she comes to the conclusion that she cannot afford to pay her rent and moves on. The second city Ehrenreich lives in is Portland, Maine. Here she is unable to find an apartment, but takes advantage of the abundance of hotels renting by the week, finding an affordable hotel room to live in for a month. She once again works two jobs, one as a housekeeper during the week and the other as a dietician's aide in a nursing home on the weekends. She barely manages to pay her monthly rent, but details the poor working conditions of the cleaners. The third city Ehrenreich attempts to live in is Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here she is unable to find accommodation due to the very low number of vacancies and ends up in a weekly motel without a lock on the door. She gets a job at the local Wal-Mart, but the pay is incredibly low and she is unable to eat anything but fast food to pay for housing. Ehrenreich details the inner workings of how Wal-Mart treated employees and its failed attempts to get them to join a union and demand better treatment. This month, like the first, was hampered by the failure to maintain housing. The greatest sociological theoryexpounded in Nickeled and Dimed is the conflict theory based on Marxism. Conflict theory asserts that among different groups and individuals with different levels of power or wealth, the more powerful group will use that power to exploit the weaker groups. In the case of low-wage workers in the various jobs where Ehrenreich worked, they were constantly treated poorly by their employers, often humiliated and insulted, even disrespected. The Florida example of conflict theory at work involves one of Ehrenreich's colleagues, a Czech dishwasher she refers to as George. George didn't speak English very well and as a result there was a strong language barrier. During the first week on the job, some items go missing and George is accused of theft from the company. Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, George is unable to defend his case and is fired from the company. The housekeeping job in Portland, Maine featured a humiliating training video, which represents conflict theory quite well. The video was made in such a way that it seemed aimed at young children. In one part, the man giving the instructions even says, "See, I'm the vacuum cleaner." » The fact that the video is shot as if it were aimed at children shows how the company views its employees as unintelligent people, incapable of doing anything correctly without stupid instructions. Employees are treated with even greater disrespect, as health-related issues have been largely ignored, acknowledged only by the simple remark of “getting through it.” The fear aroused in the lower class by the domination of the upper class in conflict theory is illustrated by the behavior of one of the employees at the housekeeping job. The employee, called Holly, refused to see a doctor after injuring her ankle, even though she was unable to walk without feeling pain. Holly feared that if her situation prevented her from working, even for a short time, she would lose her job and not be able to keep her meager living situation intact. Later, it became apparent that Holly was pregnant; likewise, she refused to pay any attention to it, for fear of losing her job completely. It wasn't until Ehrenreich asked Holly to see a doctor that she was given the day off to see a doctor. Because of this level of fear, the upper class maintains their level of control over the lower class. Wal-Mart also introduced the concept of conflict theory with its poor treatment of employees. When Ehrenreich worked at the Minneapolis Wal-Mart, she found the job stressful and monotonous from the start of the interview. The interview included a series of questions designed to make the potential employee feel like they were under intense scrutiny from the start, including many moral dilemmas such as theft and dishonesty of a co-worker. This step was immediately followed by a drug test, demonstrating an implicit distrust of potential employees and the assumption that drugs are the norm among applicants. These practices show how upper- and middle-class employers automatically assume the worst about lower-class employees and work to demean them. The orientation process required eight hours of tedious, repetitive teaching on Wal-Mart's ideologies and propaganda, most of it emphasizing how fantastic Wal-Mart is as a company. Once actually employed at Wal-Mart, Ehrenreich found that employees would continue to be demeaned for every minor problem that arose..