"Nickel and Dimed" Chapter 2 Review

Chapter 2 of Nickel and Dimed involves Barbara moving very up country to Portland, Maine. She moves her to approach a job other than waitressing. She wants to try something new. So she beings applying everywhere, including maid services, Wal-Mart, and she even applies at an old age home. With time she gets hired at 2 places. One being the old age home on weekends, and the other is one of the maid services called The Maids for weekdays. She stays in a hotel room for a while until she can get a place to officically live, and finally she moves in to the Blue Haven, which is basically a hotel but it serves as apartments to many different tenants.

Barbara first starts at the old age home. She actually enjoys the enviroment there very much. It all seems easy enough serving different breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods to all the "guests". She does however have one incident when one of the ladies, who is clearly not completely sane spill milk all over her. That is probably the only mishap Barbara went through. She liked serving the people there and talking to them. A lot of them were either diabetic or had Alzheimer's but like i said it was a comfortable enviroment for her to be in considering her Father lived in one of these homes and also had Alzheimer's.

Her second job, as a maid, was not so breezy. She found that it had severe implications on her health, including her muscles and back. Her back probably suffered the worse from all the cleaning. Barbara does not like this job, she feels as if she is looked down upon, the conditions are horrible, and the hours are long. The way she has been taught to clean is repulsing, actually you probably couldn't even call it cleaning. And her and her fellow employees have no benefits. One of her friends, Holly, thinks she may be pregnant but she can not take off work to find out because her and her husband need the money. And to make matters worse Holly falls and hurts her ankle badly but nothing can be done about it because she refuses to go to the doctor or leave work. Her boss, Ted, reluctanly lets her leave early. All of these things get to Barbara and eventually she blows up. She lashes out at Holly and anyone who is around to hear her. She doesn't like the way the people who's housese she is cleaning look down upon her. And she certaintly doesn't like when a girl who may be pregnant and is injured doesn't even find it necessary to see a doctor. At this point Holly realizes it is time to move on.

I really respect Barbara for doing all of this. In this chapter especially, I have realized being a maid is hardwork. And it is not very appealing. Cleaning crap out of toilets is something I don't think anyone sould have to do. But then again some people needs jobs and they don't care what it takes. I have a whole new respect for minimum wage workers. They are the ones who make ends meet and work hard. That, to me, shows true character.