It's no great mystery that the workplace isn't a very fair place. For years now, people have been fighting for equality in the workplace, in all its areas. Women fight for the same wages as men. Ethnicities fighting for the same wages as whites. It's been a problem for a long time, even in 2001, when Barbara Ehrenreich released her book Nickel and Dimed which tells her story as she delves from the upper-middle class to the working poor. Throughout his book, Ehrenreich tackles tough issues like (not so) affordable housing and employee benefits. But Ehrenreich also touches on the very risky topic of equality in the workplace. Ehrenreich uses her writing skills and newfound knowledge to make her audience aware of inequality in the standard workplace based on race and gender biases. He takes his upper-middle class audience through three different states, showing them a part of America they may not have noticed. He breaks these three states down into three different sections to give organization to the piece and also add juxtaposition between the different places he has experienced. Along the way, she provides details such as her inability to find a job because of her race, her friend George telling her about the parameters of her life in America, and the sexism she discovers that keeps her from abundant job opportunities. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayBarbra begins her journey in Key West, Florida. Right off the bat, this is the first place where you really start to see some racism in the workplace. She says, "Best Western, Econo Lodge, and HoJo's have allowed me to fill out application forms, and to my relief, they are mostly interested in knowing whether I am a legal resident of the United States."(13) Barbra is a middle-aged girl. white, aged woman. It's not too hard to figure out that she's not talking specifically about herself; he's talking about those with Mexican and Puerto Rican ancestry. He uses it to let us know that those places typically hire ethical people. Then, while in Maine, she says that when she decided where to go she chose there because "(she) was struck by what appeared to be an extreme case of demographic albinism."(51) She then goes on to explain how this is positive. because it also means that housekeepers, maids and the like were also white here, implying that in other states you would be less likely to get a housekeeping job because typically companies in other states employ majority, if not only, ethnic people . It's little things like the ones she says that highlight racial bias in the workplace seen firsthand by Barbara and hundreds of thousands of other Americans. But Ehrenreich touched on a different point about being an immigrant in America that people in America may not know. know. When she worked as a waitress in Florida, she worked with a Czech boy named George. George is a dishwasher at Barbara's second restaurant, Jerry's. On page 38, Ehrenreich tells her readers how George explained to her how he doesn't actually get paid by the company but the money he earns goes to the agent who sent him here, and with the money he earns, the agent gives him it only pays $5 an hour. I think this is something that many Americans are unaware of. Ehrenreich could have left it out, but in his book he emphasized the goal of educating people who knew nothing about it, like me. It highlights a whole other dimension of inequality in the workplace. He is really forcing his audience to consider a point of view with which most of