"Selling in Minnesota"- Picking Up Clothes in Wal-Mart

Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Selling in Minnesota.” Nickel and Dimed, On (not) getting by in America. New York: Owl Books Henry Holt and Co, 2002.

“Selling in Minnesota, ” another adventure into trying to get by on welfare wages, exposes the deep housing crisis that many people face working in low wage jobs and the vicious cycle that has easily trapped many in the paycheck to paycheck survival mode.

Barbara Ehrenreich makes the transition from a Wal-Mart doubter to a believer and back to a doubter again. She explores the mindset required to work in the unskilled labor market and what it takes to stick to it. Part of working for Wal-Mart or any job that you don’t love is the mind games one plays or the created motivations one makes up to stay there. Ehrenreich brings an insider view into the job culture of Wal-Mart and how the corporate culture and atmosphere seems to be a more enticing place to work than the other options out there.

She also delves deeply into the emotional cost in this world. The little friendships and human connections that come at any level seem more fragile in the high job turnover environment of the low wage job world. For in situations of stress it is in the connections to people that one is sustained and is encouraged by to endure. Her vivid picture of the life of barely making ends meet show more than the facts and numbers of the poor.

The pieces of reality of the experience come through the description of own her transformation in mindset and personality. The stresses of constant worry about a place to live, the fear for ones safety and the drudgery of the work combine to change people. Ehrenreich sees her regression to a slyer meaner person in survival mode and notes this could have been her real life if her father “hadn’t managed to climb out of the mines.”

The reader is taken into her confidence as Ehrenreich writes in a very readable personal style. She brings you along on a ‘smell the mold’ and a ‘nitty gritty in your face’ kind of ride of what it’s like surviving in a low wage welfare world and gives you a real feel of what it’s like being at the bottom trying to stay afloat.