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Making A Living

Working in the Catskills & Nickel and Dimed

The two articles discussed herein both involve women who take roles in the service industry as waitresses. One is Vivian Gornick in Working in the Catskills and the other is Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. Gornick’s work as a waitress is from a time when she actually worked in the profession, while Ehrenreich’s time served as a waitress is an undercover journalistic enterprise. While both of these women have similar experiences and attitudes toward this service profession, Gornick viewed the opportunity as a means of material advancement while Ehrenreich views it as a dead-end profession dooming one to a life of poverty and sacrifices. There are numerous similarities differences between the two stories, despite the main difference that Gornick views waitressing as a means of getting ahead in contrast to Ehrenreich’s view that it remains an inadequate means of making a living.

There are a number of similarities between the two stories of Gornick’s and Ehrenreich’s days as a waitress. Perhaps the biggest of these is that they both view the profession as one wherein one must lie to get ahead and where one must suffer humiliation to endure the rigors and abuses of the profession. Both Gornick and Ehrenreich must lie in order to secure their menial positions in the first place. As Gornick tells us about the woman who interviewed her, after telling the woman she had worked in a number of other establishments as a waitress, “She knew I was lying, and I knew she knew I was lying,” (753). Ehrenreich has a more difficult time finding a job, but when she does she also professes that she has waitressing experience in her past.

Another similarity between the two stories is that both women face humiliation in order to endure keeping their jobs. Ehrenreich’s humiliation most often comes in the form of being treated like an infe...

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Making A Living. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:41, March 19, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685913.html