Drugs and also other intrusions ehrenreich s

Nickel and Dimed

Barbara Ehrenreich attempts to forgo her upper-middle course life in order to prove her argument to get a higher minimum wage since she lives her life Nickel and Dimed. As she goes from Fl, to Maine, to Mn, Ehrenreich efforts to live her life as a minimum wage staff member, including the way of living, subordination, and apparently the supposed medicine habit of the lower category. Ehrenreich does not give up her higher social status as she treats drugs and drug testing in a very cautious and uncomfortable way, even avoiding therapy all together, which she does successfully because of the advantage of her true background. However , her argument against drug screening stands out from this kind of general failure regarding her personal judgment of medicine usage and her demand the end of drug screening ultimately differentiates itself from her personal experience. Although her personal experiences including drugs uncover Ehrenreich not capable of shedding her upper class backdrop, her debate regarding the illegality of medicine testing fails through her failure while she firmly calls individuals affected by the intrusion, the reduced class, to action through empathy.

In California, Ehrenreich begins her discussion of drugs by immediately empowering the exacto drug and stereotyping poor people that use them. Ehrenreich starts her debate by contacting out the listed “sloth, robbery, and medicine abuse” (18). By putting drug use/abuse alongside these deadly sins, she models them corresponding to each other, driving the low wage addict to compare him self to the serial burglar. Broadening on this proclamation of the evils of drugs, Ehrenreich reveals her own personal opinion as the lady “[blushes] since hard like [she] was caught toking up” (19). Her use of the subjunctive demonstrates just how distant the lady sees himself from this issue of drugs, it is far from real with her, only a lot of distant possibility. She demonstrates her own very personal fear of the stigma which in turn surrounds medicine usage. Ironically, she invalidates the discussion she is planning to make since she is struggling to let go of the stereotypes she’s calling other upper and middle course people to end. Further stereotyping and complicated of the “drug culprit” promotes any drug user farther and farther into the rhetoric of criminalization. By naming a person, someone using a possibly hazardous addiction, having a simple noun and qualificative, both of which usually carry a bad tone, Ehrenreich simplifies this kind of complex human being. That individual is a criminal. And that individual is a criminal because of prescription drugs. While in Florida Ehrenreich unfortunately begins to reveal her personal opinion and her apparent lack of ability to follow the perfect solution which she presents to everyone else.

Ehrenreich sets the employees resistant to the corporations although arguing for the end of intrusive medication tests, yet , she incongruously is incapable of understanding the workers truly as a result of her unavoidable bias. Through the manipulation of employer requirements, Ehrenreich effectively vilifies organizations as choices that smugly proclaim: “You will have zero secrets from us” (37). Not only does this paint the businesses very terribly, the antithetical “you” compared to “us” pieces the employer and employed straight opposite one another. She implicitly ridicules the act of drug assessments as the lady proclaims large corporations communication of “We dont simply want your muscles and that area of your brain that is certainly directly linked to them, we wish your intimate self”, as well as, we want the urine (37). However , Ehrenreich never needs to face these firms in such a disadvantaged way since truly decrease class personnel do. Your woman always has the privilege of leaving a job. She by no means faces the pressure of having “something to prove” when ever her job and your life are on the queue like the poor working school, the only thing she gets to demonstrate is the inequity in the procedures of the companies (83). Ehrenreich attempts to try out the function of “the person who provides precious labor to sell”, however , your woman fails to understand that her use of the infinitive verb cuts her away of that part, she has no precious and infinite labor “to sell” (84). Ehrenreich only offers her very measured labor of her assumed personality. She takes on that since “the person” who can has this important labor, the unspecified predecessor allows for her to assume this part as well. However , she has already proved through her refusal to go through the drug-testing process in the same way since the poor, the girl cannot genuinely fit the role of “the person”. Ehrenreich employs sarcastic sculpt to touch upon “what you get at the time you weed out all of the rebels with drug checks and personality ‘surveys'” (98). Implicitly saying that the “rebels” are these few who are not willing to subject themselves to a improper and unprofessional attack into their personal lives as well as their textual bodies. Your woman allows for her tone to suggest the absurdity with the request for urine. Ehrenreich fails to completely believe her poor identity but she efficiently incites the motion of her discussion.

As an outsider, Ehrenreich carries on her successful argument against drug assessment. Even though she unmindfully does not assume her role as a low-wage staff member completely, the girl successfully recognizes the dehumanization and objectification that medicine testing implies as the lady claims the girl can prove herself adept “in plumbing in $8. 50” but just as long as the girl passes a drug test out (72). Her skill and literal monetary value apparently reveal themselves through her capability to subject their self to an breach of level of privacy. Ehrenreich at some point begins to look at drugs assessments as thoroughly rude and extreme invasions of privateness. As the girl describes “apps and the interviews and the medicine tests”, polysyndeton reveals just how she perceives these drugs tests: as judges of the person’s skills that in no genuine way can determine how very well they could perform the job (99). The lady argues regarding course an individual’s readiness for the job can be obtained from a chat or questions, however in absolutely no way can someone’s readiness be found in their urine. Yet, the lady still maintains the stereotypical watch of these decrease class people, who while even when she lives with them appears surprised that they can be not “drug addicts or perhaps prostitutes” (89). Ultimately, she cannot place herself in the place of these kinds of poor staff because her bias presents itself too often, her argument regarding the use of medication tests however , remains relevant only respect the company as well as its workers, mostly leaving her out of the equation.

In the evaluation, Ehrenreich finally amounts up her argument, the simple fact that it is unconstitutional and unjust to power any staff to “strip to her/[his] underwear and pee in a cup” (114). Her low diction enables this call to action to be broadly appealing, which low diction provides for the appeal to ethos because every low wage worker which has ever felt incredible pity and intolerable embarrassment as of this requirement. The girl inspires individuals who understand this low diction, the employees, to action. This allows her to speak to people who can make a difference. Continuing this kind of final rally cry, the girl continues her appeal to ethos, concerning these people who have felt “less trust worthy” to themselves, uncomfortable in their own skin (115). Ehrenreich works to ensure that her viewers of the reduce class seems as if the lady completely understands their situation. Ironically, although her diction and ethos speaks to the class, in her individual skin, she gets uncomfortable intended for other reasons, such as her hysteria in this foreign lower course world. Ehrenreich only is aware of how these types of poor people experience because she already lives her existence as a great outsider. Finally, placing a final emphasis on the gravity of the issue with a numerical value, Ehrenreich will remind her viewers, an audience already very conscious of cost, that drug testing cost “$100 a pop” (116). Not only does the use of numbers provide a more visceral and expensive example of the negative effects of medication testing, the combo of cost with the continuity of her lower diction provides the best persuasion for anyone workers.

Ehrenreich practically calls for the conclusion of invasion while together intruding for the lives of these lower course workers. While she effectively argues that a company would not have the right to interfere with this kind of personal things such as what employees carry out in the bath room, she does not realize the irony in the fact that she is interfering with these kinds of people’s lives as your woman purposefully degrades herself to insert very little into their lives. Incapable of completely integrating very little into the working class due to her stigmatization of drugs, her personal narrative in this specific argument acts little goal but to cloud the lense through which the girl perceives drug usage from this societal group. Logically, Ehrenreich presents an exceedingly influential argument pertaining to the end of drug screening. Personally, however , her very own interference while using lives of minimum income workers in the end asks similar question as a drug evaluation request: Where do you turn with your lifestyle, and how will you do it?

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