Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of one of the most remarkable books of the 21st century, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. That book, which I’ve read at least three times, details Ehrenreich’s experiences as an undercover journalist attempting to make it on minimum wage. She's a waitress, a maid, and finally, a Wal-Mart drone, and in none of those situations does she manage to even make ends meet, much less save any money and pursue the American dream. The book was meant to shine a spotlight on a socioeconomic group some people still don’t think exist: the hard-working poor. (If you follow that link I provided and read some of the reviews, you will see that some people remained unconvinced—they think Ehrenreich just didn’t “try hard enough.” I will say nothing about this except that denial is what keeps broken systems in operation.)
Anyway, in the introduction to Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich explains that people of her acquaintance asked her, after Nickel and Dimed came out, why the blue collar workers were getting all the attention, when so many white collar workers are struggling in the face of outsourcing, forced retirement, and lost pensions. And thus was born Bait and Switch, in which Ehrenreich looks at people who “did everything right,” got great degrees, joined the rat race, and played by the rules, yet whose fortunes did not smile upon them. She talked to forty-, fifty-, and sixty-year-olds who are endlessly attending resume workshops, mock interviews, networking luncheons, and skill-building seminars, who are paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to consultants, who are spending hours and hours a day filtering the job spam out of their Monster.com accounts (“Work From Home! $25 AN HOUR!”) in the weak hope that they’ll find an actual lead there. Of course, Barbara Ehrenreich wasn’t going to research this topic without getting her hands dirty. She scrubbed toilets for her last book, and she hits the corporate job hunt in this one, going to great lengths to appear as a viable job candidate (who, needless to say, is not famed journalist Barbara Ehrenreich).
I found the book to be quite enlightening, if not quite as crushing as Nickel and Dimed. As expected, Ehrenreich found that white collar workers on the job market are dealing with exploitation (in different forms) just as their working class counterparts are. Her resume consultant strung her along for weeks, often changing a comma, then changing it back (and actually giving poor advice—telling Ehrenreich that her resume could be three to four pages when common sense dictates that it should be restricted to one). Her resume was only deemed perfect when she informed the consultant she would not be paying anymore.
Also, the majority of the networking and job-finding events she attended were sponsored by or based around an organized religion—sometimes explicitly, and sometimes as a fun surprise. A resident of Florida, Ehrenreich went to most events in the nearest metropolis, Atlanta, where she was advised that if she found God, a job would find her. Even the events which were professedly non-religious were the hacky, new-age feelgoodery that Little Miss Sunshine made such accurate fun of. (Greg Kinnear! He was hilarious in that.)
Ehrenreich’s conclusions were much the same as what can be found in Nickel and Dimed: it’s not the people, it’s the system. She seemed quite relieved to leave the corporate world at the close of the book and offered the ray of hope that more humanities-based industries, such as higher education, did not seem to be showing the same symptoms of self-destruction.
Still, it won’t be long, will it? For-profit universities are springing up like weeds. Every raise in tuition means a drop in enrollment, but underenrollment means the university has to cut its budget, means…, etc. etc., vicious cycle, yada yada. Department budgets are fractions of what they were ten or fifteen years ago. An advisor at my former institution told me that tenure-track positions (basically, a professor job with a built-in future) are dwindling and assistant professorships or lecturer jobs with no hope of tenure (a “here’s something you can do for two years while you continue to look for something that will sustain you indefinitely” job) are increasingly common.
Too bad that the whole Ivory Tower of Academia thing is a myth, or becoming one. It would’ve been nice.
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