Quote 1

I haven’t been treated this way—lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations—since at least junior high school.

This quotation appears in Chapter 1, after Ehrenreich and the rest of the staff at Hearthside are brought into the kitchen and told that there will be random drugs tests because of reports of drug activity in the restaurant. Despite being adults, the restaurant workers are treated like misbehaving children, even though there is no evidence that they have done anything wrong. In fact, the manager delivering the threats might even be the guilty party. Later in the book, Ehrenreich points out that this type of treatment is part of a system designed to take away low-wage workers’ self-respect so they won’t make demands of their employers. The unwarranted punishment also highlights the strained dynamic and power imbalance between management and restaurant workers. By keeping the two groups at odds with one another, companies and corporations ensure that their workers will not unite against them.

Quote 2

That's not your marble bleeding, I want to tell her, it's the worldwide working class—the people who quarried the marble, wove your Persian rugs until they went blind, harvested the apples in your lovely fall-themed dining room centerpiece, smelted the steel for the nails, drove the trucks, put up this building, and now bend and squat to clean it.

This quotation appears in Chapter 2 after a homeowner complains that her marble walls are "bleeding" onto the brass fixtures and asks Ehrenreich to scrub the grouting. Ehrenreich does not speak her mind at the time because employees at The Maids are supposed to be silent and polite, not give their opinions. However, Ehrenreich does use the interaction as an opportunity to point out that all the luxurious items in the house she is cleaning are only possible because of the hard work of low-wage laborers. It is also significant that in this quotation, food is mentioned as a decoration rather than a necessity, throwing into stark relief the author and her coworkers’ struggles to afford enough food to fuel their work cleaning mansions for The Maids.

Quote 3

Someday, of course … they are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption. But the sky will not fall, and we will all be better off for it in the end.

This quotation appears in the Evaluation section as Ehrenreich sums up what she has learned during her time undercover. After pointing out that the comfortable lives of the middle and upper class are only possible because of the sacrifices of low-wage workers, Ehrenreich predicts that the working poor will eventually demand more from society. She anticipates that although this will be disruptive, it will also be beneficial. Ehrenreich’s prediction about low-wage workers protesting their unfair treatment still bears significant weight; although she made it more than twenty years ago, the situation for low-wage workers has (arguably) gotten worse, and they still haven’t been able to secure fair pay for their labor.

Take a Study Break