Detail what occurred in Chapter 2. Make sure to discuss the events, people, and struggles that Barbara meets. In addition, offer any insights or conclusions that Barbara provides. Make sure to provide textual evidence to justify your response.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
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When first arriving in Maine Barbra starts looking for places to live she looks at the Motel 6. & after searching for where she was going to stay she visited a job fair. Then Barbra gets a job as a maid. The job Barbra gets as a maid charges $25 a hour. But the company gets $25 and they get $6.65an hour. "In my interview, I had been promised a thirty-minute lunch break, but this turns out to be a five-minute pit stop at a convenience store, if that." She realized she won’t have enough money so she gets another job working at a nursing home. She is working several days a week and becomes friends with the other maid she is working with. One day one of the other younger maids got hurt on the job. The manager won’t let her take any time off. Barbra tells all the maids to stop working. The manager talks to Barbra and grants the injured maid one day off from work. When Barbra goes to the nursing home one day she is left alone with all the patients and is scared she would mix up medication or hurt somebody. When Barbra is ready to leave Maine her last conversation was with Colleen she said, "I don’t mind, really, because I guess I'm a simple person, and I don't want what they have. I mean, it's nothing to me. But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then...if I had to...and still be able to buy groceries the next day."
Barbara now travels to Maine to continue her experiment. One of Barbara’s struggles in this chapter is there are no apartments in Portland, but there are "executive apartments." Another struggle she faces is she cant seem to find a job in Maine that pays enough for the housing that she would like to have. she is asked a question. If some people work better when they are high? "everyone tries Marijuana." the main thing she learns is despite all the want adds and job fairs, Portland is just another $6-$7 an hour town. she finally receives a job as a Marry Maid getting done around 3:30 she goes in search for another job, she had her eye on a potato factory. she gets a job as a dietary aide. She finds her self in a place filled with gossip. Finally she moves into the Blue Haven, she finds her resources limited. By this time she has two jobs. She has been having quite a rough time she is now cleaning houses. Slow down and above all, detach. "If you can't stand being around suffering people, then you have no business in the low-wage work world as a journalist or anything else", her "former self" tells her.
To tell the truth I have not read the book yet. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that trying to catch up on other work and other things going on around me, it's hard for me to read because I have to be fully focused on a book to read it. I'm not just going to look through the book and make stuff up, because I am going to read the book, it sounds very interesting. Tonight I will read it because I will have the time and it will be quiet enough for me to read it. So there's not much else I can say but sorry.
Struggles she meets: Being in a place where she knows nobody, having to work in unsanitary places as a cleaner.
People she meets: Julie, Earl, Liza, Pete, Linda, Letty, Ted, Pauline, Holly, Marge, and Denise
Events: Barbara moves to Maine and she could not pick up her rental car, so she took a cab; she gets a job at a hotel called the Sea Breeze working as a cleaner; at the end of the chapter, she calls in sick, and that was her last day at the Sea Breeze.
Insights & conclusions: It sometimes tends to be unsettling trying to get a job in a place where you hardly know anybody, ("Here I am--as clueless and alone as I have ever been in my entire adult life") - Chapter 2, page 53
She works for a housecleaning company called The Maids. She lives in a very tiny unsatisfactory condition. The rent for her place is $120 a month. That's quite a bit for her at first but she works two jobs so once her paychecks really start coming from both directions she will be set for a while. She says that "anger is toxic" which is probably true for people under such strenuous working conditions. at one point she has to call for food and money assistance. She is currently employed so they wheel and deal her around to different people in order to not have to help her.
At the start of part two Barbara searches for jobs around Portland, Main. She goes into a Wal-mart to a "job fair" and she says she is seated at a table with balloons and that is the "fair" part of job fair. She speaks to a woman named Julie. Barbara is Julie’s first interview, she just works up front. Before she goes to this Wal-mart she goes to Goodwill. At the Goodwill she spots a number of people there but none of them make eye contact she says. Except one man by the exit that is, I believe she says standing on one foot moving his arms around. She tries other places as well because she says she learned from her Key West journey she would have to have two jobs. Her living conditions, which I have forgot to mention are a Motel 6 at the beginning, but she is only living there until the Blue Haven Motel calls her telling her she can move in. There is a point early in chapter 2 when she is sitting in her Motel 6 room waiting on places to call where she applied for jobs. She says she accepts the first two jobs offered to her. The two jobs that she takes are a nursing home called Woodcrest and a maid service called Merry Maids. She explains when she is working at Woodcrest that she tries to pretend it is a restraunt but sometimes it is hard because of the "customers". Barbara tries to learn names and she mentions Marguerite, Grace, Letty, and Ruthy. Letty is a diabetic who steals doughnuts from other peoples plates, and Ruthy, when she found out Barbara's name yelled BARBARA BUSH! Though it doesn’t make sense. Linda is Barbara's supervisor, she tells her about Robert, the way she talks about him it seems she doesn't like him too much. At the end of chapter 2 Barbara ends up quitting the jobs, at the Woodcrest she gives her uniform to Lori, a friend from work, and tells her who she is... when she is announcing who she is, not many people are interested, except Lori, she asks Barbara if she is investigating.
In Chapter 2 Barbara gets two jobs. Her fist job she is a maid and her second job she is a dietary aid, and she makes 7 an hour as the dietary aid for the nursing home. It says in the book if she is late however the pay will go down to six an hour. She becomes friends with one of the other maids her name is holly. They have to watch videos over how to be a good maid. The have these vacuums that they have to carry on their backs. At the nursing home she is in the kitchen and she has to make sure the elders get their food; afterwards she has to clean up after them. One of the residence their take a glass of milk and spills it all over Barbara’s pants. She says you wet your pants. Some of the others that she meets are Liza, Rosaline, and Maddy. Each of them is a team when they go to peoples houses to clean them. One of the first houses that they go to clean is Mrs. W They are not very excited about cleaning her house. In fact Maddy says her name and her big house. "I hope she is going to give us lunch" Another person on their list to clean is Martha Stewart. They arrive to her house and they start cleaning. While Barbara is the bathroom cleaning the toilet she drops some of the cleaner down into her shoe and it’s going into her sock. While this happened she also can’t sleep at night because she has these red bumps all over arms, they are so itchy she is unable to sleep at night.
Barbara arrived in Portland, Maine and checked into a motel 6. She applied for many jobs because of what she knew from her Key West experience. She was called and accepted the 1st two jobs she recieved which were dietary aid for a nursing home and a cleaner or maid in a maid service. She worked at the nursing home first. She woke up at 4:45 A.M. and got ready to work at 7:00 P.M. She talked to a Linda her supervisor who told her the ropes and what not to do etc. "it seemed like she wanted a complaint from Robert every once in awhile." One day they worked in the locked Alzheimer's Ward. They gave them breakfast quickly and she treated it like a restaurant, taking orders and pouring coffee (only decaf, otherwise it gets wild). She learns some names like Marguerite a lady who comes in clutching a teddy bear and nothing but a diaper below the waist, Grace who tracks her with an accusing stare and demands her cup be refilled even if it hasn’t been touched, and Letty a diabetic who steal doughnuts off of others trays. Cleaning up is a lot worse because of all the dishes from the residents and the CNAs. She loads a tray full, bends down to put them in, gets another one ready, while also cleaning up the tables and floors of food, switches them out, and repeats the process many times. Her job as a maid is working until 4:30 or 5:00 P.M. even though they are supposed to get of at 3:30. She usually gets stuck with dusting which she like out of the four types of cleaning; vacuuming, dusting, bathrooms, and kitchen. She is assigned to one of the teams every day and she prays she never gets stuck on the older women’s team because she would have to do the vacuuming. She talked with Liza who lives with her boyfriend and his mother; she is right out of high school. She only eats a bag of Doritos for lunch which concerns Barbara and makes her want to motherly suggest she drink some milk with it at least, but gives her pop instead. On a Saturday night when she had nothing to do she decided to go to the Church of Deliverance that is having a Saturday night "tent revival". She went in talked to a woman next to her who gave her a bible since she seemed to be the only one with out a personal copy. She heard one man talk about the Jesus and his crucifixion, a Mexican looking man closed his eyes and gave a rapid fire sermon, and an older white man gave a speech about how this city and its evil ways. She got bored and left when the minister had his gaze turned the other way. The day before she left she told the women in her maid group what she was doing and Lori who silences the others with "Hey this is interesting." asks if Barbara was "investigating". She said: "This place could use some investigating." Since she is finally "out" she asks Lori what she thinks of all this. Lori at 24 who has a serious disk problem and an eight thousand dollar credit card debt says: All I can think of is like, wow, I'd like to have this stuff someday. It motivates me and I don't feel the slightest resentment because, you know, it’s my goal to get where they are." She visited Lori on Sunday and gave her the uniforms and told her to break the news to Ted any way she wanted.
In chapter 2 Barbara moves up to Portland, Maine to be exact and she holds 2 jobs again one being at Woodcrest a nursing home and the other as a maid for some jerk named Ted. Who could care less about his minimum wage workers and more about how much business comes through. This especially shows when the slogan is "we do it the old fashion way on our hands and knees.” Many of the woman maids that Barbara encounters are somehow making it by with several living in a household and some who eat nothing but a bag of Doritos for lunch mainly due to the fact that’s all they can afford. Holly one of the maids hurts her ankle really bad and she wants to keep working because she’s afraid she wont make it by. Woodcrest isn’t mentioned nearly as much as the merry maids but from what is told its a nesting ground for old people half nuts with Alzheimer’s and the cook Pete is trying to hook up with Barbara with cigarette dates and buying her egg McMuffins. The workplace at the Woodcrest seems much friendlier and not backbreaking work except being understaffed. Back to Merry Maids the description of the shit stains and pubic hair was an interesting example of how low on the totem pole Barbara felt as being on by doing back breaking work all for 6-7 dollars an hour when management charges 25 per house. Barbara resorts to having to use Shop-n-Save in order to receive a decent meal and has to use a decent amount of money for kitchen utensils and household items to be able to live in the motel that seemingly seems small and unbearable. There was a couple times she had to escape reality and go to the "deliverance" church that seemed awkward at first due to the name and she makes a trip along the beach once or twice to feel some relaxation. She found out that the house owners were often middle aged and asked once to her superior if this person house there about to clean was wealthy and her answer was must be wealthier than us since we are cleaning their house. At the end there wasn’t much of a reaction about her experiment as a journalist doing a documentary on low wage salary.
Barbara meets a lot of people while she is in Maine. She meets a couple of apartment managers. She meets Earl (shows her around Glenwood. the rent their is $65 a week. Then she goes to Blue Heaven it is $120 week, and the security deposit is $100.
She went to go and fill out applications. She went to goodwill (they pay $7 an hour). She says "Portland is just a $6-$7 an hour town"
she went to a place called merry maids. and she got a job there.
the managers said “that you will only get paid 200-250 a week. don’t try to figure it out in your head how much it is per hour." she starts Monday and gets paid $6.50. but if she doesn't show up one day then she will only get paid 6.00 an hour as a punishment. she gets off every day at 3:30. she likes to dust. she has to watch a video on hoe to do her job.
she gets a job at a nursing home working weekends. and she gets paid $7 a hour. she cooks for the people there. she moves into the Blue Heaven. she gets warned by her boss "not to put up with sexual harassment by Robert even though he is the owners son."
Here are the people that she meets at the nursing home. Linda (is her supervisor), Pete (one of the cooks, he warns her about molly), molly (stabs people in the back, Leon he follows females co-workers in to the service closet). Those are the people she works with. here are the people she serves Robert (owners son, marguerite (she is clutching a teddy bear, and wearing nothing when she walks in), Grace (she wants more orange juice even though hers wasn’t even touched), Ruthie pours her juice all over here).
At the beginning of chapter two Barbra chooses Main, a "white" town, to do the next part of her study. She goes to job fairs and looks in the help wanted ads and fills out many applications for jobs. The first job that she gets is at the Woodcrest Residential Facility where she is a dietary aide for the Alzheimer's ward. At this job she is to take the food to the older people with Alzheimer’s. Her first living quarters is at the Blue Haven Motel. Once she starts working there (Woodcrest) she starts looking for another job and finds one at The Merry Maids where she goes out to residents to clean their homes. Once there Ted the manager makes her takes the Accutrac test to see if she is honest and will be a good worker. She lies on the test but still passes and starts working soon after. On her first day she is to watch a video on how to clean and telling her to forget everything that she knew before about cleaning. They tell her to clean from left to right and top to bottom. Everything gets swept under and moved to be dusted and nothing is to be left out. At the Maids the wear these ugly bright yellow and green outfits and ride in matching vans to the places. When they arrive at the homes they are to clean they are assigned to teams where they have a team leader who splits up the work among the crew. Dusting is the easiest job. If you vacuum then you use this strap on your back vacuum cleaner which is said to weight only 10 lbs but Barbra says it’s more like 14 lbs once all the attachments are hooked up on it. When they go to clean a house they take three rags one for windows one for dusting and the last to wipe everything else down with. They are not to use a mop but to mop on their hands and knees which is a slogan that they use to make it seem like a better scrub for your money. All the people at the Maids all have problems like: bad backs, weak knees, so they can’t do certain jobs. She realizes that there are no one living in their cars here, they all has a living space so that is a difference from Key West. She notices that everyone treats the Maids as the lowest of low and even once when she goes to a restaurant after work she ask for service but is ignored because she is wearing her uniform. She says that this is what it must be like to be black and discriminated against. The entire maids look up to Ted and worry more about what he thinks then anything else. When Holly falls and thinks she broke her ankle because she herd a snap she wanted to keep on working instead of taking Barb’s advice and getting to a hospital to get help- she doesn’t want Ted to be mad. When on the phone with Ted about Holly’s accident, Barb starts yelling saying that it is bullshit to work like this that there are so many other jobs that these ladies can get and quit working for Ted and make more money. The reason they all worry about what Ted thinks is that he is the only one who thanks them and appreciates their work they do. No one else tells them thanks for there job. Barb tells are her co-workers that she is a writer doing a report for her book and all they say is that the place needed to be reported. So at the end of the chapter she works one last day at Woodcrest and calls in sick and then has Lori tell Ted whatever she wants about why she will not be there no more.
At the beginning of the chapter, Barbara chooses Maine for her next experiment location. She said she chooses Maine for its whiteness. She ends up searching for a place to stay for this experiment for a bout 2 weeks, finding that 59$ a day at the Blue Haven is suitable. She now tries for a job, making her first stop at a Goodwill. She gets a "we will get back to you in about two weeks" after turning in an application. She then turns to a WalMartwhos advertising for a "job fair". There she meets Julie, the new interviewer, who tells her that the pay is about $6.50. Babara then tries The Maids, a housecleaning service. She ends up taking the job with The Maids and realizes that she would still have weekend, so she tries to get a weekend job also. She gets a job at Woodcrest Residential Facility. Linda is her superviser at the Woodcrest. She then goes to a church at night, being atheist, and ends up not liking it and sneaks out when the pastor is turned. At The Maids, she meets: Tammy, Ted, Liza, Rosalie, Pauline, Mrs. W, Maddy, Lori, Marge, Holly, Martha, Gloria, Karen, and Pete. On one of Babara's last day's, as they rush out to get the buckets to the car, Holly trips in a hole in the ground and screams. On the second to last day of work, Barbara confesses to everyone about how she is doing an experiment and that shes writing a book. She calls in sick her last day, having Lori return her outfit, letting her tell Ted her departure how ever she wants.
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