Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

I loved Nickel and Dimed. Bait and Switch? Not so much.

The idea behind the book is a smart one: What happens to the thousands who do everything right and still get screwed by corporate America? What do they do to get by? Are they just as jaded and jilted by the American dream as those on the bottom economic rung?

But the bait here is a book promising insight into this often overlooked and undertalked about world. The switch is that, as an imposter, Ehrenreich hardly scratches the surface of promising what she says she will. You spend the first hundred pages waiting for it to begin only to realize it never will. Perhaps because it was a faux job hunt, or because everything from her resume to her name were only half-truths, she barely gets show more off the ground in this book before its over. How can a book that says so little seem so long?

She doesn't land that elusive job and gives up. Game over. By throwing in the towel, Ehrenreich only proves how little she gets it. She misses her own point. The real people whose lives she is supposed to be imitating and expounding upon don't have such a luxury. They settle. They don't give up. show less

Barbara Ehrenreich does a great job evoking the sweaty desperation of people clinging to their station after circumstances change. That's not to say that she is unsympathetic; her sympathy for struggling people is a hallmark of her writing. Her portrayals of her fellow job-seekers (and herself) are unsparing, but not unkind.

This would be best read after [b:Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America|1869|Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting by in America|Barbara Ehrenreich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442378091l/1869._SY75_.jpg|1840613], her book focusing on both the search for and the daily realities of blue and pink collar work. Rather than playing these categories of workers against each show more other, I think the shared themes of these two books are along the lines of solidarity and identifying the underlying structures of exploitation. They could be fodder for culture war stuff, but Ehrenreich is too smart to slip into that and reports with such closely observed detail that it would be difficult to weaponise any of it. show less

Not as brilliant as NICKEL AND DIMED; I get the feeling Ehrenreich can't bring herself to feel as sympathetic to unemployed white-collar corporate workers as she did to minimum-wage workers. However, it's still compulsively readable. Ehrenreich re-named herself Barbara Alexander (legally returning to her maiden name) and entered the job market, intending to get herself a corporate job and work for a few months. She never did get a job; her only offers were from AFLAC and Mary Kay Cosmetics, in both cases basically to work as an independent contractor. Along the way, she experienced job fairs, corporate counselors, employment seminars, resumé counseling, and all the other ways in which the white-collar unemployed are further fleeced. show more The thing that stands out most to me is that many of the people preying on the people looking for jobs are themselves people who can't find jobs.

After reading it, I found myself grateful I decided to become a private school teacher and not a PR person, systems analyst, or event planner. But I also feel a little less secure all around. Ehrenreich specializes in letting all the air out of the various fictions of a capitalist economy. show less

I thought that it couldn't get any more real or depressing than Nickel and Dimed, but in this book, Ehrenreich takes on the myths of the white-collar world and finds one where inaction masquerades as self-improvement and where people are so afraid of pointing out what is wrong with the system that they spend their lives blaming themselves. Especially pertinent and prophetic in the wake (or in the throes, depending on your point of view) of The Great Recession, this book exposes the white collar ideology of self-help and self-blame for what it is: wishful thinking. I know too many people whose situations mirror or are even worse than the ones described in the book; it should be required reading for all incoming college freshmen.

This is the follow-up to Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed where she spent several months working minimum-wage jobs to understand the precarious lives led by America’s working poor. While that book was eye opening in showing the abuses and suffering working class people live with, this one seems to hit the mark. This time Ehrenreich attempts to find work among America’s executive elite paying particular attention to the career coaches, employment seminars and groups that prey upon white collar professionals “in transition.” While exposing the callous nature in which the executive unemployed have their self-worth toyed with, much of what Ehrenreich writes about the people she encounters sounds cold and mean-spirited. There seems to show more be something about the way she is financially-independent and go about the job search on a lark that sets her apart from the real job-seekers that seems cruel rather than insightful. Then again, I wonder if it’s just me, if I identify with the white-collar world so that this seems an incursion as opposed to the patronizing view that Nickel and Dimed was a valuable social experiment. Anyhow, a lot of what Ehrenreich writes is pretty damn funny, and if nothing else shows the hardships put on employees of all levels by the man!

“If you have been spat out the by the great corporate machine and left to contemplate your presumed inadequacy, it makes sense to fill the day with microtasks, preferably supervised by someone else. Imagining one’s search as a ‘job’ must satisfy the Calvinist craving to be doing something, anything, of a worklike nature, and Americans may be especially prone to Calvinist angst. We often credit some activity with the phrase ‘at least it keeps me busy’ – as if busyness were a desirable state regardless of how you achieve it.” P. 46

“But from the point of view of the economic ‘winners’ – those who occupy powerful and high-paying jobs – the view that one’s fate depends entirely on oneself must be remarkably convenient. It explains the winners’ success in the most flattering terms while invalidating the complaints of the losers … It’s not the world that needs changing, is the message, it’s you. No need, then, to band together to work for a saner economy or a more human-friendly corporate environment, or to band together at all. As one of my fellow campers put it, we are our own enemies.” P. 85 show less

A good and easy read though a bit depressing. Especially as the tendency is not to create more solidarity, better health insurance or benefits in America, but to diminish benefits, stress individual responsibility and implement the American system in Europe. In which, as Ehrenreich points out, unemployment is your own fault, nothing to do with the market or corporate culture, but with your own flawed personality. The job insecurity hits not only blue collar workers anymore: also highly educated white collar workers have to deal with it. Ehrenreich's sense of humour and the way she describes her observations makes the bad message bearable to read. She's spent months as an undercover journalist trying to find a job through internet show more searches, applying for jobs, networking and considering job seeking as a regular job, getting help from coaches and church meetings. A discouraging but sometimes hilarious quest. show less

An excellent follow-up to 'Nickel and Dimed'. Ehrenreich once again cuts through the hip-deep bullshit that clogs our economic system. This time she spends most of a year in an futile attempt to find any kind of white-collar job, limiting herself to doing 'all the right things'. The message is, you might be better just staying at WalMart.