No Help Wanted

"You can't fake being a waitress," she says. "The food gets to the table or it doesn't." But in the world of the white-collar unemployed, "you're constantly being told to be something different than you are. You have to be upbeat, positive, perky, obnoxiously self-confident."

The corners of her mouth twitch grimly upward.

"I know!" she says when this is pointed out. "I'm trying to put the smile on right now!"

Rugged in America

But . . . but . . . but . . . you think, as you approach the end of Ehrenreich's tale. Sure it's rough out there. But why couldn't the Undercover Reporter, with all her experience and skills, even come close to finding work?

This is a line reviewers may take, she fears. At least one, which showed up in today's mail, already has. "It was something like "not as involving as 'Nickel and Dimed' because she doesn't get a job," Ehrenreich reports. "That's going to be the curse of 'Bait and Switch,' being the little sibling of 'Nickel and Dimed.' "

She had handicaps, to be sure. She was in her sixties, hardly the most marketable age, and had to disguise this on her resume. She had no professional contacts to start with, she points out. What she doesn't say -- though it's clear from the book -- is that she spent too much time networking with other jobless folks and not enough beating down the doors of the gainfully employed.

Still, she says, "I don't think my effort was shabby compared to that of the other job seekers I was interacting with."

Okay. What about the widely shared belief -- most widely shared among the securely employed, of course -- that America is all about rugged individualism? That competition is the engine of the capitalist economy, which is the source of our prosperity, and that winners and losers are just part of the game?

"I say, well fine, but what are we competing about ?" she counters. "I'm not attacking notions of competitiveness or individuality, really. But I'm looking at a system which casts people out whether or not they're good."

It's bad for capitalism, she says, when corporate culture creates a disconnect between achievement and reward. These days, you can be laid off through no fault of your own if the CEO changes your company's direction. But that same CEO may not be accountable if the direction change fails. "We see CEOs who preside over companies that are tanking raise their pay and perks."

What are her hopes for "Bait and Switch"? She wants her middle-class readers to stop thinking of poor people as "the other," some kind of unique species, fundamentally different from themselves.

"I want the 35-year-old middle manager at a bank to be thinking: I have something in common with a homeless person. It could happen. I'm not so far away from that."

She's got hopes for the article you're reading, too.

"Just be sure to describe me as a really terrific PR person who has been overlooked by the corporate world," she says. "They lost their chance!"

Heh-heh-heh-heh.