In chapter two of Nickel and Dimed the main character and author, Barbara Ehrenreich, has just moved to a new town in Maine. In Maine there are a lot more white people and it would make it easier for her to find a job since she speaks English, where as in Key West the low paying jobs were most likely for Americans who spoke Spanish. On page 52 Barbara says, ”Maybe, I reasoned, when you give white people a whole state to themselves, they treat one another real nice.” She talked about how all of the want ads that she went through mostly promised a “fun, casual” workplace. She was hoping that she would be able to apply for as many jobs as she could and find a home in the next week or so. In the mean time, she was paying $59.00 a night to stay at a Motel 6. After a long day of looking for an apartment, she heads back to Portland in defeat when she notices that the Blue Haven Motel on Route 1 has apartments to rent. She says on page 56, “For $120 a week I can have a bed/Living area with a kitchen growing off of it, linens included, and a TV that will have cable company notices that the former occupant is no longer the bill.” Since she was under pressure and was paying $59 a day she went ahead and took this offer paying the $100 security fee on the spot.
Now that she has found a home the next step is to find a job. From experience in Key West she knows that she must apply for as many jobs as possible since a help-wanted ad doesn’t always indicate that help is really wanted. She also attends a job fair at Walmart, where she fills out a survey and is interviewed for a job. At the hotel she waits to hear back from all the places that she applied to. The first two calls are from the nursing home, who offer her a job on the weekends and the second is The Maids, who want her to start that following Monday. Both of these jobs are paying her around $6-7 an hour. The next day she starts her first job at the nursing home where she is required to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the residents there. She does the dishes and sweeps the floors once everyone is finished. She relates this job to her father and how he had died of Alzheimer’s disease. This job reminded her of him because he lived in the nursing home and serving the other people made her feel good since some of them could remember her name and even one women who made a joke by calling her “Barbara Bush.” This make her feel welcomed to her new job.
That night was her last night at the Motel 6. Instead of being locked up in her room all day she wanted to go out. She decided to attend a ten revival that a church was having. This becomes a brief experience. She chats with the women beside her, borrows her Bible, stands, claps with the song, and leaves before the preaching is finished.
Sunday comes and she finally ready to move out of the Motel 6 and into the Blue Haven, She finds the place small, but is still happy with it. On page 69 she says, “Not to worry—I have an address, two jobs, and a Rent-A-Wreck.”
On Monday she reports to her next job at 7:30 knowing nothing about maid service. On her first day she is barely noticed and waits to receive her uniform and instructions for her job. She goes through training where she learns that her job consists of dusting, bathrooms, kitchens, and vacuuming. She enjoys dusting the best. She says “..its undeniable logic and a certain kind of austere beauty.” After a day’s training she is judged fit to work with the team of the maids. She tells how this job is at a fast pace where everyone runs in and out of the houses. She also mentions that in her previous interview for the job she was promised a 30 minute lunch break, but turns out to be a 5 minute pit stop. All that this job running in houses, cleaning them, and then running out with minutes to spare. She describes how some of her co-workers boss her around, but that is the only problem that she is having so far. Later on in the chapter she talks about how one of her teammates said that sometimes the owners of the houses will leave tape recorders on so that they can hear what the workers are saying while they work.
Finishing off the chapter she finishes by saying how she is working her finally day as a maid and how she is going to miss everybody and her nursing home job.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
"Merchants of Cool"
1.) Cool-hunting is when researchers look for what is “in.” They find the 20% that are trend setters for the other 80% followers. They search for a certain personality knowing what influence is going to come next. These researchers use surveys, case studies, focus groups and interviews to further their study.
2.) Television, music, and fashion corporations want to understand how teenagers think and what they want because they are the biggest age group consisting of 32 million and they have more money than any other generation. 150 billion dollars have been spent by them and their parents. Their parents will just give them money so that their kids will leave them alone to do work and other household duties.
3.) MTV executives and other programming and marketing decision-makers characterize their relationship to teem culture as seeing eye to eye with each other. They feel that they are reflecting what teenagers want and the things they enjoy and desire.
4.) The difference between marketing research and human research is that marketing research is knowing what people are going to buy and human research is knowing about the consumers and what they want. The goal of marketing is to be eye-catching to their audience and the goal of human research is to get to know them so that they will produce things the people want. For example, when the MTV group went into John’s house to see how an everyday teenage boy lives.
5.) The critics are giving the most accurate description of the relationship between teen culture and commercialization. Of course the merchants of cool are going to say what they want to think the relationship is, but their critics are going to say what is true and what they see. One of the critics from the video said that the standards will go down because of all the different things that are manipulating teenagers through music, TV, movies, and other things. These institutions are playing as agents of socialization. They somewhat guide teenagers into the trends and the things that arise and fall as these merchants of cool wish. In the video, Sprite used hip-hop music and stars to get teenagers to like and buy their product. While MTV would allow drugs, alcohol, and sex to be on their shows, showing teenagers that these things are okay, causing standards to drop just like the critic said it would.
2.) Television, music, and fashion corporations want to understand how teenagers think and what they want because they are the biggest age group consisting of 32 million and they have more money than any other generation. 150 billion dollars have been spent by them and their parents. Their parents will just give them money so that their kids will leave them alone to do work and other household duties.
3.) MTV executives and other programming and marketing decision-makers characterize their relationship to teem culture as seeing eye to eye with each other. They feel that they are reflecting what teenagers want and the things they enjoy and desire.
4.) The difference between marketing research and human research is that marketing research is knowing what people are going to buy and human research is knowing about the consumers and what they want. The goal of marketing is to be eye-catching to their audience and the goal of human research is to get to know them so that they will produce things the people want. For example, when the MTV group went into John’s house to see how an everyday teenage boy lives.
5.) The critics are giving the most accurate description of the relationship between teen culture and commercialization. Of course the merchants of cool are going to say what they want to think the relationship is, but their critics are going to say what is true and what they see. One of the critics from the video said that the standards will go down because of all the different things that are manipulating teenagers through music, TV, movies, and other things. These institutions are playing as agents of socialization. They somewhat guide teenagers into the trends and the things that arise and fall as these merchants of cool wish. In the video, Sprite used hip-hop music and stars to get teenagers to like and buy their product. While MTV would allow drugs, alcohol, and sex to be on their shows, showing teenagers that these things are okay, causing standards to drop just like the critic said it would.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Article Reviews
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14526.html
Review of: Race and the Race by: Gary L. Bauer
Barack Obama said, while campaigning for Maryland Senator Ben Cardin against Michael Steele, “You don’t vote for somebody because of what they look like. You vote for somebody because of what they stand for.” According to this article, over three-fourths of the electorate thinks that America is heading in the wrong direction. Also, registration for the Democratic Party has gone up, while the Republic party affiliation has plummeted. So how is John McCain still in this race if these statements are true?
Some liberals came to the troubling conclusion: it must be racism! The AP –Yahoo! Poll estimated that racism would cause Obama to lose six percent of his votes on Election Day. However, it was not Republicans, but Democrats and Independents who were most likely to reject Obama because of his race, while most Republicans rejected him because of political ideas.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/obamas_character_still_questio.html
Review of: A Question of Barack Obama’s Character by: Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama is associated with three execrable characters. They are a convicted felon Tony Rezko, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, and the race-baiting Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The window these associations give on Obama’s core beliefs is very disturbing. He doesn’t chare Reverend Wright’s poisonous views of race or Ayer’s views about the evil that is in American society. However, Obama clearly did not become unassociated with them for the many years he has known them. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that he has taken on some of their view and beliefs as well.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/111049/Obamas-Race-May-Much-Plus-Minus.aspx
Review of: Obama’s Race May be as Much a Plus as a Minus by: Frank Newport
Data taken in this article shows that if anything, Obama’s race could be a net plus, in the sense that it makes more voters want to vote for him than not to vote for him. Seven percent of white voters say Obama’s race makes them less likely to vote for him, but six percent of white voters say Obama’s race makes them more likely to vote for him. And in the nonwhite voters, Obama’s race is a significant net plus. This data shows that the election on November 4th will be about even in terms of people being racist or not.
Review of: Race and the Race by: Gary L. Bauer
Barack Obama said, while campaigning for Maryland Senator Ben Cardin against Michael Steele, “You don’t vote for somebody because of what they look like. You vote for somebody because of what they stand for.” According to this article, over three-fourths of the electorate thinks that America is heading in the wrong direction. Also, registration for the Democratic Party has gone up, while the Republic party affiliation has plummeted. So how is John McCain still in this race if these statements are true?
Some liberals came to the troubling conclusion: it must be racism! The AP –Yahoo! Poll estimated that racism would cause Obama to lose six percent of his votes on Election Day. However, it was not Republicans, but Democrats and Independents who were most likely to reject Obama because of his race, while most Republicans rejected him because of political ideas.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/obamas_character_still_questio.html
Review of: A Question of Barack Obama’s Character by: Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama is associated with three execrable characters. They are a convicted felon Tony Rezko, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, and the race-baiting Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The window these associations give on Obama’s core beliefs is very disturbing. He doesn’t chare Reverend Wright’s poisonous views of race or Ayer’s views about the evil that is in American society. However, Obama clearly did not become unassociated with them for the many years he has known them. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that he has taken on some of their view and beliefs as well.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/111049/Obamas-Race-May-Much-Plus-Minus.aspx
Review of: Obama’s Race May be as Much a Plus as a Minus by: Frank Newport
Data taken in this article shows that if anything, Obama’s race could be a net plus, in the sense that it makes more voters want to vote for him than not to vote for him. Seven percent of white voters say Obama’s race makes them less likely to vote for him, but six percent of white voters say Obama’s race makes them more likely to vote for him. And in the nonwhite voters, Obama’s race is a significant net plus. This data shows that the election on November 4th will be about even in terms of people being racist or not.
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