Barbara Ehrenreich attempts to give up her upper-middle-class life in order to prove her case for a higher minimum wage then that she lives her Nickel and Dimed life. As she moves from Florida, to Maine, to Minnesota, Ehrenreich attempts to live her life as a minimum wage worker, including the lifestyle, subordination, and apparently alleged drug addiction of this lower class. Ehrenreich fails to give up her higher social status as she interacts with drugs and drug tests in a very hesitant and shameful way, even avoiding the tests, which she only succeeds in due to her privilege. true past. However, his argument against drug testing stands out from this general failure regarding his personal stigmatization of drug use and his call for an end to drug testing ultimately stands out from his personal experience. Although his personal experiences with drugs reveal that Ehrenreich is unable to shake off his upper-class background, his argument regarding the illegality of drug testing shatters his failure by strongly appealing to those affected by the intrusion, the lower class, to action through empathy. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Florida, Ehrenreich begins his discussion of drugs by immediately empowering the literal drug and stereotyping the poor people who use them. Ehrenreich begins his argument by denouncing “laziness, theft and drug addiction” (18). By placing drug use and abuse alongside these deadly sins, it places them on an equal footing, forcing the low-wage addict to compare himself to the serial burglar. Expanding on this proclamation of the evils of drugs, Ehrenreich reveals her own personal prejudices as she “[blushes] as hard as if [she] had been caught smoking” (19). Her use of the subjunctive demonstrates how far she sees herself from this drug problem, it is not real for her, only a distant possibility. She demonstrates her own very personal fear of the stigma surrounding drug use. Ironically, she invalidates the argument she is trying to make because she is unable to let go of the stereotypes that she calls on all other upper and middle class people to end. Increasing stereotypes and confusion about who is “doing drugs” pushes any drug user further and further into the rhetoric of criminalization. By naming a human being, someone suffering from a potentially dangerous addiction, with a simple noun and adjective, both carrying a negative tone, Ehrenreich simplifies this complex human. This human is a criminal. And this human is a criminal because of drugs. In Florida, Ehrenreich unfortunately begins to reveal her personal biases and apparent inability to follow the solution she presents to everyone. Ehrenreich pits employees against corporations while advocating an end to intrusive drug testing; however, ironically, she is unable to truly understand the employees due to her unavoidable biases. By manipulating employers' demands, Ehrenreich succeeds in smearing corporations as entities that smugly proclaim, "You will have no secrets from us" (37). Not only does this make companies look very bad, but the antithetical “you” versus “us” pits the employer against the employee. It implicitly ridicules drug testing by proclaiming the message ofbig companies: “We don't just want your muscles and the part of your brain that is directly connected to them, we want your deepest self,” and of course, we want your urine (37). However, Ehrenreich was never confronted with these companies in such a disadvantaged way as the workers of the truly lower classes are. She always has the privilege of leaving a job. She never faces the pressure of having "something to prove" when her job and life are on the line, like the poor working class, the only thing she has to prove is the inequity in corporate practices (83). Ehrenreich attempts to play the role of "the person who has valuable work to sell", but she does not realize that her use of the infinitive verb excludes her from this role; she has no precious and infinite labor “to sell” (84). Ehrenreich only works very carefully on his assumed identity. It assumes that because "the person" who can has this valuable job, the unspecified background also allows him to take on this role. However, she has already proven, through her refusal to go through the drug testing process in the same way as the poor, that she can't really play the role of "the person." Ehrenreich uses a sarcastic tone to comment on "what you get when you weed out all the rebels with drug tests and personality 'surveys'" (98). Implicitly stating that "rebels" are those rare people who are unwilling to subject themselves to inappropriate and unprofessional intrusion into their personal lives and even their literal bodies. She allows her tone to suggest the absurdity of the request for urine. Ehrenreich does not manage to completely assume her poor identity, but she succeeds in generating movement in her argument. As an outsider, Ehrenreich successfully continues her argument against drug testing. Although she subconsciously fails to fully embrace her role as a low-wage worker, she successfully recognizes the dehumanization and objectification that drug testing entails, as she claims that she can prove that she is an “$8.50 plumbing” expert, but only as long as she passes an exam. drug testing (72). His skills and literal monetary value are seemingly revealed through his ability to submit to an invasion of privacy. Ehrenreich eventually begins to view drug testing as unnecessarily crude and extreme invasions of privacy. In describing "the applications, interviews, and drug tests," Polysyndeton reveals how she views these drug tests: as judges of a person's fitness who can in no way determine how well they could perform the job ( 99). She argues that sure, a person's readiness for a job can be found in conversation or questions, but in no way can it be found in their urine. Yet she still maintains the stereotypical view of these lower-class people, that even when she lives with them, she seems surprised that they are not "drug addicts or prostitutes" (89). Ultimately, she cannot put herself in the shoes of these poor workers because her prejudices manifest themselves too often; her argument regarding the use of drug testing, however, remains relevant only as it relates to the company and its workers, leaving her mostly out of the equation. In the assessment, Ehrenreich finally summarizes his argument that it is unconstitutional and unjust to force any employee to “strip and pee in a cup” (114). His weak diction allows for this call to action.?