Serving in Florida

Upon beginning "Serving in Florida," my immediate reaction was that Barbara Ehrenreich could not possibly write about her experiences as a waitress in a manor that could keep my focus for more than a few minutes. The issue was not that I am unsympathetic to lower class situations or having to work as a waitress to survive, merely that I could not relate to those situations. However, I easily related to her depiction of managers. Once I was able to connect to her story, it made the essay much more interesting.

Ehrenreich describes managers as being "corporate as opposed to human" and essentially claims that they are on power-highs. I have found this to be true of many managers at varying levels of employment. Although, I do not agree that all managers are only out to make money and do not care about employee happiness. Ehrenreich's passage on the pressure to retain the appearance of being busy was excellent, mainly because it relatable. I feel that it is safe to assume that anyone who has ever worked a minimum wage paying job has felt that pressure. The pressure, which causes workers to invent new tasks just to avoid being given a worse one, makes an already miserable minimum wage paying job even worse. It is no longer enough, in a manager's eyes, to simply do one's job. Now, one must also be busy at all times, not just when they have a table to wait on or an order to fill.

In my humble opinion, Ehrenreich's details on the difficulty of the life style she sought to live were her strongest use of rhetoric in the essay. She successfully pulls at readers' heartstrings by giving personal information on each of her acquaintances. This allows readers to see part of themselves in her friends and consequently in their shoes. She mentions that many Americans have the perception that those whom make only six to ten dollars an hour have learned how to live on that. Prior to reading this essay, I had that impression as well. Granted, I never assumed it is an easy lifestyle to live. Ehrenreich does an amazing job of detailing her difficulties as well as others'. For example, Ehrenreich inserted her list of her coworkers' living arrangements. While reading this list, I understood the difficulty of finding a place to live with so little money and still being able to eat. I was shocked when she pointed out that she wasn't even able to make a pot of soup because she didn't have a pot or the