Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream (2005)

A seminal book about the shrinking middle class in which laid-off employees struggle to make ends meet through unemployment benefits, multilevel marketing schemes, contract work, and commission-only sales, none of which offers the stability and reliability of a regular paycheck, paid vacations, health and dental benefits, and a retirement plan.

Ehrenreich's one year journey to find an executive level job led her to four states, dozens of networking events, three career coaches, a personal makeover complete with makeup, and $4,000.00 in job-search related expenses but resulted in only two job offers: one from AFLAC as a commission-only sales representative and one from Mary Kay as an independent sales representative. Neither "job" offered the typical employment package she was seeking: salaried work with benefits.

Both disheartening and enlightening, Bait and Switch exemplifies Ehrenreich's ability to balance straight forward reporting with firsthand experience. A must read for anyone trying to understand the success and failings of corporate culture in the post dot-com United States. ( )

trials of seeking a white collar job in current economy

Nothing new or radical here for anyone who's ever looked for an office job. But it is, as one of the job seekers Ehrenreich encountered in her search said, nice to know that you're not alone in the frustrations and bullshit experienced during a job search. ( )

Not as good as Nickeled and Dimed, this is about the grinding misery of the job search instead of, as Ehrenreich intended, the grinding misery of white collar corporate employment. Perhaps my discomfort is telling. The grinding misery of white collar corporate employment could have left me feeling smugly superior, from my position in the white collar academic world. But since I am academic staff, rather than faculty, my distance from job search misery is not sufficiently reassuring - and my awareness that the job market has worsened rather than improved since Ehrenreich wrote this book adds to its weight. ( )

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. 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. ( )