Mary’s Reviews > Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America > Status Update

“So if you wonder why Americans are so obese, consider the fact that waitresses both express their humanity and earn their tips through the covert distribution of fats.”

😅

“Three days go by like this and, to my chagrin, no one from the approximately twenty places at which I’ve applied calls me for an interview.”

— why does this quote sound so familiar 🙃

“There was always, of course, the difference that only I knew—that I wasn’t working for money… This deception, symbolized by the laptop that provided a link to my past and future, bothered me, at least in the case of the people I cared about and wanted to know better.”

“I had no intention of going hungry.”

She actually set rules for herself:
1. Not search for jobs in her field/education
2. Take the highest paying job & hold it
3. Find cheapest accommodations

But would be willing to break them.

This is important because, why these 3 rules?

“Encasing poor people in sterile categories—“the homeless,” “welfare recipients”— allows us to hold them at a cool distance.”

“Susan Sontag was right when she said that we only deplete the world when we try to interpret it. Our rationalizations of poverty allow us to domesticate it, to calm it in the confines of our theories and tropes. It’s safer that way. It allows us to continue ignoring poverty not because it’s hidden from view but because when we see it, we blunt our curiosity and empathy with ready-made explanations.”

🥲