I checked this out from the library when it first came out. I can't remember why, but I don't mean that in a bad way. My parents asked what I was reading, and I told them. They both asked to borrow it when I was done. My dad especially stood out to me since he sticks to spy novels and sports and music biographies, and I read other stuff. My parents have each worked minimum wage jobs: my mom got her first job in a country club because she wanted one, as far as I can tell, and my dad has worked multiple minimum wage jobs because he had to. As adults, my mom became a teacher and my dad is a businessman who makes five times as much money as she does. This was often pointed out to me growing up. My parents have severe class differences. Anyway, they both read the book and took tips from the book to become even better customers (putting numbers more clearly on our house, explaining better where it was, are the ones that stand out). I told other kids at the youth theatre company I was at, about this book. Three kids immediately asked to borrow it and talked about how great it was. One worked at a movie theatre. Another had just left but was a cashier. A third had just left the cashier job and worked in food service. So it resonated with people across class divides and age groups.

I checked it out again over a decade later out of curiosity. This...has not aged well. The author's views, I mean. He thinks the world would come to a screeching halt if minimum wage workers went on strike everywhere? This book was published in 2008. Twelve years later, minimum wage workers were given barely a raise and called heroes, but only briefly. They then had to pay back the raise they were given their employers because the employers reneged. They're not called heroes anymore either. The federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in a long, long time and isn't liveable, and I have seen the most bullshit of reasons why on the internet. So. The author's fatphobia permeates lots of this book, as do his views that aren't as socially acceptable now. Some portions were indeed funny. This guy is massively classist, as are the quotes on the cover. That's not funny at all. Minimum wage jobs are the reality of a -lot- of people. And he gets to just...go back to being white collar whenever he wants.

I have had minimum wage jobs my whole life. Some of them were in a white collar industry. Most were not. It's odd sometimes to reflect on that. An updated version of this book is never going to come out. I strongly recommend reading online if you want to know more about working poor; people on social media are drawing awareness to the myriad of factors and it's more immediate and direct than a nonfiction book written to primarily entertain. I'm glad I read it again though and compared it to experiences I have now. ( )

An interesting read. I skimmed toward the end as I really didn't care about being a cowboy but otherwise found this surprisingly good. While his insight was-and was meant to be-superficial, I enjoyed some of the lessons learned from being an ice cream scooper, pizza delivery man & construction supervisor. An interesting counterpoint to some of [author:Barbara Ehrenreich|1257]'s works that touch on some of the same issues. He's also less annoying than [author:Freeman Hall|3005644] ( )

Prioleau Alexander used to work for an advertising agency before he got tired of it and quit. He was tired of having to kiss up to clients who thought they knew his job better than he did - actually, he was tired of having to kiss up to clients, period, because none of them ever seemed to appreciate the work that he and the others in his advertising agency did for them. For a while after quitting, he just sat around like a lump and apparently made his wife angry at him (I'd probably be angry, too, if my family were suddenly depending on just one person's income because someone decided they were tired of their job). Then he got an idea - he'd start doing minimum wage jobs, just to see what they're like. The jobs he did were pizza delivery guy, ice cream scooper guy, demolition guy for a construction company, tech at a hospital, cashier guy at a fast food place, and cowboy. He also tried to get a job at a big-box store, but no one would hire him.

For each of these jobs, Alexander talks about how he got the job (in some cases, very quickly, without even the need for an application or interview), how the job began (usually with little to no training), what the job entailed, and what the benefits and drawbacks of the job were. The book was strongest when Alexander talked about normal minimum wage jobs that many people take - pretty much anything except for his time as a hospital tech and a cowboy. While those two jobs were interesting to read about, they felt like they didn't really belong in this book and were maybe just there because Alexander had a page number quota he needed to fill.

Although I imagine people who are working in minimum wage jobs right now will probably find a lot in this book to agree with Alexander about, this book seems to have been written more for those who are currently in white-collar jobs and haven't ever worked in anything but jobs like that. I found myself wondering about Alexander. Hadn't he ever taken jobs like these when he was younger, either in high school or during college? He mentions that he used to be a Marine, so maybe he went straight from high school to the military, without stopping to get a crappy, low-paying job along the way. At any rate, he sure writes like he's never had jobs like these before.

Alexander's earliest chapters are his best. I enjoyed reading about what it was like to be a pizza delivery guy, an ice cream scooper guy, and a demolition guy. Alexander had interesting observations to make about the people he worked for and with and any customers he might have served. In his chapter about being a pizza delivery guy, Alexander explains why he now never tips less than $5 when he has a pizza delivered, and why others should do the same. In the ice cream scooper chapter, he writes about the categories of customers he observed, whereas in the demolition guy chapter he writes about the types of workers found at a home renovation.

Considering that the stereotypical minimum wage jobs are at fast food places, it takes a long time before this chapter shows up and then it's way too short - by this time, I think Alexander has gotten a bit bored with minimum wage jobs. The hospital tech job, while disgusting and sometimes depressing, cannot really be considered a normal minimum wage job - after all, Alexander only got it because he had a friend who was a doctor at the hospital. The cowboy job was also something that felt out of place because most people would not have had this opportunity - Alexander got this job because a friend of his knew a guy, and the guy was willing to pay to fly Alexander to a new state to do the job. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't happen to most people who are looking for minimum wage work. These oddball chapters are my biggest complaint about the book.

My other complaint is that in a few places near the end of the book, Alexander gets pretty political - I had problems keeping my hackles from rising, even though I didn't necessarily disagree with everything he wrote. Also, Alexander is occasionally amazingly idealistic when it comes to America and how well it and its various systems work. In his mind, America is the greatest country on the planet, because even the poorest of its poor have clothes. Also, anyone who perseveres and gets a college education won't end up with a minimum wage job like one of the ones he wrote about - apparently, Alexander hasn't looked at the job market lately and hasn't considered the fact that so many people have college degrees that having one isn't necessarily worth much. I should know - I've got a BA and an MLS (Master's in Library Science) and I still haven't managed to get a full-time job in my field after more than a year of sending out applications [At the time I wrote this review, I was still job hunting. I now have a job I enjoy that pays all my bills and then some, but my original point still stands.]. Minimum wage jobs aren't just for people lacking college degrees.

One final complaint: although Alexander starts just about every chapter with information on the history of whatever it is his job is about (ice cream, big-box stores, etc.), he rarely ever looked at a book while doing his research. Most of his history sections start with the phrase "I Googled it." When Google fails him (as it does in the case of big-box stores), does he go to his local library and talk with a reference librarian? No, he contacts a Wikipedia writer. In case you're unfamiliar with Wikipedia (however it may sometimes seem, there are still people out there who haven't used it), it's an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This means that when he said he contacted a Wikipedia writer to ask about big-box stories, he could've been talking to a 12-year-old kid or a conspiracy nut. The "nut" option seems like a possibility, since his history of big-box stores has them starting with a gangster whose idea was stolen by Sam Walton. Apparently, Walton sent a whole squadron of corporate lawyers after the guy, as well as, eventually, a bounty hunter. Since this all sounds like it might potentially be just anti-Wal-Mart fiction, I would've appreciated it if Alexander had actually used cite-able sources so that his readers could check his information. However, there are no citations whatsoever in the entire book, and the only book Alexander mentions is Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Granted, this is a popular non-fiction book, and not a scholarly work, but it's still incredibly sloppy.

Overall, though, this was a funny, scary book - funny if you can approach it objectively, scary if you think of all the people who have to have jobs like this. Very scary if you have to have a job like one of these yourself, or if you, like me, are facing the possibility of a life with jobs like these, because you can't manage to get anything else.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )