Skip to main content

Bait And Switch: The (futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Review

Bait And Switch: The (futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

It's commonly assumed in the United States that if you go to college, get a job and work hard, you will be successful. You will own a house and a couple of cars, you will be able to afford medical care, and you will be able to educate your children to a level where they're guaranteed even more success than you've achieved. If this was ever true, it isn't anymore, and Barbara Ehrenreich shows us the results.

In her first book, NICKEL AND DIMED, Ehrenreich went undercover as an unskilled worker to learn how the lowest level of workers supports themselves. They don't, she learned, because the system doesn't work, and her second book shows that the system doesn't work for the business classes either. Here, Ehrenreich poses as an out-of-work PR executive and details her job search.

Franz Kafka joined forces with Charles Darwin to create the brutal, surreal corporate world the author discovers. People are downsized, laid off, forced into early retirement, and just plain fired as a matter of course in this brave new world of ours, for reasons as pointed as ageism and sexism, as arbitrary as a profitable company wanting to show more of a profit, or for no reason at all. Of course, even knowing the fragile task of holding a job in this environment, the human resources departments hold the job-seeker responsible for every unemployed minute. Working time lost to illness is unemployment, working time lost to child or elder care is unemployment, working as a consultant is unemployment. Unemployment is unemployment, and the longer such periods last, the blacker the mark against the prospective employee.

You're lucky to be working, even if you're doing more work for less money over longer hours than you ever expected, even if you get no benefits, even if you survived the last round of layoffs and have no idea what will happen the next time. For if you're not working, you become one of the lost souls Ehrenreich meets. They max out their credit cards on image consultants and career coaches, each one contradicting what the last one said, on networking forums that turn out to be loosely disguised prayer meetings, on advice books, and on inspirational videos. They spend months and even years surfing the Internet and sending resumés to companies that rarely bother to respond at all. Oh, it's depressing.

But it's not depressing! How could it be depressing? Jobseekers are instructed to leave behind any negative thoughts --- anger, depression or mounting panic, for instance --- in order to present a positive image in their next interview. They are warned that revealing any negativity will count against them, as will age, gender, overeducation, having children, or any interests at all beyond devoting themselves entirely to their prospective employers. Smile!

In the book's conclusion, the author urges the unemployed to band together and lobby for more worker protections. I hope they make it happen, I really do.

Reviewed by Colleen Quinn([email protected]) on December 22, 2010

Bait And Switch: The (futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
by Barbara Ehrenreich

  • Publication Date: September 6, 2005
  • Genres: Current Affairs, Nonfiction
  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Metropolitan Books
  • ISBN-10: 0805076069
  • ISBN-13: 9780641786570