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Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
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Sales rank 318,982
Customers rating (based on 222 reviews)
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Barbara Ehrenreich+s Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible rŽsumŽ of a professional -in transition,+ she attempts to land a middle-class job-undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and-again and again-rejected.Bait and Switch highlights the people who+ve done everything right-gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive rŽsumŽs-yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster, and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Today+s ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their -surplus+ employees-plunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workers-and little security even for those who have jobs. Like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing exposŽ of economic cruelty where we least expect it.
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| Publisher | Metropolitan Books | | Release date | 09/2005 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $24 | | Our price | $13.34 (you save 44.42%) | | Used price | from $0.01 |
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 A Self-defeating Prophecy
The one thing I can admire about the author, in spite of her overall gloomy outlook, are the consistent witticisms in her book titles. In deference, I have created one of my own for this review...
This book essentially summarizes the entirety of Barbara's efforts to find *meaningful* employment while simultaneously sabotaging these efforts through her own cynicism and hapless ventures. She jumps from job fair to job fair, career coach to career coach, without any clear objective besides padding her resume to fill the criteria for the ever-rising bar of achievement, employment in a white-collar position. The overall theme, as mind-numbingly hammered over and over again, is the perceived pervasive social injustice that permeates corporate America to the detriment of the educated and middle-class, who, per Barbara's wail, just can't find a lucky break. When confronted with this onslaught, one can't help but feel somehow lucky that the worse that can come of this "outrage" is to have a "menial" job that billions of people (including millions with a post-baccalaureate education) would arguably toil for. Of course, we live in the vacuum that is the entitlement generation of America, so per Barb, I should keep this in scope.
Naturally, depending on the mindset of the reader, Barbara's observations will either serve as a re-affirmation of personal experience, or a gross affront to the ideals of the "American dream", which, much like Barbara's specifications for her "ideal job", have elevated accordingly. Given the struggles of past generations of our ancestors during the Great Depression and two World Wars, not to mention the violent reality that faces the third-world, where getting a white-collar job may as well be an exercise in futility, I'm not convinced. Darn, I deviated from the scope again.
I would advocate an attitude of positive thinking and self-motivation, but somehow I feel I should be fearful that Barbara may notice me and sum me up as an overly enthusiastic corporate automaton. That could be dangerous.
 Funny at times yet the situation is so pathetic
Having read Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed, I expected Bait and Switch to be an excellent work. Bait and Switch is even more powerful and landed Barbara Ehrenreich on my list of favorite authors. She is a true intellectual and has shared her gifts with anybody with enough curiosity to listen (I used the audiobook) or read.
While fortunate to remain employed thus far, I feel the fear and hurt of others that have fallen out of the employed ranks and cannot seem to find a way back to the middle class. Many are talented and experienced, but they are now nearly social outcasts. We have to rethink our society, and Ehrenreich assists us. In particular, there just aren't many decent-paying jobs being created whereas many are being destroyed. Entire industries might never employ as many people again in our lifetimes. It's imperative that we develop a culture quickly that acknowledges the value of unemployed and underemployed individuals and we absolutely must get out of the mindset that blames them for their circumstances.
Consistent with Michael Sandel's book, Justice, we know that CEO compensation is far more determined by power than contribution. Sandel shows this as a mathematical truth. Yet the Calvinist value system thrives and is internalized as shown by Ehrenreich's personal journey to find employment in public relations while being over 40 years old.
In Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich once again puts herself on the line, this time testing how the system treats a good person seeking professional employment. Her observations and articulation of them frees us from the lies we've inadvertently internalized throughout our lives. Some of Ehrenreich's expressions are quite funny even though her treatment by some others was nothing short of pathetic.
Ehrenreich's experiences with career coaches are very funny. I think everyone would benefit from her analysis of what transpires between the coach and the coached. One could make the legitimate criticism that she didn't find good career coaches, as she used a random method. They were lousy coaches! But the networking events, job fairs and everything else she threw herself into went far beyond what I think the average person would be able to sustain, and it all amounted to two job offers as a salesperson without salary, benefits or an office.
Fortunately, Ehrenreich didn't have to take those sales jobs that didn't offer benefits, salary or a work place. Many others will not have an alternative. But Ehrenreich believes that people should try to understand the causes of their situation, the changes that occurred in our economy over time, in addition to just trying to market themselves for a job. This is a conclusion with which I fully agree, yet it is not yet highly accepted in our culture.
 The Game Exposed
As a former white-collar worker, I can personally vouch for Ms. Ehrenreich's experience. I haven't read this book in a while, but the message that stuck with me through the years was the pseudo-psychology and the absurd mythologies related to staying "positive" about a mostly fruitless job search. The headhunters, trainers, and career centers (even my alma mater's) had nothing of substance to offer me and they simply could not admit it. The vast majority of them wanted money for their services. Their request for money made little sense as I was unemployed and, unlike Ehrenreich, had no money to spare.
The hard truth was that my skill set was mostly soft and had little economic value in 2004. My most recent stint had been a few months in website development (nothing very technical) and before that benefits administration and consulting work with some proposal writing. There were more people than jobs available in those areas, plain and simple, and nothing I could do, short of lying, would have stood me out from the crowd. Some of the "consultants" I talked to did recommend that I lie (they called it "selling yourself"). I blamed myself for picking a fruitless career, but the dishonesty from the job search industry surrounding what I could and couldn't do to jazz up my resume and interview skills was astounding. Ehrenreich articulated this dishonesty beautifully.
Because I had no choice but to find a job soon, I did a 180 degree turn and began doing restaurant and temporary admin work, but never recovered my income as a white-collar professional. Except for my income loss, I have no regrets about leaving Corporate America.
I now work as a bus operator and find my work to be more physically demanding, but also more honest. I met many others who went through similar experiences.
They have no illusions about the current economy and their place in it.
Ehrenreich's recommendations at the end of the book are good, but not likely to happen, as most corporations don't hire people who want to agitate or change things. They hire people who want to fit in, get along, make lots of money, and make as few waves as possible. Hence the need for personality tests. Unfortunately many of those laid off or fired will only want to work their way back into this coccoon of false security as opposed to looking for the flaws in the system in order to correct them.
 Don't waste your time
This book was a total waste of my time:
- No research or supporting evidence of whatever she is trying to prove
- She attempts unsuccessfully to gain employment with a false resume with no practical experience
- Her techniques to find work are going to job fairs and self-help groups (no networking, direct contacts, etc.). All she proved is that "she" could not get a job
- I grew very tired of her continual self-glorification and mockery of everyone else she came in contact with
Chronically poor
Downward mobility, lay-offs puncture the security of the middle class. In 2005 there may have been about seven million underemployed people. The author sought to address white collar unemployment. Posing as a job seeker in the corporate world, she was vulnerable to age discrimination. To mask her identity she resumed the use of her maiden name. She learned the Myers-Briggs test is used to position people in corporate hierarchies, notwithstanding its lack of predictive value.
This book is nonfiction, not fiction, but it reads like fiction and is equally interesting. In an attempt at networking, the author attended a conference of employed people to wonder what separates the employed from the unemployed since everyone has the same attributes. In a one day boot camp Ehrenreich ran into people who have been the survivors of lay-offs and want to find employment in other fields. She learned from one consultant that getting a job is like gaining acceptance in an eighth grade clique.
After the flaws in the the author's appearance are noted by another consultant, she hesitates to make herself into a product. Her thoughts run along the lines of whether and why all women over a certain age are assigned to the wearing of earth tones. Ehrenreich concludes that there is a long term market in career coaching since corporations are imposing a culture of job change on the U.S.
After four months and four thousands dollars spent, the writer is not any closer to a job than she was at the outset. Obtaining fact to face interviews are important to job seekers in the internet age because the paramount issues are trust and personality. Ehrenreich questions the assumption that corporations behave in an economically rational fashion. Bravo. The book, (at least), is a job well-done.
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