Gizza Job

By Barbara Ehrenreich
From The Guardian
2006

Barbara Ehrenreich, investigative writer, has concentrated on poverty and the lowest paid in America. But what about the struggling middle classes - especially those who find themselves, mid-career, stranded without a job? She went undercover to break into the corporate world. Could she swing it?


The plan was straightforward enough: to find a job, a "good" job, which I defined minimally as a white-collar position that would provide health insurance and an income of about $50,000 a year, enough to land me solidly in the middle class. The job itself would give me a rare first-hand glimpse of the mid-level corporate world, and the effort to find it would, of course, place me among the most hard-pressed white-collar corporate workers - the ones who don't have jobs.

Because I've written a lot about poverty, I'm used to hearing from people in scary circumstances. An eviction notice has arrived. A child has been diagnosed with a serious illness and the health insurance has run out. The car has broken down and there's no way to get to work. These are the routine emergencies that plague the chronically poor.

But it struck me, starting in about 2002, that many such tales of hardship were coming from people who were once members of good standing in the middle class - college graduates and former occupants of mid-level white-collar positions. In late 2003, when I started this project, unemployment in the US was running at 5.9%, but in contrast to earlier economic downturns, a sizable portion - almost 20%, or about 1.6 million - of the unemployed were white-collar professionals.
Where I had imagined comfort, there is now growing distress, and I determined to investigate. I chose the same strategy I had employed when researching my book Nickel And Dimed: to enter this new world myself, as an undercover reporter, and see what I could learn about the problems first hand.

What did it take to find a new job? And, if things were as bad as some reports suggested, why was there so little protest? I knew my attempts would not be an altogether fair test of the job market, if only because I had some built-in disadvantages as a job seeker. For one thing, I am well into middle age. This defect, however, is by no means unique to me. Many people now find themselves searching for jobs at an age that was once associated with a restful retirement. My first step was to acquire a new identity and personal history, meaning, in this case, a résumé. So in November 2003, I legally changed back to my maiden name, Barbara Alexander, and acquired a social security card to go with it.

I know that "writing" translates, in the corporate world, into public relations or "communications" generally. Many journalism schools teach PR, too, which may be fitting since PR is really journalism's evil twin. I could do this, on a temporary basis anyway, and have even done many of the things PR people routinely do: I've written press releases, pitched stories to editors and reporters, prepared press packets and helped arrange press conferences. Even as a rough draft, the résumé took days of preparation.

I had to line up people willing to lie for me, should they be called by a potential employer, and attest to the fine work I had done for them. Fortunately, I have friends who were willing to do this, some of them located at recognisable companies. Although I did not dare claim actual employment at these firms, since a call to their human resources departments would immediately expose the lie, I felt I could safely pretend to have "consulted" for them over the years. Suffice it to say that I gave Barbara Alexander an exemplary history in PR, sometimes with a little event planning thrown in.

In a practical sense, I was simply changing my occupational status from "self-employed/writer" to "unemployed" - a distinction that might be imperceptible to the casual observer. I was prepared to travel anywhere in the US to get a job and then live there for several months if I found one. I knew that the project would take a considerable investment of time and money, so I set aside 10 months and $5,000 for travel and other expenses that might arise in the course of job searching. My expectation was that I would make back the money once I got a job and probably come out far ahead. As for the time, I budgeted roughly four to six months for the search - five months being the average for unemployed people in 2004 - and another three to four months of employment. I would have plenty of time both to sample the life of the white-collar unemployed and to explore the corporate world they sought to re-enter.

I also started with the expectation that this project would be far less demanding than the work I had undertaken for Nickel And Dimed, when I worked as a cleaner and a waitress - minimum wage jobs. Physically, it would be a piece of cake - no scrubbing, no heavy lifting, no walking or running for hours on end. As for behaviour, I imagined that I would be immune to the constant subservience and obedience demanded of low-wage blue-collar workers, that I would be far freer to be, and express, myself. As it turned out, I was wrong on all counts.

Job searching has become, if not a science, a technology so complex that no mere job seeker can expect to master it alone. There are about 10,000 people eager to assist me - "career coaches" - who, according to the coaching websites, can help you discover your true occupational "passion" and retool your résumé. I encounter several of them, including Joanne, queen of the résumé, and Kimberly, who majors in personality tests, cheeriness and the importance of networking. She emphasises the need for an "elevator speech". This, it turns out, is a 30- to 45-second self-advertisement, which in my case, she suggests, should begin with, "Hi, I'm Barbara Alexander, and I'm a crackerjack PR person!"

Hours of internet searching turn up a "networking event" only two and a half hours away at the Forty-Plus Club of Washington, DC. Despite their establishment origins, the 19 Forty-Plus Clubs around the nation are the closest thing one can find to a grassroots organisation of the white-collar unemployed. The clubs are run entirely by volunteers, conveniently drawn from the pool of unemployed, middle-aged, white-collar people.

The event starts at 9.30 on a rainy January morning, at an impressive address near Dupont Circle, although the space itself turns out to be a dark, almost belligerently undecorated basement suite. Pamela, who's 50 and dressed in a long, close-fitting skirt that creates a definite mermaid effect, greets me in the corridor and directs me to a table where Ted, also about 50, is presiding over the name tag distribution. The networking will proceed until 10am, at which time we will be treated to a lecture on "New year's resolutions for job searchers".

Time is short, so I get right down to work, going up to my fellow job seekers, introducing myself and asking what kind of jobs they're looking for. About 15 people have drifted in so far. All are middle-aged white guys: Mike, who's in finance; Jim, who is also in PR and, alarmingly, has been looking for seven months. A man who identifies himself as a media manager latches on to me next, relating that he is bitter - his word - because he gave 11 years to Time Warner and has just been laid off in some inexplicable corporate reorganisation, leaving him with two teenagers to feed and educate. So these are my people, my new constituency - men, and now a few women, who will go home, as I will, to a desk off the dining room and an afternoon of lonely web searching.

The message we will take away with us is this: job searching is not joblessness; it is a job in itself. Distasteful as the idea may be, I realise I do have to structure my job search in some job-like fashion. I determine that my daily plan will be as follows:

7.30am Get up, eat breakfast, read the paper, check CNN for major disasters - terrorist attacks, asteroid hits, etc - that may foreclose the possibility of finding a job for the immediate future. I refuse to dress up as if heading for a real office, clinging to my usual pre-clothes, meaning a cross between the T-shirt I wore to bed and the gym clothes I will need in the afternoon.

9am-12.30pm Proceed to desk for the bulk of the day's work - read email, revise résumé, visit the various national job boards, and whatever else I can think of to do. Thanks to the Atlanta Job Search Network I have signed up for, and which showers me with several dozen job possibilities a week, email alone can take up to 20 minutes. Why Atlanta? Because it's a happening place, job-wise anyway, with an unemployment rate of only about 4% - far lower than Boston, for example, or New York.

For weeks, the core of my day's work consists of revising my résumé to meet Joanne's exacting standards. We agree eventually on the opening which, after every comma has been vetted, reads: "Seasoned consultant with experience in Event Planning, Public Relations, and Speechwriting is prepared to provide leadership advancing company brand and image. Special expertise in health policy and health-related issues, with a track record of high-level national exposure."

Even with an imperfect résumé, as judged by my coaches, I can't resist applying for some of the jobs that pop up on the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) website. It's easy enough: I just scroll through the PR job offerings - there are usually more than a dozen a week - and send along my résumé-in-progress. I can also apply directly to a company by going to its website, clicking on "careers", searching for PR job listings, and then submitting my application online. I'll go for anything except the jobs that require technical knowledge - computer networking or video production - or lengthy experience in a particular industry.

12.30-1pm Lunch and further newspaper reading, justified by my need, as a PR person, to stay on top of trends, new technologies, business scandals and the like.

1-3pm Back at the desk for more leisurely or more reflective forms of labour, such as learning more about my chosen fields - PR and event planning -and casting about for further tips and leads.

3-4.30pm Proceed to gym for daily workout, as recommended by all coaches. I would work out anyway, but it's nice to have this ratified as a legitimate job-search activity. In fact, I find it expanding to fill the time available - from 45 minutes to more than an hour a day. I may never find a job, but I will, in a few more weeks, be in a position to wrestle any job competitors to the ground.

I am not sure I'm ready for the next step, the step that involves face-to-face interactions with people who might actually have jobs to offer. There's the matter of my business cards, too. It's the end of January, and in two months I have managed to give away no more than five out of 100 of them. I understand that with respect to the cards, my job is like that of those guys on the streets of Manhattan who try to hit you with deli menus - the point is simply to get rid of them.

Whatever is holding me back - shyness or pride - it must be vanquished. I have precious little to show for my time. I have posted my nearly finished résumé on Monster.com and HotJobs.com, and sent it off to a dozen major pharmaceutical companies - from Abbot to Wyeth - that are looking for PR people and allow you to apply right on the company websites. A couple of companies send me automatic acknowledgments by email, and one - Wyeth - goes so far as to send me a real postcard. That's it, though; corporate America seems willing to soldier on without my help.

Searching for networking opportunities closer to home - and hopefully closer to the people who do the actual hiring - I come across a conveniently timed ExecuNet meeting in Richmond, Virginia, designed to help retool executives "in transition". When I call to inquire, I am asked about my salary expectations, and this time, in a surge of positive thinking, I say $100,000. But that turns out to be half as much as what you need to get into the Richmond confab; for pikers like me, there's another meeting in Washington. The cost is a mere $35, plus the $150 I've already spent to become an ExecuNet member and receive its monthly newsletter.

The get-together takes place in an upper-middle-type hotel, in a spacious conference room where a buffet awaits us: fruit and cheese, egg rolls, satay sticks, coffee. When we are seated comfortably around the table, Ron, our leader for the evening, introduces himself. He identifies himself as a "serial entrepreneur" who has launched all sorts of small companies providing business services.

"There are four ways to find a job," Ron explains, "networking, networking, networking and networking." As for posting your résumé on job boards such as Monster.com - don't bother. Donald, a fellow "executive in transition", observes that the boards are for "your 50K people and below". Apparently, in the exalted circle I have entered, all jobs are attained through personal contacts. Any sense of having arrived at a place of comfortable superiority evaporates with a comment from Neal, a 40-ish former media manager with an Australian accent and unruly blond hair. Sounding like a thousand blues songs, he says, "I wake up and say, 'Oh God, another morning'... I have no focus."

Ron, however, is impervious to desperation; the secret of focus, he says, is "to make the search process like going into the office, whether that means going to the library, or to a friend's house." Furthermore, you have to have someone to "keep you accountable", meaning a surrogate boss figure. "We're used to having bosses, being responsive to someone, so you've got to create the same dynamic." Neal appears unmollified by this advice, which of course I recognise from the Forty-Plus meeting: turn your job search into a job. Thus the one great advantage of unemployment - the freedom to do as you please, to get up when you want, wear what you want, and let your mind drift here and there - is foreclosed. Instead, you have to invent a little drama in which you are still toiling away for the man.

Ron opens the session up for questions, and Donald asks whether he should mention a recent illness, which cost him three months of work, to prospective employers. Ron's advice: "Turn [the illness] into a soundbite that could be positive for you." Emboldened, I ask, "What if you've lost time due to homemaking and raising children?" Ron replies: "The challenge is to be a beggar with a great story. If that story doesn't land you [get you a job], you've probably got a values mismatch. Turn it into a compelling story."

A beggar? Well, perhaps that does sum up the status of motherhood in our society. How would I begin my "compelling story"? I met this guy, see, and, uh...

But there's all sorts of useful information here, too, which I struggle to commit to my notebook. Ask people to give you their contacts, and when they do, write them thank-you notes by hand, on nice stationery. Get a fountain pen; ballpoint won't do. If you can't get a real interview, at least ask for a 20-minute "contact interview" aimed at prying contacts out of people. Wear a suit and tie or the female equivalent at all times, even on weekends, and Ron seems to give me a warning glance here; my sneakers have been noted. Network everywhere. One fellow "landed" thanks to networking at a 7-Eleven on a Saturday morning; luckily he had been fully suited up at the time.

Our final hour is devoted to giving three-minute "commercials" - a sort of long version of the "elevator speeches" Kimberly recommended. I haven't memorised my speech and am counting on the presence of an audience to awaken the impulse to entertain. I say that PR and event planning are very closely connected for me: my events make news, and my press conferences are events. As for speechwriting, I don't mean to boast, but frankly I've found that events go better if I write the major speeches. By prior decision, I hint at successes that cannot be fully divulged due to confidentiality agreements: as a PR person currently doing a lot of work with celebrities, I say, I specialise in the hard cases where there are drinking problems or anger management issues.

The drinking problem idea had come up when Kimberly asked me to put my career in something called "PAR" (Problem/Action/Results) form. Once, on a book tour, my media escort had shared some gossip about a certain well-known cookbook author who was inseparable from his fifth of vodka, and what a struggle it was to enforce coherency throughout a long day of back-to-back interviews. Kimberly felt this "problem" was unsuitable for a résumé, but it was the only one I could come up with. I pause to let my audience picture me deftly herding a series of drunk and disorderly celebrities, and conclude that I have always handled these cases with discretion, imagination, and cunning. The word cunning seems to catch their attention, and I wonder if it's something I should use again.

Finally, it is Tim's turn to speak. He has not been just a run-of-the-mill HR guy; he's a union buster, though that's not his phrase. His résumé lists unions he has gone up against and defeated, and he stresses these victories in his "commercial". Neal, who has been largely silent since revealing his problems with getting up in the morning, asks Tim whether, if he can't find another HR job, he would consider working for labour instead. I mumble insincerely that Tim's experience might be really welcome at the AFL-CIO, right here in Washington. A beat goes by before Tim says, "Yes." Then he thinks for another few seconds, swallowing hard and blinking repeatedly, before saying, "Probably not. That would be a big adjustment."

So Tim has principles, which, under the circumstances, is almost shocking. No matter what the temptation, he'd remain loyal to the managerial class. I, on the other hand, have none. If Wyeth, the manufacturer of the hormone replacement drug that probably contributed to thousands of cases of breast cancer, offered me a job doing damage control in the press - well, under the terms of this project, I'd have to take it. But the way things are going, that is beginning to seem as unlikely as an AFL-CIO bid for Tim.

My major takeaway from Ron, now that I have a chance to reflect, is that getting a job is like gaining acceptance into an eighth-grade clique. There exists an elite consisting of people who hold jobs and have the power to confer that status on others, and my task is to penetrate this elite. Since my eighth-grade status never advanced beyond that of loathsome pariah and nerd, I have no practical experience of elite crashing, but it makes sense to include a ruthless scrutiny of the "product" I am trying to sell. It's the wrapping, so to speak - my physical appearance - that concerns me now. If it is to keep up with the standards set by the résumé, mine needs a careful re-evaluation.

Fortunately, I discover on the web, there are companies that will do this for me, and I call one of them, Image Management, in Atlanta. This turns out to be located in a loft in what looks like a gentrified warehouse. I am greeted by Prescott, suavely outfitted in suit and tie. Naturally, I have already read a couple of dress-for-success books and learned that the idea is to pass as a hereditary member of the upper-middle class. As the leading expert in the field, John T Molloy, puts it in his New Women's Dress For Success: "The executive suite is an upper-socioeconomic business club, and in order to get in you must wear the club uniform." I think I have the class thing pretty well in hand - muted colours, patternless fabrics and natural fibres, for example - but my observations come largely from the academic and publishing worlds, which permit a dangerously wide latitude for personal expression in the form of flowing scarves, rumpled linen and dangly earrings.

Then there is the vexing business of gender. All the books warn that it's a lot trickier for a woman to pass than it is for a man, in part because the female "uniform" is not yet as standardised as a man's. But the problem seems to go deeper than that, to the very biological underpinnings of gender: the features that make a man sexually attractive - handsomeness, tallness, a deep voice, etc - also work in his favour at the office, while female sexual attractiveness can torpedo a woman's career. Shoulder-length hair, an overly generous display of legs, or a "too busty" chest can all undermine a woman's credibility. Beauty itself is a handicap. I know I have no problem in the area of "too sexy", "too busty" or distractingly beautiful, but it is clear that for any woman, of any age or condition, being female is something to compensate for.

When Prescott returns with the coffee, I lay out the situation. I have been "consulting" for several years now and need to reconfigure myself for the corporate world, but have only the vaguest idea of how to proceed.

As in so many of my coaching experiences, we begin by categorising me as a "type", only here no test is involved, only a quick all-over survey by Prescott. There are four possibilities: "classic", which applies to people who always wear skirts, "are not very flexible, and tend to be Republican"; "romantic", who "love flowing material"; "dramatic", who "love to break rules" and are often "eccentric"; and "natural", who are "outdoorsy, want to save owls and trees, love texture, and don't wear a lot of patterns".

I turn out to be a natural, which seems to please Prescott, because "there's less to change". The first problem is that I come across as "too authoritative" as a result of the combination of an "angular" body with a tailored shirt and the straight lines of my jacket lapel. "You want to look approachable, not authoritative, so people will feel comfortable working with you", and this means curved lines, not straight ones. Decoding this diagnosis, I see that I am not looking feminine enough. This is, to say the least, confusing. The dress-for-success books all urge what I take to be a somewhat mannish appearance, achieved through pragmatic hairstyles and curve-concealing suits. But if you go too far in the masculine direction, Prescott is saying, you somehow err again.

We move along to colour in general, where I receive a major blow: I can never wear grey or black again, because they drain the colour from my face. This pretty much condemns me to nudity, since my entire wardrobe is black and grey, and not because I'm striving for New York City-style coolness, circa 1995. The truth is I spill on everything, so no peach or yellow item has ever survived more than two or three wearings. Even my conservative silver brooch, a gift from my Norwegian publisher, is deemed "not corporate" by Prescott. All this time I had thought I was a perfectly presentable-looking middle-class professional, when in fact I must come across as a misfit, a mess.

Mainly, as a writer, I have no need to dress for work in anything other than gym clothes, or no clothes at all for that matter, and when writers do try to "dress up", they are generally granted a lot of leeway. I remember attending a banquet with the poet and short-story writer Grace Paley, who appeared in a loose pink floral dress. When I complimented her, she confessed it was a nightgown, which was obvious on closer inspection.

I come home to the realisation that my trip, which cost me more than $1,000, air fare included, netted me little more than a lip pencil, a tube of foundation and a handful of business cards. In fact, I am almost four months into my search - a point at which I expected to be running from interview to interview. The daffodils are fighting their way up in my front yard and my cash reserves have sunk by almost $4,000, but I am not noticeably any closer to employment than when I started back in December.

Following Kimberly's advice, I have begun proactively approaching companies where no appropriate jobs are posted. And, aside from my cybersearching, the only thing to do is to keep on networking - more intensively, though, and in repackaged form. I head for Ann Taylor in the mall two miles from home, and zone in immediately on a tan - not black - trouser suit with an accessibly curved, rather than straight-lined, lapel, which is on sale at half price, about $160. Our local department store supplies $15 gold earrings, and although I know there should be a gold necklace "to pull it all together" none comes to my attention. The message is: approach me, please, I'm perfectly harmless.

Home again, I sit down to confront the fact that my résumé, which has been posted on Monster. com and HotJobs for more than two months, has netted not a single legitimate inquiry. An ordinary job seeker might despair, but I have a unique advantage: I can simply upgrade my résumé. I retain my recent history as an independent consultant, but gone is the last trace of Barbara the dabbler and displaced homemaker, replaced by a highly focused, if not workaholic, professional. There is one last suggestion from Ron to explore: that I become active in the public relations professional society and use it as a means of networking. At the PRSA website, I comb through upcoming conferences and settle on a seminar on "crisis communications management", which will include what to do when, for example, "the activists attack", or the CEO is indicted.

What I learn is that corporations are scared, if not paranoid, and for good reason. Give me an industry and I can think of a "crisis" menacing it: an angel-of-death nurse in a hospital; a whistle-blower in a chemical company; dissatisfied or injured customers anywhere. Thus every company needs a crisis communications plan, whether it knows this or not, as well as a person - that is, me - to design it. In my new cover letters - which go out to all the pharmas I have applied to so far - I explain that the function of PR "is not only to light fires, but to put fires out". If I can sell the threats - the homicides, the lawsuits, the face-painted, anarchistic, antiglobalisation activists - I can sell myself as the knight on the white horse, saviour of corporations. But the fact is, no takers are presenting themselves.

Locum Tenens, a small company that serves as a temp agency for physicians in the central Georgia area, is looking for a PR director, so I write back emphasising my extensive involvement in the health-related field and my passion for working with physicians. When I make my follow-up call, Deborah, the hiring agent, picks up the phone herself and asks if I have any questions. Indeed I do, since this encounter will be a test of my expanding skills.

"Do you have any philanthropic involvement in the community?" - the idea here being that a company's philanthropic activities should be seen, somewhat coldheartedly, as an extension of its PR efforts. Deborah says she's not sure, so I press on: "Do you have a crisis communications plan? For example, if there were to be complaints about one of your physicians? You know, sexual harassment or an unusual number of deaths." Again, she's not sure, and while I attempt to alarm her with the absolute necessity of a crisis communications plan, which I am uniquely prepared to create and implement, she must be fishing for my résumé, because she says, "Oh, here you are," and then, after a pause, the familiar rejection: "There's a gap."

I have, by this time, applied for more than 200 advertised and posted jobs in what has become a life of unrelenting rejection. Actually, rejection puts too kind a face on it, because there is hardly ever any evidence that you have been rejected - that is, duly considered and found wanting. As the New York Times reported in June 2004: "The most common rejection letter nowadays seems to be silence. Job hunting is like dating, only worse, as you sit by the phone for the suitor who never calls. "

I find a promising job fair listed on the website for the military contractor CACI International, which I was visiting because the alleged involvement of some of CACI 's employees in the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib seemed to make the company an ideal candidate for my "crisis communications" approach. Its website urged job applicants to apply in person at the fair in August.

I decide to attend. The young woman at the CACI booth who is accepting résumés looks blank at the mention of PR and passes me along to a suited man lurking behind her. The company website didn't list any PR openings, but that is no barrier to me; the point is to convince them that they need my services whether they realise it or not. I know I have fewer than 60 seconds to wow this man with my knowledge and skills, so I cut to the chase.

"You might want to rethink your PR approach," I suggest to him as gently as possible, citing CACI 's PR director Jody Brown's responses to the allegations of torture in the New York Times, which I had studied in advance.

"What did she say?" asks the suit.

"It's a matter of language," I tell him. "She called the allegations 'irresponsible and malicious'. In other words, she brushed them off. You need gravitas, dealing with these things - like 'We take these charges very seriously and are doing a full investigation, etc.'" He looks interested; at least the eye contact lingers, so I rush on. "See, a response like hers can be like pouring gasoline on a fire. One of the functions of skilful PR is to put the fires out."

By now we have gone well past my allotted minute. He takes my résumé and urges me to FedEx, not email, my résumé to Jody Brown.

"Don't tell her what I said, OK?" I ask with a smile as I leave, and when I glance back, he is still following me with his eyes, which should be a good sign but, given the nature of his business, creeps me right out. I hasten towards the coffee table, now thoroughly plundered of refreshments, where, in a rare moment of moral lucidity, I face the fact that my professional flexibility does not extend to defending torture allegations. Jody will be getting no résumé from me.

I continue to make applications and follow-up phone calls through September, until I am overwhelmed by a sense of futility. If this were my real life and my livelihood were at stake, I would be climbing the walls. But even in my artificial situation as a journalist-slash-job seeker, I cannot help feeling the rejection. The corporate world has spoken, and it wants nothing to do with me, not even with the smiling, suited, endlessly compliant Alexander version of me.

In late September, my job search effectively over, I started trying to track down the job seekers whose cards I had collected. Eleven people responded; none had found "real " jobs yet; and even those who had been guarded in the settings where I originally met them were eager to talk about their strategies, most of which by now included taking survival jobs.

Hillary Meister, a 45-year-old with a career in communications, moved back to the town where her parents live when an illness temporarily curtailed her job search. "Without my family," she says, "I'd definitely be on the streets." Steve, the former marketing man who was thinking of learning about wines to qualify for an upscale serving job, is giving up his $845-a-month apartment for a room with kitchen privileges: "All I need is a place where I can plug in a computer." Until now, he says, "my family's been helping me out... But they keep saying, 'What's wrong with you? Just take a job, any job.' "

Middle-class Americans, like myself and my fellow seekers, have been raised with the old-time Protestant expectation that hard work will be rewarded with material comfort and security. This has never been true of the working class, and now it is increasingly untrue of the educated middle class that stocks our corporate bureaucracies.

Doctors, lawyers, teachers and college professors have done better at carving out some autonomy and security for themselves. Their principal strategy was professionalisation - no one can practise medicine, for example, without a thorough education and a licence; and some have added the further protection afforded by unions. What sets the white-collar corporate workers apart and leaves them so vulnerable is the requirement that they identify, absolutely and unreservedly, with their employers.

· This is an edited extract from Bait And Switch, by Barbara Ehrenreich, to be published by Granta on March 6