Book Review: Bait and Switch

Book Review: Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream
By the Liberal Arts Dude

In this book (a follow up to the bestseller Nickel and Dimed), Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover, once again, to expose an aspect of the dark underbelly of American society. Whereas in Nickel and Dimed she went incognito as a blue-collar, minimum wage worker, in Bait and Switch, she masqueraded as a white-collar job hunter in search of a solid, middle-class job. “Middle-class job” being defined in this case as paying at least $50,000 per year with health benefits. Because of her background in Journalism, Ehrenreich decided to masquerade as a job applicant in corporate Public Relations.

Ehrenreich followed much of the advice and strategies white collar job-hunters usually undertake in a typical job search. She hired expensive career coaches to help her refine her job-hunting strategy and burnish her image. She spent a lot of money on a new wardrobe and makeup to project a more professional image. She went to networking organizations and meetings to establish a support system with fellow job-hunters as well as seek potential job leads. Although not religious herself, she even went so far as to join Christian-based networking groups. She pored hours over Internet bulletin boards and company websites. She wrote and re-wrote her resume. She cold-called companies offering her services as a PR professional whether or not they have a job advertised. She attended job fairs. She attended PR-specific seminars in the hope of meeting a contact or two that can generate leads for a job. She perfected her sales pitch of herself and her services so she can be ready to network with anyone at any time.

She did the above activities under a pseudonym. She ended, after about a year, with no job offers in her chosen field. The two offers she got were a commission-based sales job for an insurance company which did not provide an office, equipment, or health insurance; and another sales position for a cosmetics company that required putting one’s own money down (almost $2,000) as seed money to start. She rejected both offers and ended up at the end of her book at the same place she was at the start of her undercover assignment—unemployed but at least $4,000 poorer from job-hunting related expenses.

Throughout her experience, she stresses the psychological damage that job-hunting and prolonged unemployment does to her psyche (and to the psyche of the typical white-collar worker). The endless networking, applying for jobs, researching companies and cold-calling only to be met with—not even rejection—but absolute silence, is what makes the process very difficult and emotionally hard. On one hand one is supposed to treat job-hunting as a fulltime job. One is supposed to maintain an upbeat, confident, and “sell myself” attitude. On the other the lack of response from companies (she sent over two hundred applications over the course of a year) except for a postcard or an automated email acknowledging receipt of her application drove her close to chronic depression and anger. The financial instability of unemployment coupled with the stone-cold silence of the corporate world will inevitably strike down even the most peppy and upbeat people.

The book was a quick read for me. I finished it overnight in about three sittings. I found the topic engaging and fascinating, given that I am a white collar worker (albeit in a nonprofit setting); I have firshand experience of the white-collar job-hunt and prolonged unemployment and underemployment (the experiences which have led to this blog); and I am currently studying Public Communications as a part-time graduate student. I found that in the scale of 1-10 in terms of job hunters, Barbara would have easily scored a 10 in terms of the sheer breadth of strategies she employed, how many jobs she applied for, and how willing she was to go in adapting herself to the job-hunting game (to the point of getting a complete physical and emotional makeover). Yet despite all this effort, she still ended up unsuccessful.

What she found was she was not alone. Many of her job-hunting compatriots were middle-aged people who were laid off or downsized out of their jobs. She followed up with many of them about a year after ending her undercover research and found out that many were still unemployed. Those who were employed were working “survival” jobs—jobs meant to pay the bills and far below their professional and educational credentials.

A common thread throughout her book is that she sees the plight of the unemployed and underemployed white collar worker as a social problem. The solution, according to her, is for these white collar workers to unite and band together and, through collective action, make life better for people like them. She says what is needed is a mass discussion of the failures and strategies of the corporate world in taking care of its employees. This is an age of mass insecurity for workers due to corporate policies that are quick to cut employees and their benefits as a way of cutting costs. She says a discussion of the issues among white collar workers along these lines would be a good start. She also recommends the implementation of a universal health care system that is not employer-based as a crucial first step in white collar workers reclaiming their dignity.

A depressing ending to an otherwise fine book. She gives no easy answers and her prescriptions on how to address the issue of the plight of the white collar worker seemed, to me, hollow and unspecific. One thing though—I would recommend the book as recommended reading to anyone who will go through or has gone through the white- collar job-hunt in America. New graduates especially, need a good hard dose of reality and to see the world from this perspective as they prepare to enter the dog-eat-dog world of the marketplace. Will it help them any? I don’t know. But I do know that reading books like Bait and Switch and Nickel and Dimed is a crucial first step in developing a realistic consciousness of oneself as a worker who somehow fits into the Scheme of Things in the national and the global economy.

Copyright 2005