Scratch Beginnings: An Interview with Adam Shepard

I made a post about Mr. Shepard and this book: http://quenchzine.blogspot.com/2008/02/fake-poor-rich-white-dude-goes-slumming.html

I welcome any comments or thoughts from readers.

Without getting too much into ideology, I think there are certain people who will work hard and strive to make the most of any situation and succeed, and others who will work just hard enough to get by and plateau.

Who knew Trading Places got it so right?

I read “Nickel and Dimed” a couple of years ago, and I always felt there was something amiss about it. Thanks to this interview, I now have a better idea of what I already knew intrinsically.

I want to share some of my recent experience. I recently became a Dave Ramsey-ite and am doing everything I can to get control of my finances and get out of debt. One of the major steps for me is to find additional employment.

As an under-40, healthy, Masters level educated individual, I always assumed that I could find work in a heart beat. For weeks, I went around to factories and big box stores applying for work. I scoured over the Want Ads, filled out applications, and sent in resumes. I spent hours going through job listings on websites and at the Employment Commission. I found myself very frustrated by the whole process. Most places were still using applications designed in the 70′s, including a bunch of questions I’m not sure are entirely legal.

I finally got an interview for a 2-3rd shift security officer. I even have experience as a security guard, and the interview went well, but I never heard back. I tried calling and could only leave messages that were never returned. I went to a job fair and made it to a group interview (an interesting experience, if you’ve never done one of those), but was not “invited” to stay for the next step in the process.

I’m well educated, well spoken, experienced, and confident. How hard should it be for someone like me to find a part time job? After almost six weeks of searching, the stars aligned and I got not 1 but 2 part time jobs. One I found through the Employment Commission, and one was *finally* a call from one of the big boxes.

I mention all this because like Adam’s story, I was really surprised at how hard it was for me to find menial employment. I realize that my situation is a little different. Mainly, I was looking for part time work that fit around my day job. Second, there are some things I was not willing to do (mostly because the pay just wasn’t enough). Third, I was not looking for permanent employment in my chosen field.

I’m completely confident that if I had to replace my day job I could do so quickly, but I was shocked at how long it took me to get hired.

@truthyness: You’re absolutely right. That was the other thing. If I know with absolute conviction that if I misstep I can immediately get rescued from my predicament, I will make different choices than if I know that any misstep on my part will doom me to a worse situation than I was in previously. People who have grown up with the best of everything and who go into a homeless shelter with a credit card and good connections cannot possibly understand that.

I have never been in a homeless shelter but I have been technically homeless. I have also faced risk at different points in my life and it is SO different when you do not have children in your care. You’re less picky about who your roommates are, you’ll sleep on someone’s couch for a while, you’ll live in that weekly-rate motel. When kids are involved it is a very different story. Those “Cadillac rims” Shepard was so dismissive about would have paid for half a month’s worth of daycare. That is how expensive it is. This is nothing to be flippant about. It isn’t like you can just go pick government aid off a tree. I’m still on a Section 8 waiting list that I got onto last JULY. It would make such a huge difference in my budget it wouldn’t even be funny. But I’m stuck here instead, in gangbanger hell with no car.

For me it was a combination of luck and choices that got me here, just as it is for anybody, and I’m dealing. I’m not asking for a rescuer, I’m not asking for pity (although I am not asking for people to fling poo at me, either). What I AM asking for is for people to quit indirectly insulting me with these stupid social experiments. At least Ehrenreich was honest about it (I’ve worked for Wal-Mart and can attest to some of the crap she endured). And it is a world of difference between an older woman trying to get decent paying work and a younger guy who can still get the good blue-collar jobs. And it’s yet another world of difference between either of those and what my situation is. There is NO one cookie-cutter answer to poverty.

Its interesting that people are more motovated to try to discredit the actual experience that to try to learn from it.

If being rich, white and college educated disqualifies someones experience then lets toss Ehrenreich right now.

The point is not that he had a credit card, which no one considered when they were hiring. It was that having a positive attitude will get you a job. Working effectively will keep the job. And managing your money will allow you to build up reserves- no matter what you are starting from.

That is advice that is applicable to anyone regardless of skin color.

I wrote the author, and asked for a copy of the book, which he happily sent to me. I reviewed on my book review site.

While the book is not stellar literature, I think it meets the goal it set out to accomplish: an adventure story of a young man trying something new, and as an inspiration to others who might want to do the same. Elaborate social research it isn’t, and was not intended to be.

It seems like the interview with Adam Shepard is missing some crucial analysis as to how and why this experiment with poverty was so successful. While he does openly discuss his societal privileges as a middle-class, college educated citizen- there is little discussion of his privilege as a white male.
To begin a discussion on poverty and social class, especially in Charleston SC, and not discuss race has to be intentional. So why doesn’t Mr. Shepard tackle this topic? Why doesn’t he begin to discuss his privilege as a male? Service industry jobs are physically demanding, he doesn’t hardly discuss being an able-bodied person either. There’s not even mention of his sexual orientation.
In addition, Mr. Shepard knew full-well that his experiment could end at any time, and at worst it would last only twelve months long. The point is, his life of poverty, of giving up simple comforts and sleeping in shelters, couldn’t have the same effect on his mental status as it could for example, for a black woman fighting racism and sexism her entire life.
Mr. Shepard believes that Nickel and Dimed was intentionally constructed for failure but it is obvious that he intentionally glossed over some very serious factors to make his own argument of success. To leave out a discussion of white, male, able-bodied privilege is to essentially say that these inequalities don’t exist in society and that is not only inaccurate but it’s harmful to oppressed people everywhere.

To all the nay sayer’s saying that oooh, he’s white, he can speak, he’s healthy, that’s why he made it, I call bullshit on your victim mentality. People who come from privileged backgrounds can find such a fall devastating. They don’t have the mental cahones needed to get further vs. someone who has the mental toughness of living it for their lifetime.

My mother, my single mother, was violently dropped out of privilege, not white, didn’t know english, is a priss, came here on a refugee citizenship, had a completely useless college degree from a 3rd world country, had to take care, and still has to support her demanding mother, and had to deal with depression and more! She started from pizza prep cook, and became the top manager in nation. And now, here I sit, in her $.75 million dollar house in a stable upper middle class family with children she loves to death. As the author said, we all have our talents, we all have our shortcommings, and we all come from different backgrounds and just to use your specific set of shortcommings as an excuse to not make it in this wealthy society of ours is just not right. Everyone has talents and gifts from every background. My mother fits many of your “criteria of permanent disadvantage” and yet SHE MADE IT! (Female, single, not-white, no english, came as a refugee, etc)

It was hard for her, I wont deny that. It wasn’t a very happy time for her, (she talks about her college & school days alot when she gives stories of her past) but still, it’s possible.

And to be honest, women have it easier in the minimum wage job market. Waiting tables can be very lucrative if you learn how to work it. (and if you have a will, there is a WAY!) And the women always get wayyyyy more in tips. And tend to be hired more for many categories of jobs. And are in safer jobs which don’t drain your energy at the end of the day.

There’s countless examples of people of disadvantage clawing themselves out of it every day. I could say if a guy was gay, he could use the gay subculture connections to help himself out of poverty. Or he can be discriminated against for his lisp. Or he could use his superior sense of gay style & charisma to land lucrative sales jobs and eventually start his own successful chain of fine art stores. [I know one who's JUST LIKE THAT] Hispanic people have their huge cultural support networks to get themselves working in the USA. They manage to save several hundred dollars every month to send to mexico with their shit shit jobs all the time. Ooooh, but they’re hispanic, a woman & can’t speak english. But guess what, they MADE IT!

As has been written, both in the interview and in a number of comments, having a goal makes adversity tolerable.

A great number of us who are working poor or struggling to stay afloat financially have no goals. A number of us just get through the day and literally cannot look forward to anything. Low-grade depression and an overall sense of being overwhelmed by life make it difficult to do anything else.

I won’t say that Mr. Shepard’s experiment wasn’t interesting or can’t be replicated, but he did start with clear attitudinal advantage. This can’t be overlooked.

Terry,

I read O’Connell’s book. It is absolutely terrible. And word has it that Shepard did his own promotion, so where was O’Connell on that one?

Pete

Adam Shepard is, in my opinion, not too different from what I call “Nomadic Trustafarians.” Picture this, young rich brats, usually just out of college (as Shepard) from areas of socio-economic deprivation like Lincoln and Duxbury, MA; most of Fairfield County, CT; Scarsdale and Great Neck, NY; Alpine and Summit, NJ; the “Main Line” near Philly, etc.

These rich, college educated, but very naive people temporarily “go native” in many third world countries, notably Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Thailand. After spending 6-12 months “keeping it real” and eschewing western culture (except for the things these people “need,” such as a multi-band cell phone and an internet connection), they return to the Larchmonts and Marbleheads of America and act if they have been “transformed” by the experience.

Here is an anecdotal account of “Muffie” calling her friend “Leesa” (notice the affectated spellings?). Muffie is just about to return to West Moneybucks, CT from 10 months in Costa Rica. Leesa returned from Nepal a week earlier. Of course, Leesa and Muffie want to get together to discuss how “fabulous” their slumming-it-with-the-natives experiences were.

Leesa offers to pick up Muffie at JFK. Leesa told Muffie she will be driving “dad’s car.” “Oh, which one?,” Muffie asked. Leesa replied, without any tint of irony in her voice, “I’m not sure if I want to take the 2005 Jag, the 2003 BMW Convertible, or mom’s 2007 Acura MDX.” Muffie asked Leesa to take the Acura, since she thinks her backpack will fit best in the SUV.

Just as most of his trustafarian brethren return “close to home” after about 10 months or so, Adam Shepard returned back to his wealthy North Carolina family, ostensibly due to “family problems.” HELLO? Poor people have family problems, also. However, the REAL poor cannot escape the “Trustafarian Disneyland” when there are family issues.

These people must continue to WORK and SCRAPE BY in spite of whatever life throws at them. If these people are lucky enough to even have a car, it is likely out of warranty and prone to mechanical breakdowns.

I would recommend this book to: People who drive around Wellesley, MA or Hewlett Neck, NY with a “Live Simply So Others May Simply Live” bumper sticker on the back of a two-year old Jaguar or Mercedes!

I hope that you don’t mind me coming back. I feel coming from a completely different background compared to both you and Barbara (Nickel and Dimed) gives me a different perspective, I wish to share a few more of my thoughts.
1. There is so much fixation about cars, why are we not talking about effective public transport systems. Taking cars off the roads would be kind on the hole in the ozone layer and other horror stories. Also reducing dependence on fossil fuels would mean that adventures like Kuwait and Iraq and now Iran are probably not very important. Also no need to prop up regimes like Saudi Arabia where camels are allowed to vote and women are not.
2. Public health care with tarrifs connected with the minimum wage.

3. Public housing, with the size of the American GDP, it surely can afford decent public housing, again the rent connected to the minimum wage, so that those who cannot rent from the market have an alternative.

4. Public schools.

Surely if Americas can stock enough nuclear bombs to blow the earth many times over, it surely do this much for those of its citizens who are a little disadvantaged in one way or the other.

I’ve just read Adam’s book. I stayed up all last night, what a great read!

Upon reading some of the above comments, it seems to me most have not actually read Adam’s book.

I won’t talk about Adam’s book but let me talk about a few of the above comments.

1. Adam was white and good looking.

My son is in prison and sadly will most likely spend most of his life in prison. And he will never admit that it’s his fault. It’s The Man. No personal responsibility. It’s a very scary step to take, but admitting that one is responsible for one’s own actions, it a brave step in the right direction. And on a scale of looks, he’s a 10.

My wife’s father came to this country right after the revolution in Castro’s Cuba. He did not speak English. He tells me the story how he is standing on the street here in California, no money, doesn’t speak the language, no job with a wife and two very young children. He told me how he broke down and cried.

His two children, Ricky Noceda has become a respected doctor and his sister (my wife) Jeannette Noceda a successful attorney.

My wife and I along with her parents made a trip to Utah to find and pay a special visit to her father’s friend. This man would give my wife’s father little jobs so he could give him money. My wife’s parents never forgot this man’s kindness. They loved this person and will never forget him.

This is what makes our country the greatest country on this earth. I’m proud to be an American and I thank Adam for his fine book, I hope it becomes a movie.

Oh, and what prompted me to look up this guy was hearing him on an interview. I recall he talked about getting a job with a moving company, in spite of a lack of physical skill (his description). How odd! Why would he downplay his athletic ability?

What I don’t understand about people like Adam and people who admire them is, why can’t they acknowledge some people have superior innate ability? Some people really are smarter, more athletic, and so on. People are not created with equal skills sets, or opportunity.

I find it interesting that so many people have so many negative things to say about something they haven’t taken the time to read or research. A wonderful example of the dog-eat-dog mentality of those who don’t want to see anyone get credit for doing something extraordinary. Adam did something extraordinary. If you READ his book, you will know that he says from the get-go that there are flaws in his methods and that he may have had things in his favor that others may not. He’s humble about it and recognizes that his experience is not the end-all and be-all solution.

I would like to make clear to those who have not read the book and want to say he was a “healthy” male whose experiment would have failed miserably if he had a health issue—this gets addressed in the book. He did not remain healthy throughout. He had problems that did effect his finances. Read the book to find out how he dealt with it.

I would also like to point out to “Daniel” above that Adam didn’t return to his mansion in the hills. He and his brother rent a three-bedroom apartment so they can care for his cancer-stricken mom who had lost her job.

Do your homework. Give credit where credit is due. Then go out and give someone a leg up.

You can add me to the list of “Hmmmm, young, HEALTHY, educated, white, male… gee, I’m so. shocked. that he succeeded.”

I do reflect on some personal experiences, here; that I’ve had persistent beggars accept money but express a preference for food (looking at my bag from a bakery), and, while keeping the money, accept the food (my dinner: a bagel). Next time around, when I responded to the beggar, who was wailing for money for food? He turned down the food. Yup, my dinner was NOT ACCEPTABLE to the beggar. I’ve also noticed that not one – the few women, nor the more frequent men – ever offered to EARN the money they were asking for by, say, carrying one or more of the heavy bags I was lugging. And then I think to myself, No one was handing me money when I was picking up wood off the railroad tracks to heat my home. I’ve had people beg for money for “a cold soda” on a hot summer day – because apparently, water from a nearby fountain wasn’t acceptable. My feelings are mixed; I think this young man was, essentially, in the same position as a lot of young white male college graduates starting out and/or looking for summer jobs. Poverty IS a very different experience for women, women with children, or people who aren’t in robust or even good health. But I’ve spent a whole lot of years being poor (I had help staying that way), and I have encountered other people who could manage being poor better than they apparently choose to.

Yes, it DOES stick in my craw that the dinner which is good enough for me isn’t good enough for someone who is willing to beg.

I really hope the communists over at NPR give this author as much airplay as they did Ereinrich.

The message of this book needs to get out, despite it not serving any political ends.

This book is poorly written, arrogant and preachy. The author is a cocky, conservative (though he claims to have NO political views, yeah right) young white man too blinded by his white privilege to see the genuine plight of homeless minorities. He thinks one’s goal in life should be to deprive oneself of everything possible and save all your money, as if that is what life is supposed to all about for everyone. He concocts lies to achieve all his goals. He lies to get into the shelter, thus displacing someone in genuine need. He lies to get the government to cover his housing, food and other expenses, and then banks the money instead of donating it back to the shelter. He lies about his life to everyone he meets, and wants us to see him as virtuous because he is able to bank the money he receives from government and charity. I have serious problems with this young man from a spiritual perspective.

Barbara Ehrenreich did not set herself up for failure. She was not trying to do what Adam Shepard did. Ehrenreich only spent one month at three menial jobs in three separate states in order to highlight the plight of the working poor to stay afloat financially. She was not trying to lift herself out of poverty like Adam Shepard. That was not her goal. Adam Shepard’s experiment takes place in an entirely different world from that of the working poor that Ehrenreich covered. Shepard is among homeless people in a shelter. Ehrenreich is not concerened about living as cheaply as possible, as Shepard is. That is because her experiment is to highlight what life experience is like for the working poor. Shepard is the one who is concerened about living as cheaply as possible in order to save as much money as possible. Shepard is a capitalist. Ehrenreich is a socialist. That is why Shepard makes, as you do as well, a gross error in comparing his experiment to Ehrenreich’s experiment. Finally, at no point in her book does Ehrenreich state that social immobility is impossible. She even talks about her father lifing her family up from poverty to become an upper middle class family. At no point in her book does Ehrenreich state that the working poor are doomed to eternal failure. She gives plenty of examples of upward and downward social mobility. Also, as a 60-year-old upper middle class woman in her experiment, you should be able to understand why she paints a bleaker situation that an idealistic, cocky young man like Adam Shepard. I believe that the reason you and Adam Shepard misunderstand her work is your opposition to her socialist views. You and Adam Shepard both need to give her book a second read and try to hear her out completely. She has important and valid points to make, as does Adam Shepard.

I’m sure some of these have been addressed already. But I have a few issues to take here.

I think a lot of the people who voice criticism about Ehrenreich’s book are not speaking to the merits of her writing or to how accurately she described the realities she observed. It seems like almost everyone who complains about her book are largely personal criticisms; they dislike her book because they had to read it in college (in the first place, this tells me that Ehrenreich’s book is one they would have avoided reading if they possibly could have; in the second, it tells me that most of these critics probably encountered Nickel and Dimes with the benefit of advantages which, for vanity’s sake, they want to believe that everyone else had). They dislike her book because they think her “attitude” undermines whatever presumptions they harbor about the realities of life in the service economy. They dislike her book because, as they seem to put it, she designed her exploration to be a failure – they site that she lived in “hotels” (bargain hotel rooms which she relied upon while she was looking for cheap, claustrophobic, unfurnished rental spaces which, in turn, came at artificially reduced rates because the commutes attached to them or the conditions of these dwellings were so undesirable that literally no one else would take them); that she bought a 40 dollar pair of pants once; that she “treated herself” to meals at restaurants (which I also find to be a mischaracterization of her story – she occasionally had to buy a cooked meal because some of the places she was staying didn’t have so much as a hot-plate).

So I would like to suggest a counterpoint. The reason that Ehrenreich’s project seems “designed to fail” to some readers is that, in fact, Ehrenreich’s project was designed to emulate the realities of life in America – a reality with which most people who make time to comment on web forums are woefully unfamiliar. In reality, Ehrenreich set very minimal standards of “success” for herself – her only design was to see if she could work the jobs that working poor people held, and she would consider it a success if she was able to move into a place with one month’s rent in her pocket, and then earn enough money to pay the following month’s rent when that came around.

Her project wasn’t (as Shepards seems to have been) to see if she could save a bundle of money – essentially, Shepard was a tourist – by working minimum wage jobs while living for two consecutive months rent-free in homeless shelters. Her project was to see if the realities and constraints that face actual human beings out there permitted even basic survival, let alone comfort or “success” as the middle class seems to view it.

If everyone who worked for Merry Maids or for Denny’s had the opportunity to live rent free, wouldn’t they choose to do so? Ehrenreich describes friendships with many people who live in their cars, or with relatives. The crux of her book is that free housing is not unlimited in supply, or even broadly available – and that if the only solution to keeping the masses of the working poor in America indoors is to give them free housing, then that is essentially a subsidy on their lifestyles in the very same sense that the welfare programs from which they were ejected by 1996 reforms was a subsidy.

Shepard’s “project”, on the other hand, seems to pose the question:
“Can a healthy, physically fit, college-educated white male make rent for 8 months without having to sell his body, deal drugs, or do anything else he’d be ashamed to include in a memoir – such as, getting addicted to drugs, or ending up with massive credit-card debt.”
He defines “success” as having a savings account with about 2500 dollars and a vehicle at the end of 10 months. If this is the nature of his inquiry, he could just as well have stopped right there – I have accomplished this (with similar privileges to the ones he had), as have countless friends. There are unlimited anecdotes as testament that it is possible to live in a state of (relative) comfort if you don’t have to support a family; he abstains from cigarettes and alcohol because he knows very well that he will regain these privileges again after his project concludes; I can fairly well assume that he never pays health insurance premiums, visits a dentist or optometrist, buys medication, supports a child or an ailing spouse.

Additionally, the idea that a person can keep working a job at a moving company indefinitely is pretty questionable in itself. I suspect that – even assuming they had the physical wherewithal to occupy a job like the one he had – the average person in such an occupation would, lacking the physical and kinesthetic education that he had, forget to do stretches, lift with their backs and not their legs, eschew working precautions necessary to the job. They would subsequently succumb to injury, joint pain, arthritis, and the host of other problems that accompany hard physical labor. He managed to get by for about 9 months. In fact, people who work such jobs at any length end up with carpal tunnel, sour backs and knees, ankle problems, etc. Unlike Ehrenreich, however, he doesn’t work a variety of jobs to get a broad perspective of what service work is like – he just finds one things that works for him and keeps at it, knowing that as soon as he reaches a finish line based on time or savings volume, he gets to call “game over.”

The characterization that Ehrenreich failed because of inclining herself toward failure, or that Shepard “succeeded” simply because of his indomitable spirit, is a very poor one. The reality here is that both “succeeded” in demonstrating that the working conditions at the bottom in this country are abominable and untenable, which seems to have been Ehrenreich’s foregone conclusion (and necessarily, also must be the conclusion of any sensibly inclined and impartial observer) and which was also Shepard’s conclusion, although he voiced it rather equivocally by fracturing the focus of his narrative into a host of different and unrelated topics (i.e., his preoccupation with the status of the “American dream,” which he attributes to Ehrenreich, but which Ehrenreich never presumes to address in her own book).