Serving in Florida

I believe Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Serving in Florida" would agree with the statement "America has a problem with income inequality that must be fixed." I feel this way, due to the fact that Barbara experiences the hardships of working two jobs, all while only making minimum wage. Along this short, but very educational journey she experiences all kinds of issues that are happening in America, including income inequality. For example, when Barbara meets George, she notices he is young and doesn't know much English at all, so she jokes around and attempts to get to know him. She learns George is an 18 year old boy from Czechoslovakia, who works as a dishwasher for $5 an hour and lives in a home with other Czechoslovakian men who work as well and some nights, George  is even forced to wait to sleep until another man leaves for work. Barbara herself was only making $6.10 an hour, while working as a maid. How are people supposed to live off that amount? Barbara certainly couldn't, so she was forced to try and balance working two jobs. One as a maid and the other as a waiter. I found the scenario that Barbara had brought up over her salary as a waiter and the amount of gas she has to spend daily interesting. She states, "I make the decision to move closer to Key West. First, because of the drive. Second and third, also because of the drive: gas is eating up $4 to $5 a day, and although Jerry's is as high-volume as you can get, the tips average only 10 percent, and not just for a newbie like me. Between the base pay of $2.15 an hour and the obligation to share tips with the busboys and dishwashers, we're averaging only about $7.50 an hour. " This woman works her tail off for only $7.50 and $6.10 an hour? She later discovers how much pressure and stress comes while working two jobs, as she just walks out from her waiting job, due to all of the chaos and commotion of a busy restaurant. As a server Barbara probably felt the feeling of "Why am I doing this to myself? It's not even worth it anymore." She was working for minimum wage and forced to deal with major amounts of stress on a daily basis, while knowing that some people make much more money than her, and don't have to deal with nearly as much adversity. It's a terrible feeling when the amount of gas you use a day is pretty close to your hourly salary. Income inequality plays a major role as well, when George is under paid, due to him being a young Czechoslovakian immigrant. As a human being,  you just tend to question yourself on whether the situation is actually worth all of the effort and in her case it just wasn't worth the exhaustion anymore, not even after a day.