Nickel and Dimed
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40 free Nickel and Dimed trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Barbara Ehrenreich left her desk to find out whether anyone can really live on the wages at the bottom of the American job market. She took the work, paid her way out of what she earned, and wrote down what happened. The result became a bestseller that readers still argue over. This quiz walks through the whole experiment: the restaurants in Florida, the cleaning crews and care work in Maine, the shop floor in Minnesota, and the co-workers and managers she met along the way. It also covers how the project began, the arguments of her closing chapter, and the books and adaptations that followed. It is written for students revising the book, for book clubs, and for anyone who read it years ago and wants to see how much has stuck.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which retail giant hires Barbara Ehrenreich as a sales associate in the Minnesota chapter of Nickel and Dimed?
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart paid her seven dollars an hour after a day-long orientation on company history and philosophy. The manager who hired her said that philosophy was the same as her own.
Q 02The title Nickel and Dimed borrows an idiom for losing money to what?
Many small charges
Many small charges that add up beyond expectations is the idea behind the idiom. Ehrenreich turns it on low-wage workers, whose spirit and dignity she says are chipped away bit by bit.
Q 03Before becoming a journalist, Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich earned a doctorate in which field?
Cell biology
Cell biology was her doctoral subject at Rockefeller University, and it shaped the book. She agreed to the assignment by treating each month of low-wage work as a scientific experiment with ground rules.
Q 04Nickel and Dimed opens with Barbara Ehrenreich waitressing in which Florida resort town near her own home?
Key West
Key West was too expensive for a server to live in, so she rented an efficiency apartment thirty miles away. She had picked the town to stay close to home for her first experiment.
Q 05What did Joan Holden adapt Nickel and Dimed into in 2002, with a premiere in Seattle?
A stage play
A stage play was the result, and companies across the country have performed it since. Holden had spent 32 years as resident writer of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Q 06After her three low-wage months, Ehrenreich argues in Nickel and Dimed that no job truly deserves which common label?
Unskilled
Unskilled is the label she rejects, because every job had demands and skill sets that had to be learned. Her months of manual work took stamina, focus, memory and quick thinking.
Q 07Which cost does Barbara Ehrenreich single out in Nickel and Dimed as her constant problem in all three cities?
Housing
Housing beat her everywhere, and she blames the rich outbidding the poor for living space while wages lag behind. At one point a run-down room cost her more than her net pay.
Q 08How does Barbara Ehrenreich present herself to employers in Nickel and Dimed while hiding her career as a writer?
A divorced homemaker
A divorced homemaker who needed to earn a living was her story. Her own rule was to lean on no skill that came from her education or her writing.
Q 09What does Barbara Ehrenreich conclude in Nickel and Dimed that a low-wage worker needs just to cover food and rent?
Two jobs
Two jobs at the least were needed, she concluded, and she lived it herself. In Maine she cleaned houses all week and took a second post at weekends.
Q 10Nickel and Dimed set out to test the effects on the working poor of which 1996 overhaul signed by Bill Clinton?
Welfare reform
Welfare reform pushed recipients off the rolls and into the labour market on the promise that work would lift them out of poverty. Ehrenreich went to see whether the wages added up.
Q 11To cut her commute in the Florida chapter of Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich moves closer to work into what?
A trailer
A trailer in a park nearer town saved her time and gas. It was only eight feet wide, and she left her efficiency apartment thirty miles out to live in it.
Q 12George, the teenage dishwasher Ehrenreich teaches English at Jerry's in Nickel and Dimed, is of which nationality?
Czech
Czech and nineteen years old, George becomes her friend at the restaurant. Her one regret about Jerry's is that she never gave him her tips.
Q 13When George is accused of stealing at Jerry's in Nickel and Dimed, how does Ehrenreich respond, to her later dismay?
She stays silent
Q 21Which team leader at The Maids in Nickel and Dimed keeps on cleaning while pregnant, sick and later injured?
Holly
Holly would not stop, out of financial need, pride in her work and a wish to please her boss. Ehrenreich threatened a work stoppage to get her help, and neither Holly nor the owner would allow it.
Q 22Besides drug screening, which hiring hurdle does Ehrenreich face at The Maids and attack in Nickel and Dimed?
Personality tests
Personality tests, she argues, deter job seekers and violate liberties while doing little for work performance. She once lost her temper and dismissed one such questionnaire in front of her crew.
Q 23Which condition affects the locked ward Ehrenreich once has to handle alone at Woodcrest in Nickel and Dimed?
She stays silent rather than defend him, and the change in her own character troubles her deeply. He was accused of taking from the dry-storage room.
Q 14Which supermarket chain's job does Ehrenreich pass up in Florida in Nickel and Dimed rather than take its drug test?
Winn-Dixie
Winn-Dixie's computerised exam was no trouble, and she aced it. She declined the drug test because she felt the pay on offer was not worth the indignity.
Q 15In Nickel and Dimed, which Hearthside waitress who trained Ehrenreich is handed her house key when she leaves Florida?
Gail
Gail could not get a place of her own, since a month's rent in advance was impossible on her income. Ehrenreich passed her rented place on to her on the way out.
Q 16What work does Ehrenreich briefly take on at the hotel attached to Jerry's restaurant in Nickel and Dimed?
Housekeeping
Housekeeping had one solace, she found: the television playing in the rooms she cleaned. She soon gave it up to wait tables next door instead.
Q 17In which Maine city does Barbara Ehrenreich spend her second month in Nickel and Dimed, cleaning houses?
Portland
Portland was her base in Maine, a state she picked because she could blend in there as a low-paid worker. She took a room at a Motel 6 on arrival.
Q 18At weekends in Maine in Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich works as a dietary aide in what kind of facility?
A nursing home
A nursing home, the Woodcrest Residential Facility, hired her to serve meals and clean up afterwards. It paid a little more per hour than her weekday cleaning job.
Q 19The Maids' training videos in Nickel and Dimed surprise Ehrenreich by using very little of which cleaning basic?
Water
Water was used in very small amounts, which told her the company prized an orderly appearance over actual cleanliness. Each house also got a set time based on its size.
Q 20What does Ehrenreich accidentally break while cleaning a client's kitchen for The Maids in Nickel and Dimed?
A fishbowl
A fishbowl broke and its contents went everywhere. That same stretch her first week's pay was held back under company policy, so she phoned agencies for free groceries.
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease patients lived on the ward, where she had served breakfast beside her supervisor on her first day. One weekend she was left to run it entirely by herself.
Q 24Which home-improvement chain's job does Ehrenreich drop in Nickel and Dimed on learning of its eleven-hour shifts?
Menards
Menards had looked the better choice, with talk of ten dollars an hour. On her first day she learned of the long shifts and that the pay might be lower after all, so she refused.
Q 25Before her Minnesota drug screenings in Nickel and Dimed, which recently used substance makes Ehrenreich fear failing?
Marijuana
Marijuana, smoked not long before, sent her into a detox effort. She drank a great deal of fluid, bought products sold to clear the system, and passed.
Q 26In the Minnesota chapter of Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich gets a free apartment at first by minding which pet?
A cockatiel
A cockatiel was her charge, and she called it Budgie even though its owners had given it a different name. When the free stay ended, her hunt for a room turned desperate.
Q 27Which department is Ehrenreich assigned to keep in order at her Minnesota store in Nickel and Dimed?
Women's clothing
Women's clothing had to be kept orderly, which meant learning the layout and every brand and style. The sheer volume of garments to sort could be overwhelming.
Q 28At her retail orientation in Nickel and Dimed, what is Ehrenreich told any non-work activity on shift is called?
Time theft
Time theft was drilled into new hires along with the company's history and service philosophy. Ehrenreich later commits it herself, using work hours to chase leads on a room.
Q 29What does Ehrenreich begin urging her fellow Minnesota store workers to form near the end of Nickel and Dimed?
A union
A union was her pitch, made to co-workers one by one and then at a staff meeting. News of a strike at several hotels gave her hope that it could happen.
Q 30Nickel and Dimed grew out of a 1999 article Barbara Ehrenreich wrote for which long-running American magazine?
Harper's
Harper's ran the piece in its January 1999 issue, and it later became a chapter of the book. The article won her a Sidney Hillman Award for journalism in 2000.