See, I Am the Vacuum Cleaner: Using the Patently Absurd to Expose the Patently Obvious
It would be too easy, perhaps, or at least too obvious, to focus only on Ehrenreich's use of humor as a matter of craft. It's everywhere in Nickel and Dimed, it's hilarious, it's relatable, one would hope, to almost everyone, and it's the single most important factor in rendering Ehrenreich likable to readers not nearly so fortunate as she. Her humor is anodyne for the creeping elitism which hangs over the first several pages like a cloud. More than a humorist, Ehrenreich is an absurdist; again and again she finds those naked pulse points which fiction writers like Vonnegut and Heller are so adept at mining. War is absurd, say Vonnegut and Heller. And so is the Accutrac employment test. But that doesn't mean one can't find themselves at the mercy of either. And what may separate the merely funny from the completely absurd is that while the soldier may laugh, war isn't kidding, and neither is the Accutrac. Being an Absurdist in an Absurd Land is serious business.
A good example of Ehrenreich's absurdist bent is her use of dialogue on page 74, during the narrator's pre-employment training at The Maids. Dialogue, as any writer knows, must justify its existence. It must earn its keep; it should, in a carefully modulated text, punctuate, precisely as it does here. Understanding this, and understanding, too, that 'brevity is the soul of wit,' Ehrenreich uses dialogue in this paragraph (and it's a long paragraph, running 22 lines and spilling onto the next page) sparingly. She uses it precisely once, after some exposition in which she describes the inventor of a backpack vacuum explaining, via videotape, how the mechanism is worn, and saying, proudly, "See, I am the vacuum cleaner."
What makes the paragraph absurd is that it's really no laughing matter; to The Maids, that's exactly what Dr. Ehrenreich will be. The delivery is funny but the thematic under-current is not, no more than is the fact that one of The Maids' competitors uses the slogan, "We clean floors the old-fashioned way-on our hands and knees," or that this slogan seems to ring the bell, as it were, for the industry's clientele. Writes Ehrenreich, "A mop and a full bucket of hot soapy water would not only get a floor cleaner but would be a lot more dignified for the person who does the cleaning. But it is this primal posture of submission, and of what is ultimately anal accessibility that seems to gratify the consumers of maid services."
It is this theme of violation and degradation which Ehrenreich returns to again and again-violation and degradation by an entire apparatus, one which is not only bigger than you, but markedly dumber. A passage on page 107 comes to mind in which Ehrenreich writes: "At one morning meeting, Ted gravely informs us that there has just been 'an incident' and that the perpetrator is no longer with us. This kind of thing hardly ever happens, he says, because the Accutrac test is almost 100 percent reliable in weeding out dishonest people (with the exception of myself, of course)." Anyone who has seen the Mike Judge film Idiocracy may well recall the national fixation on Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator-"It's got Electrolytes!"
But Ehrenreich knows when to play it straight, as well, as when she allows a break in her facade on page 110-at exactly the point where we are about to break, where we really need her to do something on our behalf, to lash out at her employer, to do what we would do, we want to think, under the same circumstances. Writes Ehrenreich: "I blow. I can't remember the exact words, but I tell him he can't keep putting money above his employees' health and I don't want to hear about 'working through it,' because this girl is in really bad shape. But he just goes on about 'calm down,' and meanwhile Holly is hopping around the bathroom, wiping up pubic hairs."
Unfortunately, because of a whole host of reasons, Ehrenreich will diligently unpack later, her coworkers are unwilling or unable to share in her show of defiance. Here again Ehrenreich deftly uses dialogue, writing, "What's all this worrying about Ted? He'll find someone else. He'll take anyone who can manage to show up sober at 7:30 in the morning. Sober and standing upright.'
'No,' Holly finally interjects. 'That's not true. Not everyone can get this job. You have to pass the test.'
The test? The Accutrac test? 'The test,' I practically yell, 'is BULL____! Anyone can pass that test!'
To which one half expects Holly to reply, "But it's got-Electrolytes!"