Student Name

Dr. Professor

ENG 101

9 Oct. 2015

"Serving in Florida" Rhetorical Analysis

In the excerpt "Serving in Florida" from her book Nickeled and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the two main problems with the serving industry: corrupt management and unlivable wages for the wait staff. Ehrenreich, an author who focuses on class, gender, and work issues, argues that the serving industry does not provide jobs that are financially viable for their staff, calling for a change in how servers are treated and how they are paid. In order to create an effective argument, Ehrenreich appeals through her audience through personal experience, her credentials, and first-person research also create a more effective argument. However, Ehrenreich is extremely biased in her writing, creating a crumbling foundation on which her argument, although otherwise convincing, falters.

 

Ehrenreich's expertise area, publications, and first-person research improves her credibility. Ehrenreich, an author of politics, class, work, and gender, has published many works on similar subjects to "Serving in Florida". She also goes undercover to waitress in two separate restaurants in order to conduct first-person research. Her ability to provide real-life examples, rather than simply basing her opinion off of others' research creates an argument that seems more plausible. The fact that she has published similar works makes her an expert in the field, further building her credibility.

 

Along with boosting her credibility, Ehrenreich is also able to cast her fellow workers' lives as downtrodden because of her first person research, gaining sympathy for other workers in the serving business. Gail, a server at Hearthside, is used often by Ehrenreich to exemplify the hard worker who can never break the vicious cycle that she has found herself in. Gale's living conditions, health, and quality of life are negatively affected by her serving job because she does not get paid livable wages. Through the example of Gail, and the many other co-workers, Ehrenreich appeals readers' emotions and therefore creates a more effective argument.

 

Although Ehrenreich does effectively appeal to her audience's emotions and is credible to write on the behalf of people in these jobs, her argument is too biased. Ehrenreich portrays all managers as corrupt and workers as hard-working, good people. She even goes as far as to state that managers are a part of "corporate as opposed to human" (129). Mangers are lazy and demean their workers to do menial task when they believe that they are not working hard enough. Similarly, Ehrenreich describes all the workers as hard working people who "give and give and [corporate] takes" (130). However, the fact that Ehrenreich did not show any accounts of good managers and poor workers does not mean that they do not exist, but that she simply did not put these facts into her essay, thereby weakening it with her biasness. 

 

Therefore, although the essay "Serving in Florida" does create a strong emotional appeal to the audience and the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, is quite credible, it is weakened by the incredible biasness of the overall paper. Still, the biasness does not so cripple the argument as to rule it completely ineffective, but it is something the readers must consider. The biasness may have been an rhetorical choice, exaggerating the problem as an effort to call people to action against non-livable wages that many are working for.

 

Ehrenreich, Barbara. "Serving in Florida." 50 Essays. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. Print

 

 

 

"