Nickel and Dimed is the title of a gritty participant-observer study by Barbara Ehrenreich. (ISBN 0-8050-6389-7) Essentially it is a series of status-dives into the lower working class along the lines of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Barb (as the name tag says) finds employment in the servant sector and tries to purchase non-homeless status (inevitably at "weekly rates") using the income thus earned. Pubwan is about market transparency (as opposed to information asymmetry), not low wage employment. Nevertheless, there is much subject overlap between Nickel and Dimed and pubwan...