Help Wanted

A Novel

De: Adelle Waldman

Narrado por: Amanda Ronconi

From the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. comes a funny, eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America.

Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours―most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs.

When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.

Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, lauded by the Los Angeles Times as an “exacting character study” with “excellent and witty prose” and described as “incisive and very funny” by the Economist and “brilliant” by both NPR’s Fresh Air and the Washington Post. In her long-awaited follow-up, Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to the world of modern, low-wage work. A humane and darkly comic workplace caper that shines a light on the odds low-wage workers are up against in today’s economy, Help Wanted is a funny, moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.

©2024 Adelle Waldman (P)2024 Spotify Audiobooks

Boring

Not much plot at all. If you like very character driven novels, I think you’ll enjoy it.

Funny and great character development

Really enjoyed the book and insights into life working at a big box store. Good read!

Great story

I loved how this book a highlighted the life of all of its characters, allowing the reader to have a peak into the lives of others. I am someone who has worked retail in the past and, I highly related to the things that the characters go through.
But even if you haven't worked retail, this book is entertaining and touches the heartstrings.

The Community of a Big Box Store

I love how the author put together the puzzle pieces that make a workplace function—the backstories, motivations, interpersonal relationships of the workers in Movement (formerly Logistics) set against the corporate culture, the realities of the local economy and mores.
The problem, though, is that there are so many characters. I wish I had taken notes from the start—a list or diagram—so I wouldn’t have to keep backing up when I couldn’t remember who was who.
Having worked a wide variety of blue collar jobs in my student days and beyond, I feel like this author put her finger on the complexities of fate in the workaday world pretty well.
The narrator was good, but if there had been a clearer delineation of voices and accents, I might have had an easier time following the action.

Interior Dialogue

I love this author’s way of getting into her characters’ heads, it’s really enjoyable, I hope she gives us many more books