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.
