breaking down in big box

Big Will has been working for Town Square for years. He now runs the store in a small town that once had a busy factory, and since that factory closed, the town has been slowly dying. After his time there, he is finally about to get a promotion, moved to manage a store in a better town, a stepping stone to a district manager, and it’s time for him to choose his replacement.

Meredith has recently taken over the Movement team. Movement is the early morning folks who come to the store in the dark, unload the truck, and stock the shelves before the store opens. It’s the team that no one wants to lead, partly for the hours and partly because it’s a difficult job. But Meredith moved there from the sales floor, thinking (rightly) that those in power would see it as her becoming a more well-rounded manager than the others in the store and fast-tracking her for a promotion.

Big Will was impressed with Meredith’s choice to go to Movement. He sees her ambition and intensity, and he’s talked her up to corporate to take over in his place. At the time, he’d thought of himself as a mentor, encouraging her to take risks as a leader and help the Movement team become more successful. Instead, he sees her talking down to the team and always putting her own needs before the team. He starts to wonder if he’s made a mistake in backing her, but corporate is sending a team to do interviews of her team before they make the final decision of who will get the store manager job. Those interviews will probably give them a better idea of what she’s like as a manager than anything he could tell them.

But what he doesn’t know is that there is a group inside of Movement who knows everything that’s going on in the store, and they want to make sure things break their way. Their plan is to get Meredith promoted, so she’s not working over them anymore. Then the head of their team, Little Will, can get promoted to her job, and one of them can take over for Little Will. That would mean, for that lucky lottery winner, full time hours and benefits, neither of which they can get as part-timers.

But who gets the job? It is the woman who’s been there the longest and knows softlines inside and out? Is it one of the younger, more energetic workers? Is it one of the guys who knows the warehouse better than anyone else? They all have skills. They all want more hours. They all want a stable job with benefits, which is hard to find in their small town. But to get Meredith out of their hair, they’re going to have to work together and have some hope that their future could be brighter than their present.

Anyone who has worked retail, particularly at a big box store, will recognize the internal politics of Help Wanted. There are the cliquishness of the different teams, the struggle for more hours, the never-ending push to do more with fewer workers, the repetition, the uniforms, the friendships, the corporate fear of unions.

Author Adelle Waldman got all those details right, to the point where it may have kicked up a little PTSD for me thinking about those days I spent in red shirts and khaki pants. But more than that, she understood the relationships that get built in those back rooms. This whip-smart novel exposes more about the politics of big box stores than six months’ experience working there. It’s a fascinating look at the modern workplace, and the modern work force, and it blends humanity with compassion and humor. Help Wanted is a powerhouse of a novel, one that puts all the worst and best of our working selves on display. And it tells an amazing story to boot.

Egalleys for Help Wanted were provided by W. W. Norton & Company through NetGalley, with many thanks.