The Big-Box Blues
There’s something achingly familiar about the fluorescent-lit aisles and overstuffed shelves of a big-box store. For many Americans, these sprawling retail behemoths are inescapable fixtures of daily life—impersonal cathedrals of consumerism where we grudgingly stock up on life’s essentials. But for the employees who clock in before dawn to keep the machine humming, these stores can feel like a special kind of purgatory.
In her sharply observed and bleakly funny new novel “Help Wanted,” Adelle Waldman pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of a Town Square store (a thinly veiled stand-in for Walmart) in a struggling upstate New York town. With anthropological precision and biting wit, she chronicles the daily grind and petty indignities endured by the store’s beleaguered “Movement” team—the ragtag crew responsible for unloading trucks and stocking shelves in the pre-dawn hours.
Life on the Graveyard Shift
As the novel opens, we’re introduced to the core members of Movement:
- Nicole, a cynical young mom clinging to her fading high school cool-kid status
- Raymond, a hapless sad sack perpetually down on his luck
- Val, an ambitious go-getter desperate to climb the corporate ladder
- Milo, a delusional man-child with delusions of comedic grandeur
- Ruby, a world-weary veteran of the service industry
- Diego, a hard-working immigrant striving for a better life
This motley crew clocks in at 3:55 AM each morning to face another day of back-breaking labor under the watchful eye of their scatterbrained boss Meredith. In vivid, cringe-inducing detail, Waldman captures the soul-crushing tedium and physical toll of retail drudgery—the endless boxes to unpack, the finicky customers to appease, the corporate jargon to endure.
A Glimmer of Hope
But a tantalizing opportunity arises when the store’s beloved manager, Big Will, announces he’s transferring to a cushy job in Connecticut. With the store manager position up for grabs, the members of Movement hatch an unlikely scheme. If they can convince corporate to promote the despised Meredith to store manager, it will set off a chain reaction of promotions that could benefit them all.
What follows is a darkly comic caper as this ragtag band of retail workers conspire to gaslight corporate into thinking Meredith is management material. Their harebrained plot involves everything from spreading false rumors to sabotaging rival candidates to staging elaborately choreographed displays of teamwork.
The Human Cost of Low Prices
While the central plot provides plenty of humor and narrative momentum, the real power of “Help Wanted” lies in its clear-eyed depiction of the human cost of our bargain-hunting culture. Through a revolving cast of richly drawn characters, Waldman illuminates the precarity and quiet desperation of the retail working class.
We see Diego struggling to provide for his family on poverty wages, wondering if the American Dream was just a cruel illusion. We watch Ruby’s fierce maternal pride as she scrapes together money for a manicure before her son visits, determined to project an image of stability and success. And we feel Milo’s pain and humiliation as decades of dead-end jobs slowly crush his spirit.
A System Rigged Against Workers
With sociological insight, Waldman pulls back to show how corporate policies and relentless cost-cutting measures create a system rigged against workers. The arbitrary manipulation of hours to keep employees just under the threshold for benefits. The dangling of promotions and raises that never quite materialize. The cult-like forced positivity of corporate culture that demands total devotion for minimal reward.
In one particularly gutting scene, longtime employee Joyce explains to a new hire how things have changed:
“When this store opened fifteen years ago, things were different. Working full-time, forty hours a week, wasn’t some big privilege—something you had to beg for. It was standard. That meant you could work here and live on what you made. You wouldn’t be rich, but you could live. If you wanted to make more, you could work overtime. Not anymore.”
It’s a stark illustration of how the social contract between employers and workers has eroded, leaving millions of Americans trapped in a cycle of poverty and instability.
Empathy for the Underdogs
What elevates “Help Wanted” above mere social critique is Adelle Waldman’s deep empathy for her characters. Even as she mercilessly skewers corporate doublespeak and managerial ineptitude, she never loses sight of the humanity of her retail workers.
We come to understand Raymond’s self-defeating pessimism as a coping mechanism for a lifetime of disappointment. We see how Nicole’s hostility and disaffection mask a fear of reaching for something more. Ans we recognize Val’s naked ambition as the survival instinct of someone who clawed her way out of homelessness.
The Dignity of Work
Most poignantly, we see how even the most mundane labor can provide a sense of purpose and belonging. For all their griping, the members of Movement take pride in their work and find meaning in small victories—a truck unloaded ahead of schedule, a display artfully arranged. There’s a touching camaraderie that develops among this band of underdogs, united in their shared struggle.
Flashes of Waldman’s Wit
Fans of Waldman’s bestselling debut “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” will recognize her talent for skewering social pretensions and exposing the gap between how people see themselves and how the world sees them. Her prose crackles with wry observations and perfectly deployed details.
Take this description of the store’s district manager:
“Raymond’s eye started to twitch. He had a congenital condition that prevented his left eye from opening all the way and made it appear hazy. When he was anxious, it also blinked frantically.”
Or this bit of internal monologue from Nicole:
“She couldn’t wait tables, she just couldn’t. Not after listening to her mother complain all these years. Her mother had been at the diner for twenty-five years, ever since the company she’d worked for before Nicole was born, the one that made keyboards for IBM, moved to Mexico.”
In just a few sentences, Waldman conjures entire life histories and generational sagas of deindustrialization and downward mobility.
A Humane Portrait of the Working Class
What’s most refreshing about Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman is how it restores dignity and complexity to a segment of society too often reduced to stereotype. These aren’t the salt-of-the-earth proles of power ballads, nor the “deplorables” of political caricature. They’re flawed, funny, frustrating human beings just trying to get by and maybe nurture some small dreams along the way.
Waldman has a keen ear for the gallows humor and weary fatalism of the service industry trenches. But she also captures the small kindnesses and moments of solidarity that allow people to maintain their humanity in dehumanizing conditions. When an elderly coworker offers Travis a ride on rainy days, or when Ruby slips Callie an extra $20 to get her nails done before a family visit, we’re reminded of the grace that exists even in difficult circumstances.
The Limits of Solidarity
Ultimately, though, “Help Wanted” is clear-eyed about the limits of worker solidarity in a system designed to keep people isolated and desperate. For all their schemes and bonding, the members of Movement remain trapped by forces larger than themselves. The novel’s bittersweet ending suggests that while communal action can provide some comfort, true escape remains elusive for most.
A Timely Portrait of American Inequality
In an era of deepening inequality and labor unrest, Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman feels especially timely and relevant. As recent strikes at Amazon warehouses and Starbucks stores have shown, American workers are increasingly fed up with stagnant wages and degrading conditions.
Waldman’s novel offers valuable insight into the day-to-day indignities that push people to their breaking point. It’s a stark reminder that behind every “low, low price” is a human cost—in sore backs, missed family dinners, and deferred dreams.
A Worthy Follow-Up
With “Help Wanted,” Adelle Waldman cements her status as one of our sharpest chroniclers of modern American life. While it may lack some of the romantic entanglements that drove the plot of “Nathaniel P.”, this sophomore effort showcases an expanding social vision and deepening empathy.
Fans of workplace comedies like “The Office” or Joshua Ferris’s “Then We Came to the End” will find much to enjoy here. But in its nuanced exploration of class and labor issues, “Help Wanted” also recalls socially conscious novels like Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” or Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, “Help Wanted” is that rare novel that entertains while also opening eyes to the hidden struggles of our neighbors. You’ll never look at a retail worker the same way again.
