I read Help Wanted by Adele Waldman this spring almost in one go. It was a Barack Obama reading pick, and it didn’t disappoint.
It is one of the best novels about the workplace I have ever read and a parable and commentary on post-Industrial capitalism. It centres around a group of colleagues in a logistics department, that has recently and hilariously been renamed ‘Movement’ by some management consultants. They have an awful manager, Meredith, who is in danger of promotion, given that the store manager of a once but no longer great big-box retail store is about to move on to better things. Meredith’s team are at first delighted that their views are going to be taken into account in whether or not she should be promoted to store manager, and then concerned, when they realise that if they tell the truth and she isn’t promoted as a result, they will be stuck with her.
In response, the team of disparate characters, each with their own story of how they ended up working the 4-8am retail shift, get together to form a plan, one that goes against all their natural instincts. They agree to report to management what a wonderful manager Meredith is, given that she will do less damage to them on a day-to-day basis as store manager than she does as their team manager, causing them daily grief and making all their jobs both harder and less fun. As the plan takes shape, each of them dream about what it could be like if they were to get promoted to backfill the gap she will leave.
This was such an enjoyable read. It was spot-on in describing what it is like to work in an environment that revolves around cardboard boxes, as I know from my partner who works in a packing factory. It also reminded me of Animal Farm by George Orwell in both its story-telling style and in cleverly setting out a much a bigger narrative about the global economy and the impact it has on the lives of people at the bottom of the employment pecking order.  It well deserves its accolades and I shall be recommending this short and beautifully formed novel far and wide.
