Fic­tion

Help Want­ed

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2023

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 Team 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.

Discussion Questions