Help Wanted

Waldman’s (The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.) latest centers on a logistics crew at a big-box retailer who jostle among themselves for better pay and benefits. As the team members stock the store, they band together to get their incompetent manager promoted. They do this not out of kindness but because, in a ripple effect of promotions, one of them could end up as group manager, with steady hours, health insurance, and a substantial raise. Though this novel is billed as a workplace comedy, the store and its environs are bleak and painfully realistic, and the workers’ plan to get promotions is less of a caper than a struggle for survival. With a disaffected, sarcastic tone, narrator Amanda Ronconi offers a somewhat uneven performance, capturing the accents of the born-and-raised upstate New Yorkers but slipping when presenting other accents among the wide-ranging crew; a character from New Jersey sounds Southern, and a Honduran character occasionally sounds Jamaican. Throughout the twists and turns, the novel wavers between trying to be a sitcom and putting forth an analysis of post-recession America.