In the best dystopias, terror comes from a footing in the real world. Adelle Waldman has created such a tale in her latest novel, Help Wanted.
Waldman is the author of the 2013 critically acclaimed novel of manners, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., a biting commentary on the pretensions of Brooklyn literati. In Help Wanted, the bespoke bookstores and trendy coffee shops of Nathaniel P.’s world give way to a “dungeon-like” warehouse and the dimly lit sales floor of a suburban big box store. Waldman brings to both projects an acute sensibility for ferreting out social mores and class hierarchies that sustain inequities.
Help Wanted is set in the fictional Town Square in Potterstown, New York. According to Waldman, the inspiration for Potterstown draws from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), specifically the dystopian Pottersville, a town undone by the rich and evil Mr. Potter. The plot brings the members of Team Movement together in a caper to unseat their micromanaging and incompetent boss, Meredith. They hatch a plan to promote her so they can secure a new boss. Plans to overthrow the oblivious and self-centered Meredith lead to surprising allegiances, bait-and-switch tricks, a distraction from the grueling early morning shift, and even a little hope.
Before writing the book, Waldman worked a minimum wage job for six months during the early morning shift at a Target near the Catskills in New York. Putting herself in the shoes of her subjects draws immediate comparisons to Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere (1984) and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed (2001). However, Waldman parts ways with Conover and Ehrenreich, purposefully steering clear of memoir to decenter her experience as a middle-class writer out of her comfort zone unloading boxes and stocking shelves in the wee hours of the morning.
To her credit, Waldman doesn’t romanticize, patronize, or use the working-class characters in Help Wanted as props in a broader story about the morality of the white middle class. Told from the point of view of a cast of relatable people, the resulting narrative is a complex ensemble of voices that makes for a refreshingly non-didactic read. There are debates in the story about union organizing, but this is not Norma Rae (1979). There is no titular hero who takes down the boss and inspires the oppressed to revolt. Instead, Help Wanted simmers with injustice and a quiet acceptance that the corporate office has rigged the system.
The book’s title captures Waldman’s comedic tone. The cover features a glossy, brightly colored “Help Wanted” sign – yet Town Square isn’t offering a living wage or even steady hours. Like Joshua Ferris’ And Then We Came to the End and the television series Superstore, Waldman embraces workplace comedy, creating insufferable corporate neologisms like “the smart huddle” and absurd workplace rules that generate eye rolls from employees.
Waldman grasps that comedy isn’t always funny and that laughter can be political. Help Wanted reflects our grim world in which corporate greed trumps human rights and the Orwellian doublespeak of conservatives who talk about lifting people out of poverty and into jobs. In Help Wanted, soft corporate power consistently erodes workers’ ability to succeed. Some of the characters work two jobs to make ends meet.
All the members of Team Movement eagerly request and are consistently denied a 40-hour work week that would enable them to keep their health insurance and other benefits. One of the characters, Val, stocks a section she renames “Toys for Rich Kids”, which displays toys she cannot afford to buy. Other structural problems that impede the members of Team Movement include a lack of housing, childcare, and reliable transportation.
Waldman’s Help Wanted is a contemporary dystopian tale set in the wasteland of corporate greed and neoliberal policies. Waldman skewers capitalism, showing once again how much it sucks to work at a soul-crushing job that sells the fantasy of endless consumption. As Waldman’s character Val puts it, it feels less like the “beginning of a new day than the ass end of a very old one.”