WORK TO DO: A Novel, like "The Office" only meaner

WORK TO DO: A Novel
JULES WERNERSBACH
University of Iowa Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 paperback, preorder now for delivery on 7 April 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When Eleanor founded Guadalupe Street Co-op in the early 1980s, she was in her mid-twenties and madly in love with her girlfriend, Meg. Together, they envisioned an idyllic grocery store owned by its workers and customers.

Forty years later, Guadalupe Street Co-op is an iconic Austin business with a loyal customer base, an antiquated business model, and a disgruntled staff. Roz, one of the store’s senior managers, is too caught up stalking her ex-wife online to notice that her girlfriend, Molly, is plotting with her coworkers to unionize. Roz also doesn’t see that Molly is not-so-secretly in a situationship with Randy, the dairy manager leading their collective.

Unfolding over the course of a single week during Texas hurricane season, Work to Do pings between the co-op’s first year and present day, as the unionization bid reaches fever pitch. The wind howls, the power goes out, and water creeps through the front door, as questions of who owns the grocery store and who has a right to its future are posed. And will the workers ever be paid enough to buy the organic groceries they shelve?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Hierarchies change people, at the top and at the bottom. They're good for, and at, that...yet we're told that being "a family" is not to be in a hierarchy by the kind of lefty person who sets up a co-op. (I was transported to Wheatsville as I read this.) If that's the case, what kind of family did you grow up in? Parents are our first bosses, our first gods. The idea of hierarchy is instilled in us by "bedtime" and "naptime" and, most hated of all, "bathtime." These activities are policed by Authority, ie parents. Thus from a young age we are in a hierarchy called "family"; soon enough, we begin to rebel. We desire to make our own choices, our own lessons learned our own way.

A unionization drive at a co-op is the business equivalent of adolescent rebellion. It felt to me as though all the characters were coping with adolescent emotional states throughout the story. The nature of any group is to experience friction in different strengths and around different topics of disagreement. This story pits idealism...no co-op anywhere ever is founded to make a profit...and pragmatism...how the hell can I pay rent and buy food this month? It's all tangled up with personality conflicts, old grudges, and the inevitable recrudescence of Being Right in any group attempting to make decisions.

Eleanor, the founder of the co-op, is parent to the idea and has powerful, forty-year-old ideas about the concept of the workers as family. Of course no one's paid enough, no one ever is because capitalism runs on scarcity. No matter that you're structuring a business on a cooperative model, you're still in a capitalist system, its pressures still apply. As the founder (owner is not applicable, they all own the co-op) Eleanor's investment is truly, intimately personal. It explains but does not excuse how thoroughly unpleasant Eleanor is during the whole book.

In point of fact, everyone from Randy the unionizer to Roz the manager, through to Eleanor the founder, is thoroughly unpleasant. Not one of them behaves empathetically, with kindness, or in any way not narcissistically. This is not the read for someone who needs to like the characters they're reading about. It's well-observed, with lots of clever lines; it's got the hurricane and its aftermath to give the reader a serious jolt of adrenaline; it's been part of everyone's experience to be a member of a hierarchy that's experiencing change. I was kept in the flow of the story by these structural realities while not invested in any one character's success. It was an interesting experience of being on the outside of a story, looking on as events unfolded, feeling myself caring in an abstract way about these folks.

Anyone who wonders if queer people running things, leftist running things, or multigenerational structure including all ages, are happier workplaces should read this story. Anyone who thinks life is better when x thing is the center of your work, your relationship, your mind should read this story. People are people. They do and say stupid, ill-advised things. Sometimes hurtful words are fixable, sometimes they aren't...don't think you're being Right will carry you through to inevitable victory...or even to happiness. It's all laid bare in Author Wernersbach's smoothly polished prose.

Read Work to Do when you're after a cautionary tale about hubris, a reminder that empathy is always a better choice, that cooperation trumps selfishness but does not necessarily mean getting what you want. It's a very grown-up person's book, and looks at queer people in all their messy, human glory...and snickers behind its hand.