The story centres around manager Manny DeLeon and the last shift and closure of a Red Lobster restaurant in New Britain, Connecticut.

[4][5] O'Nan has said that he was prompted to write the book after reading about a real Red Lobster restaurant which was closed overnight and thinking about "the off-kilter relationship between corporate ownership vs. local constituents".

A starred review in The Atlantic commended the book as a "melancholy but never bitter story of a decent guy trying to do the right thing" and O'Nan's writing as able to "coax poetry from the prosaic".

[1] In his review for The New York Times, Nathaniel Rich calls the novella "a methodical, minute-by-minute account" of the day but said that O'Nan "can evoke the tedium of the job too effectively", noting the "five full pages" describing the use of a snowblower to clear snow from around the restaurant.

[10] Ron Charles from The Washington Post recommended the novella in his top 10 reads for Labor Day, calling the story "quietly moving" and a "clear-eyed insight into the way millions of people work and get laid off in America".