An overqualified woman is forced to take a temporary holiday sales job to survive after her divorce and becomes frustrated by her idiotic supervisors. She finds compassion in an unlikely ally who confirms that being smart and compassionate truly are keys to success.

SYNOPSIS:

"Superstore" meets "The Devil Wears Prada"

When Amanda and her husband split, she moves with her kids back to Southern California where she has contacts and expects to easily get back into the workforce. She has some money from the sale of their house, but that dwindles quickly as hundreds of job applications and a handful of interviews leaves her homeless and desperate.

She takes a temporary holiday retail job just to get by. The manager, Gerardo, is a self-obsessed, self-important egomaniac who thinks he's smarter and better at everything than he is. As her prospects get worse, she has to suck up Gerardo's insulting behavior until something hopefully, finally comes through. With almost no savings left, she and her two children move from a nice hotel to a medium level motel to a cheap crappy motel. Even with all of the bad things in her life, she is compassionate to an elderly, likely homeless woman, Mildred, who hangs around the Mall where she works. With clues from Mildred's stories, Amanda implements concepts that help her become the top sales associate.

Gerardo is determined to show her he is boss and stop her from doing the customer service things she has implemented. He writes her up for every imagined offense to assure he can let her go when the Holiday rush is over. When the corporate reps are scheduled to visit to check on the first month progress, Gerardo makes sure Amanda isn't scheduled to work. This scheme backfires when the corporate reps specifically want to meet the top sales person, Amanda. It couldn't come at a worse time. Amanda is in the middle of moving to yet another motel and scrambles to go see the reps. As she races to get to the meeting, she can't locate Mildred to give her food. She is torn. Does she go meet the reps to forward her own cause at a job she may not likely want to keep even if they offer to keep her on? Or does she follow her heart and gut instinct to help the woman she has come to think of as family?

When Mildred is discovered unconscious by a mall security guard, Amanda drops everything to be by her side. Amanda's compassion is not only a life-saver for Mildred, it ends up gaining the attention of the corporate owners who reward Amanda with the executive level job she has been seeking.

Being smart and compassionate truly are the keys to Amanda's success.