The Record Haus

Welcome to The Record Haüs, a Chicago record store where the customers are demanding, the employees are dysfunctional, the music is loud, and management has absolutely no idea what it’s doing.

It’s July 2000, and after years of selling CDs, vinyl, cassettes, imports, and assorted musical detritus to the good people of Chicago, The Record Haüs is nearing the end of the line. For assistant manager Perry Hardaway, that might actually be good news. He’s underpaid, perpetually frustrated, trying to get his fledgling band off the ground, and spending far too much time babysitting a collection of coworkers who treat gainful employment as more of a suggestion than an obligation.

And those are the relatively normal problems.

Over the course of one very long week, Perry and the rest of the Haüs crew contend with bizarre customers, workplace romances, spectacularly inappropriate behavior, petty feuds, bad decisions, worse management, and the thousand tiny indignities familiar to anyone who has ever worked retail.

Set against the dying days of the independent record-store era, The Record Haüs is a fast, profane, music-soaked comedy about friendship, work, growing up, and the strange little families we build in the places we never intended to stay.

If you remember when discovering music meant digging through bins instead of scrolling through an app—or if you’ve ever worked a job that made you wonder how any of your coworkers survived to adulthood—welcome to the Haüs.

The music is playing. The store is open. For now.