Punch in. Punch out. Factory life moves one shift at a time. Nineteen-year-old Lee Bauer has flunked her way out of college and is moving back in with her parents and younger sister. Her father presents her with a bill for her wasted tuition-and a demand that she repay it immediately. With limited employment options for a college dropout, Lee takes a job at a local ice cream factory. The work is monotonous but strangely comforting. Days are filled with aimless gossip and hanging out with equally aimless coworkers. Then she meets Kris, a coworker unlike anyone Lee has encountered, and she feels a growing attachment that inspires comparable amounts of excitement and confusion. As Lee wrestles with her feelings and identity, family and friends, and struggles to find her place in an uncertain world, she is torn between the freedom of youth and the responsibility of adulthood.