Abstract Tired of settling for temporary internships, Rick, a 24-year-old with Down syndrome, decides to quit and starts looking for a real long-term job. Thanks to a friend, he finds it at the Old Abrate Chocolate Factory. While he is making new friends and falls in love with a colleague, Tina, his parent’s marriage is falling apart.

Details Rick is a 24-year-old with Down syndrome, is tired of taking on internships, and wants to find a real long-term job. So, after the last of countless boring assignments at his workplace, he decides to quit. Ivan, Ricky’s father, has recently sold his small firm to spend more time with his son and allow his wife to go back to work. He is talking about it with some old colleagues when he receives a call from Rick’s office, alarming him that Rick had left without telling anyone. Worried, he goes looking for him and finds him staring at a fish tank in a Chinese restaurant. That same night, around the dinner table, Rick’s parents discuss with him his future. He claims that he wants to have a real job and refuses to start another internship or do anything else until he finds one. He even refuses to get in the morning or do anything at all during his day, and his mother, Alessia, worries that he is going to fall back into a crisis as it has already happened in the past. So, she offers to take some weeks off work, but Ivan declines and promises that he is going to take care of their son. Desperate, the dad complains to the social services, which are not able to find a respectable job for his son, and out of frustration, decides to go look for one himself together with Rick. However, it is thanks to a friend of his, Cedrini, that Rick finally gets an interview for a job at the Old Abrate Chocolate Factory. In the meantime, Ivan and Alessia’s marriage starts to tremble when he finds out that she had been cheating on him with her boss for a year and a half, while she reveals that she knew about an affair that Ivan had in the past, while she had been taking care of Rick who was going through a depression. Rick insists on going on the interview at the chocolate factory all alone by bike to show independence. On his way there, his bike breaks down, and he shows up late, so his interview is cancelled. Just when he thinks that he has wasted the opportunity of a lifetime, he approaches Emma, an old paraplegic woman in a wheelchair who turns out to be the chocolate factory’s ex-manager and mother of the current one, Miriam. By seeing him with her mother, Miriam decides to give him another chance and, ultimately, hires him effective immediately.
His new job consists of creating unique packaging and assembling the chocolates’ boxes. His team is composed of other people with intellectual disabilities, among which his friend Cedrini, head of the department, and Tina, a girl with Albanian origins for whom he starts developing feelings. Despite his first argument with a colleague who is jealous of him and Tina, he hits it off in his new team and starts to make new friends. Before getting to know the workplace, Rick does not warn his dad, who gets worried about not seeing him come home. Therefore, he decides to go personally to the factory to see what is happening. When he gets there, he finds out about Rick’s new job and expresses his doubts and worries to Miriam, who, slightly bothered, reassures him. Ivan and Alessia try to talk their divergences out, and he confesses that he has had various affairs in the past. They agree that they have been emotionally distant for a long time, so they decide to accept their separation and Alessia’s relationship with her boss. Although, for Rick’s sake, they choose not to make it official. The packaging team has planned a karaoke night, where Rick decides to duet with Tina. They rehearse at her house, and the more time they spend together, they start to fall in love. Rick becomes happier and happier, and Tina even helps him accept their condition, which is something he always finds difficult. Nevertheless, Ivan finds out about the relationship and becomes slightly apprehensive. He shows up again at Miriam’s office to express his doubts, but she refuses to accede to his demands, considering him overprotective. At first, he does not react well and accuses her of being insensitive and not knowing what it means to have a child with Down syndrome. However, when Miriam reveals that she had a daughter bearing the same condition and lost her to a heart attack, he apologizes. At the meeting, he finds out that Rick knew about his parents’ separation all along and that he had talked about it with his colleagues and Miriam. Just when everything seems to point in the right direction, new problems start arising. The factory’s board of directors, the Abrate family, proposes a partnership with a bigger French company that would boost the Abrate Chocolate Factory’s profit, under the condition that they would have to cede to the packaging department. This would mean the end of Rick’s and his colleagues’ jobs. However, Miriam is determined not to give up and fight for their job.