Are You My Customer? (part 1)

an essay about the apotheosis of service work in The Menu, A Gentleman in Moscow and The Bear

            Are You My Mother? is the title of a children’s book I loved to read to my son about a confused baby  bird who spends almost the entire narrative wandering the world, asking kittens and hens and backhoe diggers “Are you my mother?” In the disorienting psychic space of the post-industrial service economy, we equally confused workers find ourselves asking people, readers, followers, friends, and acquaintances the unspoken question, “Are you my customer?” – or better yet, for those of us who believe in craft labor – “Am I serving you, my customer, or a higher cause?” Recent narratives, including the 2022 film The Menu ,  2016’s novel A Gentleman in Moscow and the second season of the FX television series  The Bear Season 2(2023) offer reassuring, well-crafted and entertaining answers to these questions. By elevating the figure of the service worker to victim-hero, they divert our attention away from the fact that the world of production is being monopolized by a singular, powerful, chip-making machine, described by Dutch inventor and engineer Jos Benschop in the recent New York Times Magazine article on US China trade wars “as the most complex thing mankind has ever produced.”