Are You My Mother? is the title of a children’s book I loved to read to my son. In it, a baby bird falls out of its nest and wanders the earth, asking backhoe diggers and cats if they are its mother. Like that baby bird, lost in the disorienting psychic space of the post-industrial service economy, equally confused workers find themselves asking people, readers, followers, friends, and acquaintances the 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 media hits, including the 2022 film The Menu, the 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow, and the second season of the FX television series, The Bear offer their viewers and readers reassuring, well-crafted, and entertaining answers to this increasingly fundamental question.
As we are more and more alienated from the realm of production, so our lives are more and more oriented toward the ancillary domain of customer service. “Are you my customer?” has become an existential question. Who are “you,” the customer, anyway? You are me. Customers R Us. We are always customers of something, asking to be served ourselves. Customers are impatient, careless, unforgivable people, but they also kind of have it hard. It’s exhausting to be constantly demanding better service, asking to see the manager, stewing in a sous vide of discontent and resentment. In California where I live, customer service has been perfected as a technique of depersonalized friendliness and insincerity. “Hi, how are you? My name is Cathy, I’ll be your server today!” followed by a careful self-effacing, flash of teeth and perhaps even a slight bend at the waist.
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