Oh, the dreaded call to customer service! You begin with a simple question in mind and the highest hopes of a quick resolve. When the operator picks up you discover, not an operator but an automated system. You patiently listen to all of your options and hit the proper number on your phone. After waiting through some lovely looped music and a periodic voice interrupting to remind you of how important your call is you finally hear a new voice. This voice, too, is automated and offers you more options!

In his satirical novella Customer Service, Benoit Duteurte explores one mans journey through this modern day labyrinth.

When the narrator looses his phone he finds himself cut off from family and friends whose phone numbers are now lost to him. When he can't remember his computer password, he looses his ability to do his work. And when he can't remember his code to the lock on his apartment building, he find himself in danger of loosing his home. After finding no resolution in the phone maze he decides to head straight to the top, the owner of the signature that appears on all of his bills, the mysterious customer service agent Leslie Delmare.

Duteurte's writing throughout this novella, as translated by Bruce Benderson, is very straight forward. It's a bit like reading a newspaper column series. The reader easily relates to the aggravation of the hours of phone calls trying to get services or billing information corrected.

The final chapter, however, takes a bit of an odd turn. Putting one in the mind of having read a Twilight Zone episode. ( )

The other night I was at the DT window in my job… and a lady asked me what was the difference between 6 different items that have the word “nachos” on them… at firsts I thought she was confused and I ask her to be more specific and to tell me the 2 items she wanted to hear the difference… and she said on her bitchy voice “all of them…” this is the part of the history when the bitch realizes too fucking late with what kind of nut case she dealing… 45 seconds later when I finished telling her every single ingredient on each and everyone of the mother fucking nachos all she could say was: “I guess I asked for it” and them proceeded to order something else… every time I have to deal with this dumb fucks I ask my self WHY GOOGLE? WHY ME??? WHY SO MANY RETARDS!!!!??? WHY????!!! That was what was going on inside my sick, afro covered head when I was reading this… all I could see is these dude who acts like he is smarter than the dumb people trying to help him but can’t do nothing against the rules their employers set… and then something “funny” happened now keep in mind that I’m a sick/twisted individual… I am Alfonso, The One That Laugh At Things That Ain’t Funny! This 3 dumb bitches were sitting in 2 of the chairs in front of me… now you may notice that there are only 2 chairs in the last preposition but 3 dumb bitches sitting in there… how could this be you may ask yourself… well simple dumb bitch #1 was sitting on the chair on the left dumb bitch #2 was sitting on the one in the right, and DUMB as fuck bitch #3 was sitting in the arms of the 2 previously mentioned chairs… I know what you thinking… why would anybody seat on the arms of the chairs when the Wikipedia entrance clearly says that a chair is usually used to seat a single person… why the dumb bitches decides to seat together… is beyond me the thing is that they were sitting there… when a B&N employee came to explain that they shouldn’t being doing that… and this happened:

B&N employee: excuse me, you can’t be seating in the arm of the chairs, there is a chair right here in front of you that you can use…

Dumb Bitch #3: why not? We’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes without being any problems….

B&N Employee (who was wearing a face that screamed: did she seriously just say that?): well, is the rules only one person per chair.

Now this is the part where I start laughing like a maniac I couldn’t believe that was happening infront of me…. So I’m not sure what was being said.

Dumb Bitch #3: I’m not sure what she said but it had something to do with there not being a sign that says its only one person per chair….


Now at this point I was practically crapping my pants of how hard I was laughing… I mean I couldn’t ve the B&N employee didn’t grab a book or something and bashed the dumb bitch’s head off… it was so freaking funny like if the dumb bitch suddenly turned 10 and the B&N employee became her mother… the stupid thing is that after they finished their discussion on sitting manners and protocols it was established the stupid bitch kept fighting to the B&N employee who was just doing her job… after the “discussion” was over one of them pointed at me and said: something like “I love the title of that book” (customer service) and something else that I couldn’t catch cuz I was laughing too hard… all I wanted to say it was something of the line “omg, you the dumbest person I’ve seen in the last 3 months” but all I could do was laugh like an idiot =(

Now the thing I learn from this experience is that the dumb bitch is kind of right… there is no rules specifying how one should seat on the chairs… next time I’m there I’ma pull an Ata (old friend from highschool who liked to sit upside down) and mess with the B&N employee and telling her that there is no sign demanding that I seat like a normal human being =)

( )

Weird, fun little read about a man thrust into a Kafkaesque hell when he loses his cell phone. He tries to call the customer service number attached to account only to be sent running in circles. Then he has a problem with his computer and the mysteries of the customer-service universe deepen. Before long, he's down the rabbit hole and into a strange world where a giant corporation controls everything and nothing. It's an amusing entry in the Contemporary Art of the Novella series. ( )

It is easy to see why Beckett encouraged Duteurtre. He has a controlled tone and pace, and the form is spare and fluid. This could have been an excellent exercise in form if it weren't for the subject, "customer service."

The content is consistently passé: the narrator struggles with personal computers and technology; he trots out clichéd notions of capitalism and politics; he indulges in inept musings on sociology and demographics; and the whole is driven by a lackadaisical plot machinery to do with the frustrations of getting good customer service. Duteurtre seems not to know anything much about politics, or about people who write about the frustrations of consumerism, or about writers who actually know technology. The narrator is a lazy journalist who does his research on the internet, and the book could have been better if Duteurtre had seen more of himself in that character. I can't help but think he will be embarrassed when he discovers what people like Nicholson Baker, William Gibson, or Brett Easton Ellis have done on the obsessions of capitalist technology. Other reviewers are simply wrong when they say this book is an incisive inquiry into consumerism, that "Duteurtre's metaphors serve as a testament that will allow later generations to see how society dove into the technology craze with gusto, and not enough caution," that the book is full of trenchant critiques of our blissfully ignorant consumer culture. The book has no insights that were not already worked through, in much more powerful forms, by writers from Debord to Negri. ( )

Duteurtre's seemingly simple treatise on the negative effects of technology in today's world slowly reveals its layers in small increments. The unnamed protagonist lets loose his frustrations on the encroaching field of electronics with skillful comparisons of old-world ideas juxtaposed with modern innovations. His angers and concerns absolutely echo the sentiments that many people feel today in an age of fast-paced living. The second half of the novella slides eerily into surrealism, with the character of Leslie Delmare seemingly representing the narrator's conscience, with a personality that both intrigues and clashes with his own. A present-day 1984, this glimpse into a world just like ours, yet slightly off-kilter, shows us our future if we don't slow down. Not quite dystopian, yet not quite real life, Duteurtre's metaphors serve as a testament that will allow later generations to see how society dove into the technology craze with gusto, and not enough caution. ( )