A mere 120 pages long, Kwan Ann Tan’s choose-your-own-adventure novella, The Waiter, offers more than just adventure. Set in a near-future London that is infested with spontaneously opening and closing sinkholes—or “maws”—the book invites readers to step into the shoes of an unnamed Waiter, whose job it is to complete time-consuming, unproductive tasks on behalf of various clients, from stirring a simmering pot of soup for hours to queueing for a viral donut.
The reader gets to choose, alongside the eponymous Waiter, what jobs to accept, what route to take to get there, and whether to stay on track or not. Every choice leads to a new storyline, each of which explores different characters and aspects of this dystopic world, and brings the reader to a different ending. Which ending matters less than the collection of choices and consequences within one volume itself—the interactive reading experience epitomizes the experience of living in a media-saturated, urban world, in which life can splinter into so many different directions that more time is spent on exploring the simulation of these options than on committing to one.
The unnamed Waiter is a stranger to herself. She has no recollection of who she was before she was saved and recruited by the Company. The Company maintains strict control over her life by paying her in their own credits, which gives her access to Company housing and clothing. It tracks her activities through her phone and encourages her to consume articles about boosting productivity, which is the cornerstone of its business model. The protagonist is made to be ordinary and grey: firstly, by the Company, so that she could slot seamlessly into the lives of productivity maximizing clients; secondly, by the author, to allow the reader to assume her blankness and explore the options provided within this world. The layered experience of assuming this character’s perspective as she assumes her client’s perspectives—stepping into their kitchen to stir soup, slipping into their hotel room to drop off their suitcase—feels like an embodiment of the today’s parasocial, media-driven relationships, where voyeurs are invited into the most private places of influencers’ lives.
What’s more, the Waiter—and, by proxy, the reader—is not limited to one of these lives. The story may come to a close in the darkness of a maw on one page, only to continue on the next, on a different trajectory. Every subsequent restart in search of a different alternative is like a re-read, a reinterpretation of the world at hand; just like how every new piece of media consumed, every new influencer followed, is another way of life to be voyeuristically explored.
The explorations in Tan’s novella are cast in different tones and genres. Through its interactive nature, The Waiter allows for a lot more exploration and rumination than its slimness would suggest. Every fork in the road provides a chance to explore a different side to the world and a different way to exist in it. Altogether, the novella makes for a compelling reading experience that nudges readers to consider what it means to be making choices in an overcrowded, overstimulating world that is obsessed with efficiency.