reviewed by Isaac Fox
About a quarter of the way through Susan Yim’s “Hi _______, do you have a small minute to talk about your extended warranty?”, the piece retitles itself. The new, far more representative, title is “What are your most recent thoughts on life as it is in the present moment: a survey.” (A note on genre: this doesn’t really fit any of the categories, so I’ll refer to it simply as a “piece.”)
“Hi _______…” takes the form of a customer survey, much like the vaguely addressed, blander-than-cardboard ones infesting everyone’s mailbox and inbox. But this survey is a handwritten splash of color, and its questions are a little different than what the title might lead you to expect. One offers up an array of geometric patterns and asks, “Which one is life? NOTE: There is a correct answer.” Other questions flow vertically up and down the page, and at times, some (but not all) of the letters in a sentence invert or turn sideways. This barrage of subverted expectations turns an annoying little constant of 21st-century life into something chaotic and unsettling.
Over the course of Yim’s piece, the speaker’s voice alternates between intrusive, absurd, poetic, crude, existential, and increasingly frantic. At the same time, Yim also evokes the chilly, authoritative voice of a more traditional questionnaire. These opposing tones often clash with each other or change places suddenly, as in this question: “Follow a line or don’t / Doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, right?” The resulting effect captures the contradictions and whiplash of our collective “most recent thoughts on life as it is in the present moment.”
You can read “Hi _______, do you have a small minute to talk about your extended warranty?” online at https://www.havehashad.com/hadposts/a-questionnaire. Yim has also posted several people’s responses, including her own, on Twitter. Her handle is @fearthenorms. HAD (https://www.havehashad.com) posts something short and delightfully odd every day.
Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren’t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in Rune Bear and Heart of Flesh magazines, as well as Green Blotter’s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188.