The foreign-worker invasion by the People’s Republic appears to have conquered Singapore’s car wash industry. Prior to this local phenomenon, the heavily accented English of friendly Malaysians could be heard at nearly every manual car wash, punctuated by the slightly better English of their otherwise Hokkien-spewing Singaporean supervisors. These days, crisp Mandarin direct from the Middle Kingdom is what I hear most often at these places, spoken by Chinese ex-farmers contracted to clean our dirty cars.
Hardworking, honest and disarmingly courteous, these guys happily earn every cent of that $6-$7. And their wages are probably low enough for the car wash boss to hire six China nationals to do the same job as three Malaysians.
One chap would be doing the spraying (surely the most fun task of all), another the soaping and sponging, while the remaining four fellows concentrate on scrubbing one wheel each. That’s socialism, with bubbles.
I think it’s time to up the ante in the whirl of car washes. They should import pretty girls from Beijing to man the booths. These women don’t have to get wet – they just need to be the eye candy before and after the sudsy section.
They’ll greet the customer enthusiastically when his car arrives unwashed, accept payment with a smile, and say goodbye with gusto when he leaves in his well-washed car. As for attire, these newly imported “washerwomen” from China should dress to impress.
