wasted cleaning labour

Japanese food is quite popular in Thailand, and several chain stores offer not-quite-authentic-but-passable Japanese food around town. Zen is one such chain.

We went to the one in Central Pinklao right before closing time, when the waitresses were already starting to clean up.


Would you believe it, the waitresses actually collected all the little soy sauce pots and emptied them into the big bottle, so that they could wash each little pot and put it away.


And if that weren't enough, another waitress collected all the spice bottles, emptied those into a big plastic bag, and whisked them all away...and in this case, it's not even like the bottles were some fancy ceramic thing, they were the original bottles that the spices came in, straight from the shop.

What a complete waste of labour...not to mention unhygienic!


It would make a lot more sense to use that human power and spend it in cleaning the restaurant, which looked worn down and dirty, rather than wasting it on soy sauce and spice bottles!

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