In the past couple of months, I was able to observe the Thai catering sector from within; in Chiang Rai, a brand new shopping centre, the Central Plaza, opened a few months ago, and I went to work in one of the outlets in the food court as a volunteer.
Much to the amazement of the Thai personnel, I was peeling vegetables, grating green papaya and carrots, slicing onions, and much more, for four hours or more almost every day. After a few days they got used to seeing a foreigner working there, but the puzzlement remained high that a westerner was prepared to work there, even without being paid. The customers, who sometimes glimpsed this ‘farang’ (the Thai term for a westerner) hard at work, were equally amazed. If, exceptionally, I failed to turn up one day, there were always people asking where the ‘farang’ was.
What I noticed most of all is how hard people have to work in the Thai catering business, and for what small wages. For the owners of the food stalls (and that also goes for ordinary food stalls and small restaurants on the street) the working days are very long. They start long before the food stall actually opens, when they go and buy ingredients at the market. The food court at the shopping centre is open between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m.; before opening there are all the preparations, and after closing time, there is obviously more work to be done, tidying and cleaning. At the shopping centre, a working day is thus a minimum of 14 hours long, and that does not include going out to buy ingredients, or bookkeeping. Profit margins are minimal, because competition is intense. Many people eat out, or buy take-away meals at the food stalls, because prices are so low. At a guess, not more than a 10% profit is made on food; since prices are so low, that amounts to hard work for what is very little money for westerners.
Employees are getting even less: for 8 or 9 hours of work every day, seven days a week, 30 or 31 days a month, 365 days a year (the average food stall never closes), a worker is paid between 5000 and 6000 Baht per month (between £100 and £120, or between $160 and $195). Granted, the basic cost of living (food and drink, clothing) is much lower here, but many other things don’t cost much less than in Europe or the U.S. (petrol is about £0.75 / $1.25 a litre; a mobile phone, a necessity for most Thai people, costs about the same; so do cars). Thai people admit that nobody can live on this kind of income; many people have a second job, live with their family or share a room or a small flat with friends). And most people are (heavily) in debt, and live from one pay day to the next loan. Yet it is remarkable how few people I have heard complaining about working conditions, long hours, the lack of a day off, and so on. On the contrary – it always strikes me how many smiling faces I see every day. Obviously, the sort of conditions I have described are seen as the norm, but there is also a completely different way of thinking. Although poverty is widespread according to western standards, a drastically different philosophy and mindset (taking care of your family and friends first, and only then thinking of yourself) make for a much greater solidarity which in itself actually makes poverty less of a problem than in the West.
My experiences as a kitchen menial at Central Plaza has taught me a lot: apart from the obvious knife skills, I have also realised that a well-paid job and working conditions that we see as normal, should not be taken for granted. I have also learnt that the better the working and living conditions, the more people seem to complain...
