Kopi with Bertha: Oops, I forgot to return my tray

by Bertha Henson

NO ONE ever returns the tray at the hawker centre I frequent. Neither do I. I have a million excuses for not doing so. I haven’t done so in the 30 years I’ve eaten there and when the tray return station popped up a couple of years ago, I just didn’t think to do it either. It’s a habit. I will also add that there is just one tray return point and it’s at a corner of the hawker centre. It’s easily missed or, in my case, forgotten. My third excuse is that the centre has such effective cleaners that you risk getting your tray of half-eaten food taken away from under your nose if you suddenly lay down your chopsticks and spoon.

Yes, yes, I know it’s a disgusting habit. And to think that some years ago in my past life, I helped initiate a Return Your Tray campaign way before the G agencies did so. We made stickers for tables which said: “This mess is not OK, Please Return Your Dirty Tray”.

When TMG went out to scour hawker centres and coffeeshops for a fix on the tray-return habit, the results didn’t surprise me. People simply ate – and left. And the birds came. More recently, when the Public Hygiene Council gave the tray return habit four out of 10 points, I thought the tally was too generous.

This week, I was at an unfamiliar hawker centre chafing at the lack of clean tables. Trays with bowls and plates had been left behind. I sat gingerly at one messy table and was looking around for a cleaner when I realised that the tray return station was a mere five steps away. I piled the bowls and used tissue paper on a tray and “returned” it, all the while keeping an eye that no one would sit down and chope the seat while I was doing so. Then out came my packet of tissue paper and the mess was wiped away.  I thought to myself that I just cleared up after someone else.

When TMG asked patrons why they didn’t clear up after themselves, they gave similar reasons, including the need to preserve the jobs of cleaners. Do you really want to make the old aunty or uncle lose their jobs by practising good hygiene? I know there are aunties and uncles who do so, and I always feel guilty that they have such jobs. I get upset at messy eaters, the sort who leave bones and bits of food on the table and then leave without a thought. My mother has a habit of wrapping them up nicely in a tissue paper and leaving the mess on the bowl or plate. I’ve learnt that habit at least.

But what about the cleaners? Will they be re-deployed? Their answers to TMG were illuminating. Some said that they could always find a job at another hawker centre, which means they know how widespread the bad habit is. They also complained about how they are run off their feet during peak periods like lunchtime. Once, when a TMG photographer appeared with a camera at a hawker centre, the cleaners worked doubly quickly because they thought he was an environment inspector.

Besides the aunties and uncles, there are plenty of foreign cleaners as well. Young women and men making a living away from home. I was thinking that if there were no local aunties and uncles, they wouldn’t have a job here because surely a quota system operates for the employment of foreign cleaners? It seems we leave the dirty jobs to old people and foreigners. This week, I spied a female cleaner at another unfamiliar hawker centre who was clearly not right in the head. She was clearing tables haphazardly and talking to herself. But it seems she is a fixture as several patrons seemed to know her. If she didn’t have this job, would someone like her be able to get another easily?

Are these excuses that we make for our dirty habit? That, in our heart of hearts, we are concerned for the livelihood of the cleaners? I think it’s an excuse we think up when we’re caught. Then there’s this suggestion that people should be incentivised to return their trays. I was thinking maybe we should just tip the cleaners if so.

I don’t know about you but I make it a habit to return my tray at fast-food restaurants. Is it the air-con and ambience? Or is it because crockery,  cutlery and napkins are disposable? Sometimes the food is wrapped in grease paper – they look like stuff that need to be thrown away.  So I usually tip them into the bin and pile my empty tray on top of the trays other such well-behaved patrons.

I would also never not return my tray in the food courts at the university – because everyone else does so. Is that what should happen – it has to start with someone and hopefully, more and more people will be influenced by the example? I’m not sure. I gather that it is the case in the army where soldiers have to return their trays and students in school canteens, so what happens when these people go out in the working world as adults? They behave like children?

But who am I to criticise others? That occasion earlier this week, when I cleaned up after someone else’s mess, I didn’t clean up after my own. I ate – and left. I only realised this when I was writing this column.

In this column, consulting editor Bertha Henson muses about life and living – and makan – through the scenes she witnesses in her neighbourhood.

 

Featured Image by Natassya Diana.

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The post Kopi with Bertha: Oops, I forgot to return my tray appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Bertha Henson