A typical Saudi laundry (undated photo from flickr.com)
[from FB post: January 12, 2017]
The Laundry
Another place I pass on my daily walk to the coffee shop is the laundry. It is not just a place I pass, but a place I patronize. I hate doing laundry and finding a place that washes (and presses) all my clothes for the week for about $10 is nothing short of manna from heaven for me.
The laundry is a very small place that is dominated by a huge ironing press leaving room for a tiny counter. For a place that makes clothes clean, it is rather dirty. I certainly would never want any of my clean clothes to fall on the floor there. The room behind the big press and the small service counter (and all the hanging clothes) is a humid little hole filled with washing machines of all types. There are usually two guys back in that windowless, watery hell doing laundry non-stop all day. The guy working in front sees daylight but then must stand behind the huge press (very hot) and press clothes all day AND mind the steady flow of customers. Given the attitude of the customers, I think I'd choose the watery hell.
In Saudi Arabia, achieving everything by never leaving your car is a kind of game. Everything is drive-thru. This place makes SoCal look like they just got cars yesterday. When you need something, you simply park in front of a small shop and lay on your horn until someone comes out and takes your order (whatever it may be). It happens with the laundry as well. People pull up blaring their horns until one of the guys goes out to either deliver clean clothes or pick up dirty ones. And then there is the "discounting". The laundry service is extremely cheap, and even cheaper for Saudi traditional dress. Nevertheless, a person will ask for his bill and then just cut off a certain amount of money because "I gave you a lot of clothes". It is a kind of self-discounting. The guys at the laundry being so afraid of the Saudis will just accept whatever is given. If there is any loss, it will come out of the foreign labor's pocket, never the Saudis.
Which then leads me to the business model here.... someone owns the building and the business owner (Saudi) pays rent to him. The business owner actually just sponsors foreign labor (manager + workers) to make a business. He collects a set fee on a monthly basis (kind of like the building owner collects rent). He is nominally responsible for the welfare of the foreign laborers, but in reality doesn't bother much with them. As long as he gets his monthly fee, he lets the manager to do as he wishes. It is really more or less guaranteed profit with almost zero risk.
The manager, Karim, is a young guy from Bangladesh. He is very nice and smiling with me but to his workers he is extremely harsh trying to get as much work out of them as possible. His salary is based on the business profit. The better the business, the more profit and the higher his salary. The workers are paid a set wage monthly regardless of how much (or how little) they work. Karim is just slightly less of an asshole than the Saudis and because he is a "boss" he really does not work very hard and spends much of his time in his room sleeping. Finally we arrive at the workers, and my friend and favorite is Salim. Salim is Indian Bengali from south of Calcutta from a small village on the Houghly River. Salim is a little bit of a guy and only 25 years. His father died when he was 11 and he has been doing manual labor to support his family ever since -- his life story is rather crushing and I am amazed at his positivity in the face of his myriad woes. I often stop by and chat with Salim if Karim is home sleeping and there aren't too many customers. I can't really stand to be there and see how the Saudis treat him as I have had fantasies of putting their heads in the big press more than once. Salim often asks me if people in American are like me. It is such a hard question to answer. I tell him there are bad people everywhere, but overall Americans are pretty polite people. He loves my fearless attitude toward the Saudis.
The laundry is a place that is part of my life in that I pass by and say hello to the guys there nearly every day. They are sincerely happy to see me every time (which really is quite nice). They do something for me that I value and I really try to communicate that to them (even though, honestly, they suck at doing laundry and pressing clothes... hahahaha). I just love the fact that I can drop of my clothes after school on Thursday and pick them up Friday afternoon without too much hassle.
The small things in life are often the things that make us the happiest.
Another post that I read with interest after some years have intervened. My only update is that it seems the current regime in Saudi Arabia is trying to wean the country from its dependence on foreign labor. How this might change such places as the laundry I described remains to be seen.