Elderly people working in rich supermarkets

Large supermarkets, where urbanites concentrate on pouring out their material consumption desires. In the central area of Shenzhen, there is a large superstore almost every few kilometers, running at high speed day after day. And a group of elderly people from all over the country, maintaining the moment-to-moment glamour and grandeur of these large shopping malls.

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The supermarket in the mall in front of your home should be considered a supermarket dedicated to the wealthy district of Futian Center in Shenzhen, a supermarket where packaged vegetables can be sold for thirty dollars.

Vegetables and fresh meat are seldom discounted, with origin and freshness as the signature, and the shelf life is only one day to attract people around to buy. The vegetables and fruits that are not sold out and are about to expire will be pulled by a cart around eleven o’clock at night by an uncle who cleans near the parking lot, and he will pick out the vegetables that are still edible from the garbage cart and distribute them to the elderly people who clean in the mall.

Many of them live on leftover bread and fruit from the supermarket, and sometimes the leftover white rice from the nearby hotel buffet is picked up by the cleaner as the next day’s staple food. There is a diabetic uncle who eats three meals a day by mixing the frozen rice in the freezer with dried rice and boiling water.

Nearby this mall are apartment buildings that cost over 100,000 per square foot, the most profitable banks and international kindergartens that are hard to get into. It reminds me of the scene in “The Parasite” where no one pays attention to how these cleaners in their 50’s and 60’s live in this big city in a busy mall with people coming and going.

Many cleaners choose to work two shifts in a row in order to earn more money, starting at 7:00 am and ending at 11:00 pm, working 16 hours on their feet, with only a half-hour meal break at 10:30 am and 4:30 pm, for a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan, regardless of food and housing.

They often fall asleep against the wall in the corner of the mall, and try to find time to rest as much as possible, such as going to the toilet frequently, but they can’t go more often.

There are no young people in the team of cleaners and there is always a shortage of people, eventually only those from rural areas and older people can stay as permanent workers, young temporary workers can get up to two hundred dollars a day, and many of them are from Sanhe.

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Under the impact of the epidemic, there are especially many temporary workers in the past year, and many people who can’t find work temporarily come here to spend their time. A man from Hunan Province, his family’s chicken farm closed down because of the epidemic, he thought to do a few months, the situation is better and then reopen the chicken farm; a responsible for cleaning the floor outside the mall uncle, before the epidemic he was driving a truck in Hong Kong, Hong Kong closed, he could not return to Shenzhen, so he has been here to do the day-end.

Cleaning workers can not find the management of the people, the mall manager three days a change, two days a change, recruit a new person, stay less than three days and disappeared, cleaning workers in the contract at the time of entry to write a month can rest four days, but in reality, never get “leave “, the boss will refuse for a variety of reasons, such as, you see others are not resting, you do another day tomorrow to give you leave …… character is not strong enough, in this group will suffer, the dirtiest and most tiring work will be assigned to the most will not express their demands.

Most of them will not be able to stand it, dry a few months will leave, and eventually left behind are older people who have no other way out, they come from remote counties or rural areas, can not do other work, earning money is their biggest purpose, often hanging on the mouth of the phrase: earn some money to spend on their own, do not have to ask their children for money.

Mall waste paper boxes, beverage bottles is one of the additional sources of income for cleaners, once the supervisor is not in, someone to search for useful garbage, basically to grab, when the market is good, more than a few dozen dollars a day of income.

Mall cleaning uncle from Jiangxi, every day after cleaning the last hygiene, he divided the rest of the dishes to the people doing cleaning around the same mall.

Every day at eleven o’clock after work, they often use black garbage bags to bring back the vegetables given to them by the uncle from Jiangxi, winter melon, sweet potatoes, fruit peppers, lotus root …… all kinds of deliberately scratched vegetables were brought home. They are not bad, just after a day, they are no longer fresh enough. Supermarkets want to sell vegetables to be expensive enough without complaints, they can only be on the freshest thing every day, then not fresh enough will be discarded, the whole cart to throw out – this is the price people get “fresh This is the price behind people getting “fresh”.

Jiangxi uncle to deliver vegetables also divided into people, more often than not, the delivery of food is a transaction, sometimes he needs the other party to pick up the paper shell scrap with him in exchange for vegetables. Pork, beef and some other meat products he would not give away, he secretly sold at a low price. This became his cleaning work in addition to another extra income, more often than not a day can earn a hundred or so.

In less than two months, Uncle Jiangxi took the soon to be expired meat to sell the matter was known by the supermarket supervisor, he was fired, went not far from the mall to find a new cleaning job. No one would ask him where he came from.

3

The company that manages the cleaning is an outsourced company that has been subcontracted, and it is very easy to get a cleaning job here. Just stop by, find a cleaner who is cleaning, make small talk with him, and he will give you the manager’s number and tell you that there is a great shortage of people.

The management office is located on the negative floor of the mall, the manager is the biggest “official” inside, the applicant goes to the management office to do the registration, sign a simple contract, fingerprinting and then can work. There is no medical examination, all many janitorial leg inconvenience, suffering from chronic diseases also normal on the job.

Because of the high mobility of personnel, there is an unwritten rule, if the cleaning staff on duty can introduce a new cleaning staff to join, and can work for two months will have a 100 yuan reward, even so, still can not recruit people.

Mall managers are often changed, today or a 40-year-old woman, the next day will be replaced by a middle-aged man, they are also in Shenzhen between the major supermarkets jumping back and forth, from Haiya Colorful City to COPARK, from Carrefour to China Resources Vanguard ……

The main reason is the low wages. In this mall full-time employees (the contract says a month off four days) work 8 hours a day, a month 2500 yuan; 16 hours a day, 5000 yuan. If you do not take four days off, you will be paid 80 yuan a day for 8 hours of overtime and 160 yuan a day for 16 hours of overtime.

According to the adjusted minimum wage standard in Shenzhen on August 1, 2018, the minimum wage standard for full-time workers is 2,200 yuan per month; the hourly minimum wage standard for part-time workers is 20.3 yuan per hour.

Obviously, the wages of the cleaning staff are extremely low and there is no guarantee. In the beginning, when there were not enough workers, the management office would find temporary workers from outside (a temporary worker needs to pay the labor agency 20 yuan agency fee) for 220 yuan a day, which caused the dissatisfaction of full-time cleaning and demanded a wage increase, then the management office simply stopped looking for temporary workers, and the work of full-time cleaning became more and more, one person topped several positions.

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The role of young people in this system are those who supervise the work, mostly young girls, their job is to patrol the areas that need to be cleaned, find cigarette butts, leaves, stains when the photos reported to a group with leaders, cleaning is very annoying to these young people, saying they have no empathy.

In one inspection, an aunt with synovitis in her left leg was accused face to face of not wiping the black stain on the floor. The aunt cried on the spot, speaking in a dialect that the other party did not understand, and what she probably meant was that the stain simply could not be wiped off, and she wanted the girl to try it herself. The girl who checked did not understand, some resentful, she did not complain about the aunt, and rarely went to the aunt’s cleaning area to check later. Later, she heard the supervisors discussing that the people from the mountain were very difficult, spilling and rolling, and then she had a sulk alone.

The model of outsourcing can be applied to almost every large supermarket, every “beautiful” park and every high-class office building in Shenzhen. Almost all of the cleaning and landscaping workers in Shenzhen are a group of elderly people aged 50 to 60 from all over the country. Those legendary people who have several suites at home and can’t be bothered to come out to clean are not encountered by the cleaners in this mall. All they know is that they must always keep their assigned areas clean, keep moving no matter what the situation is, and sweep up trash as soon as they come across it. They are tired in their hearts of those who throw garbage around, but in the position they are in, they do not want to interfere, they can only silently endure, it is good that such people are only a minority after all.

Among them, some are because their children work in Shenzhen, and some are trying to survive. A 62-year-old uncle was brought to the mall before the old folks, had swept the road in Beijing for five years, Beijing’s winter is too cold, freezing hands and faces cracked, painful, and only three thousand dollars a month. He came to Shenzhen, the biggest reason is that Shenzhen is not cold in winter, he was worried that in Beijing one day freezing to death on the road are not known.