The other day I visited a household appliances store in Causeway Bay to drop off a few things. In the lead-up to Christmas certain Hong Kong charities send out requests to gather the disposable items in one's wardrobe and bring these over for re-distribution. I was responding to one such call.

After spending some time at the store, which doubled as a collection point for recyclable clothing - waiting for the person at the counter to complete what looked like a lengthy phone call - her colleague pointed me toward a tall collection box, and signaled that I should drop my offerings through the opening on top. The whole sequence of events took place without a single word uttered by the keepers of the assortment of donated goods. They watched me with an impassive expression, and once I was done putting the donations in the receptacle they pretended I was part of the furniture and returned to the job at hand.

At the outset it did feel a little odd that my efforts at helping a cause did not even merit a routine "thank you" from the collectors of charity. However, soon I realized the people I met at the collection point were probably store assistants who worked extraordinarily long hours every day for pay that didn't match the volume of tasks they were made to carry out - as is the case with many who work in Hong Kong's various service industries. Having to receive donations on behalf of a charity probably added to their already heavy workload. If they did not smile at me or rebuffed my attempts to engage them in small talk about the particularities of the charity they were serving, it probably wasn't fair to hold it against them.

Earlier this year, in a report released by Better Business World Wide, Hong Kong totted 57 percent in the smile index. In other words, 57 in 100 customers had received a smile from the salesperson during a transaction. The year before Hong Kong had in fact finished at the bottom of the heap of 67 economies surveyed, with 48 percent.

Until there is a regulation on standard working hours that is sensitive to the needs of Hong Kong's service-industry workers, there probably isn't much ground for us to complain about reluctant salespersons and restaurant waitresses slamming plates down on the table. The previous Hong Kong government had proposed guaranteed overtime payment for those earning less than HK$11,000 a month but such a move, even if it were enforced, would push people with modest incomes to put in extra hours, without necessarily improving the quality of their lives.

If we are really concerned about putting the smile back on the faces of the people who serve us, why not help bring some diversion in their workaday existence? There is no dearth of high-quality cultural events happening in Hong Kong and exposure to these could make a real difference toward broadening one's horizons. Just as the organizers of the major cultural festivals in the city - Hong Kong Arts Festival, West Kowloon Cultural District, K11 Art Foundation and ArtisTree at Taikoo Place, among others - present a whole range of programs especially aimed at students, they could perhaps consider dedicating a concert or a participatory theater experience to people who work in the service industries, especially in the lower tiers. In fact, just as it is possible to buy dining vouchers for people who might have use for them, why not have individuals chipping in and sponsoring a ticket or two to encourage service industry workers to check out a play or an open-air concert of their choice?

Of course these ideas could only work if employers recognized the healing effect of art on tired brains and frayed nerves and were willing to spare their staff for a day or half-day with full pay. In a city whose economy depends hugely on profits made from the service industries, this could be a way of giving back to those who expend their labor and time to build its very foundations.

(HK Edition 11/20/2017 page8)