Minibus does not always run fast (or jump red lights)

i got to know Fat So when i rented an apartment flat through her, as a real estate agent. She was a stout, as her nickname suggests, yet energetic, woman in her early forties with a boy's haircut, a macho voice and a big easy smile. That day, she walked me through twelve apartments before we concluded a deal late in the evening. i expected to see her again around. However, what really took me by surprise was how i did. One morning i walked down the street for a newspaper, i found her sell newspapers at a newsstand.

So, Fat So sells million-dollar homes at night and five-dollar newspapers in the daytime. That's a good example for the high versatility of Hong Kong people. "How does that work?" i asked her. "I sleep less," she replied without hesitation. Fair enough. Fat So is one of the many part-time workers who sleep little. But why does Fat So sell home and newspapers, but other combination of goods like fruit and fish, dim sum and wanton, etc? The apparently unrelated combination of businesses of home and newspaper offers an important synergy Fat So cannot resist.

No one buys newspaper at night. In contrast, no one sees flats in the morning. A newsstand opens from dawn until 11 a.m. The busiest hours last about an hour when people grasp their newspapers on their way to office. It is meaningless, profitless, to leave the newsstand open for the rest of the day. On the other hand, home-seekers usually have to work, and are free to shop for flats at night only. On weekdays, the rush hours for a typical real-estate agency usually last two hours, from eight through ten in the evening although it opens all day long. Therefore, Fat So can capture the best moments of both businesses and earns her living efficiently.

Fat So is flexible enough to perform different tasks in a day. Unfortunately, many companies cannot.

All public transportations, from MTR to ferry, bus to taxi, were half-seated, at best, for the majority part of their working hours. See the empty well-air-conditioned buses wandering in the dark streets. See the long queue of taxis with their roof lights helplessly switched on. However, any transportation business has their once-and-for-all-day big shot during the rush hours. Besides, fast food chains, Cafe de Coral alike, convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven, especially for those located near business districts, are cold and quiet at night shifts. However,their lives all depend on business in the rush hours.

Rush hours are short, lasting about four hours a day, but they do pay. For public transportation along the right routes, stores at the right locations, working class voluntarily, or involuntarily, flood in from all directions, with no question asked. They enthusiastically squeeze into your trains and you don't even have to feel sorry about inadequate seats. At 8:30 a.m., they just love your trains. At 8:50 a.m., they chase your taxi. They hunt down breakfast with determination from your fast-food shop. They wipe out newspapers and snacks at your convenience store. No discount, fine.

That's an all-you-can-win situation in fixed, albeit short, period of time. To maximize revenue from the rush hours, businesses have to either speed up the customer turnover, that's to serve as many customers as possible, or increase the billing.

Minibus drivers go for the customer-turnover tactics. Riding in a minibus is a roller-coaster experience. Some minibus drivers commit speeding and ignore the speed-control alarms installed in their vans. i would rather the minibuses deactivate the alarms so that i can have a quieter environment, or the drivers should drive more slowly. Riding in a speedy van with the alarm persistently going off double the pain in the neck. Minibus drivers sometimes jump red lights. If you think that's their bad driving habits, you are wrong. i am sure, in the mid-afternoon, you have been long idled in an anchored minibus as the driver is expecting more customers to get aboard.

Those minibus "pilots", as if they fly aircraft, are not evil or bad kids. They take risks of their lives too. They do the stunts during rush hours only, like a hungry man having starved for a whole day. The reason is that they got only a short period of time to earn as much as they can. Their routes are typical long, for instance, from Kwun Tong to Tsuen Wan. Should they drive slowly, they cannot do many trips before the rush hours of that day are over.

Tea restaurant and fast food shops cannot increase the customer turnover as customers stay as long as they please. The lunch hours are from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. It takes about half an hour for each customer to finish his or her meal. Therefore, the restaurant could possibly have a customer turnover of three times. Their strategy is to boost the sales per customer, by offering super-sized meal set. A big entree comes with a soup and tea or coffee, and sometimes butter bread. The restaurants deliberately boost the meal sizes so that higher meal prices can be justified. They do not do that all day, but only in the rush hours. They have slim and inexpensive tea sets when the shops are quiet.

Most restaurants in Central do not even open for dinner because the business district becomes a ghost town after sunset, except for the pub and fancy restaurants in Lan Kwai Fong and SOHO area. The lunch-hour battles for those restaurants are even tenser.

Yet another solution for the rush-hour problems is to do something productive during the quiet hours, like Fat So does. But not many fixed assets, whether they are motor vehicles or restaurants, can be converted to cater different services day in and day out.

Banks are becoming more flexible to a certain extent. Recently, banks are bolstering their improving services by extending their business hours. In fact, basic banking services are performed during normal office hours. The extra hours during weekends are for their promotion of investment and insurance plans, and nothing else because they understand that people are free to deal with their personal finance at leisure timeonly.

Unlike Fat So, most of us stick to a single job. A survey shows that Hong Kong people works 51 hours long a week. Among jobs taking the longer hours are retail and catering services. i believe the really busy hours for most of those jobs last last than 25 hours a week. Why do people work overtime? 40% of respondents say they stay late to be seen. If only all the bosses in Hong Kong know Fat So and how well she works.

Next time, i will revisit the topic about Octopus cards and how they are helping solve the rush-hour problems.

Nov 21, 2006
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