SINGAPORE - Too busy to join the ridiculously long queues for bak kwa this Chinese New Year? Get your workers - if you have them - to do it for you then.
That is apparently what some employers in Singapore are doing to avoid queuing up themselves. This week, a photo of foreign workers staking out overnight at a well-known bak kwa store was circulated on social media, highlighting the practice once again.
The photo posted by Facebook user Anson Leong at 2.42am on Monday morning showed seven Indian workers sleeping on the floor outside Lim Chee Guan's flagship store at New Bridge Road. The original post was shared over 360 times as of Tuesday evening.
Chinese paper Shin Min Daily spotted three foreign workers among the hundreds of people in the queue on Tuesday morning. One of them told the paper that his employer had instructed him to buy 20kg worth of the barbecued meat.
Lim Chee Guan is selling its bak kwa at $52 per kg this festive season.
A shop employee told Shin Min that foreign workers had been coming to the store over the past three weeks, with four such individuals purchasing 320kg worth of bak kwa a few days ago.
The Straits Times last reported on this phenomenon in 2012, with a spokesman for Lim Chee Guan saying then that bosses had been sending their workers there for a few years.
