SINGAPORE — The food courts in the basements of shopping malls and the ubiquitous “hawker centers,” covered markets where scores of stall-holders sell cooked food, are a mainstay of eating out in Singapore. At one of my regular lunch spots, I watch the cleaners diligently tidy away the trays. They scrape leftovers into bins and wipe the tables and floors with disinfectant.

They perform these unskilled, repetitive tasks with often surprising enthusiasm. What is striking is, first, that the workers are local Singaporeans, not the foreign-born recent immigrants one might otherwise expect to do such work in a wealthy country like Singapore. More important, they are frequently of, or even beyond, retirement age.

The cleaning staffs have names, of course, but whenever I speak to them, I address them as “Auntie” or “Uncle” — the honorific terms used here when one is speaking to someone of an older generation.

I chat with them about health and happiness in old age, and I hear their varied reasons for wanting to keep working in jobs that others might consider demeaning. Some do so because they see it as a way to continue to contribute to society, and they’re reluctant to become a burden on their families. Others among them wish to escape the loneliness of an increasingly sedentary retirement. Many need the extra income that even such modest work provides (typically less than the equivalent in Singapore dollars of about $1,100 a month).