The guys who come to the UAE to wash and sweep and polish and clean have a sideline business, after hours, that no doubt makes them a fair amount of money.

Washing cars.

They can be found in the underground garages of most any big building in the country, and in many of the bigger ground-level parking lots, as well. In most cases, they work in that building, during the day, or in a building nearby.

They carry a bucket and some rags, a squeegee  and a bit of soap, and they will politely approach a driver returning home from work to see if he or she would like a clean car. (I’m not entirely sure it’s legal.)

The fee? Twenty dirhams. About $5.50.

Not much, but if a guy does 10 or 15 cars in a single night, the take (which I assume is pure profit for the washer) begins to add up. It could be an extra $50-75 for a few hours of scrubbing. This, in a country where the window washers dangling 140 floors up outside the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, make $600 a month.

The Mustang, above, was washed today, perhaps not long before we paid our 20 dirhams to have our car washed.

The signal left behind by the washers that they have washed your car?

A wiper arm lifted away from the windshield. The driver’s side wiper blade, in the car above.

This system seems to work for everyone.

Dirty cars are (according to urban legend, anyway) likely to be ticketed.

Car owners have a few options. They could wash their car themselves. (Hah!). They can run them through the automated car washes attached to many of the gas stations here, but that costs 35 dirhams.

Or they can wait to be approached by one of the guys where they park, and pay only 20 dirhams and then walk away, and know their car will be clean when next they see it.

Occasional glitches get into the system. Once in a while, a guy will wash the wrong car. We paid the money, and the next morning — when the washers are off doing their real jobs — we got to the car and it had not been washed. A car the same color, a few feet away, however, had a wiper blade pointing north. No real way to work that out.

Once in a while, the job might be a little sloppy. And, of course, no vacuuming is involved because the patron has locked his/her car and walked off, ahead of the washing.

On the whole, it’s a very UAE thing.

It’s about energy and ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit by the guys who do the washing … and consumers who take advantage of their services in a car culture where a dirty car is viewed with disdain.

Everyone seems satisfied with how it works out.