STATISTICALLY, I AM LIKELY TO DIE IN A QUEUE IN THE BANK

Looking back on my arrival in Brazil over five years ago, I recognise now that I was carrying some pretty hefty cultural baggage. I was expecting things to be like in Britain, only slightly more half-baked and with more fresh fruit juices. I was counting on a reliable postal service, an adequate banking system and reasonable public services.

In fact, I spent the first few months here in a state of perpetual malhumour, interspersed by unpredictable bouts of seething, railing, fuming and frothing. The source of my ire was the blithering, and ongoing, idiocy of Brazilian bureaucracy. The difference now is that I have gone so far native that I patiently view my burlesque encounters with collective public enterprise with a sentimental, heart-softening whimsy. This acceptance of the unacceptable is why the unacceptable becomes acceptable – nobody can be arsed to make a decent case for change, let alone organise, protest, start a petition, etc. After all, why get all stiff-jawed when there are whole hectares of cows to be barbecued, footballs to be craftily juggled and motel sheets to be surrepticiously soiled with your latest squeeze? These people have a point.

Visiting the bank is the single most life-denying activity Brazilians can indulge in. If you totted up how long the average citizen spends in bank queues over their lifetime, I swear it would make tattooed men sob at the sheer futile waste of human potential. Interminable queues, sweltering temperatures accompanied by questionable personal hygiene, and always one cashier, representing fifty percent of the available workforce, who abruptly stands up, walks away and doesn’t come back for several days.

Opening hours don’t help any. With doors swinging open at eleven and slamming shut at four, this five-hour window is barely sufficient to pay the water rates, let alone arrange an overdraft, apply for a loan or buy insurance. Add to this the preference given in the queue to senior citizens (many of whom must still be in their fifties, I often resentfully note) and mothers carrying children (you can see infants being passed around outside the bank in return for a small fee, or a sandwich), and the establishment becomes a powder keg where tempers are as short as queues are lengthy. Heavily armed and poorly trained guards in bullet-proof booths only add to the atmosphere of potentially front-page tension.

I have a theory (as yet an untested hypothesis, admittedly) that Brazil’s wealth of lavishly talented footballers are a product of their constant submission to mindless bureaucracy. Surely someone, anticipating another couple of wasted hours in some queue, thought of taking a football along with their banking, the resulting ad-hoc kick arounds on nearby wasteground whilst their places are held in the line providing valuable extra match training. In support of my theory, which country has won the football World Cup a record five times? Brazil. Which team won the last World Cup? Italy, another world-leader in officialdom. (Have you ever tried buying a train ticket in Italy? There is always, without exception, a nun at the front of the queue who spends at least ten minutes in animated conversation with the clerk. I mean, how much information about trains can the average nun need?) Ah, you say, what about Germany and France and England, all World Cup winners, all relatively red-tape free? They are simply exceptions that prove the rule.

If anyone would like to sponsor further research in this area, please get in touch. I would even be willing to stop teaching for a while in order to dedicate myself entirely to this study.