Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

M. le Prof d'Anglais said…
Interestingly, more and more banking transactions and train reservations are done online. At the same time, the national football squad is suffering from a lack of new talent. OK, they got to the World Cup final, but with a very old squad, most of whom won't be back for the next one. Coincidence?
21 September 2007 at 13:36
M C Ward said…
Coincidence my arse! Do you fancy co-authoring a paper on this?
21 September 2007 at 15:27
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FOOLING WITH SCHOOLING

One of the commonest figures to be found within TEFL is the aspiring administrator. This is a teacher who, often drained by years of repetitive, poorly remunerated clowning around in the classroom, seeks a position managing other teachers, such as Director of Studies (aptly and attractively known as "Doss"), from which they can sit in an imaginary TEFL director’s chair smoking a cigar, bellowing, “CUT!” and enjoying not having to pull a linguistic rabbit out of a hat twelve times a day, five days a week. I include myself within this TEFL subgenre, although my past experiences of administration have left me with an odd yearning to get back into the classroom and be king of my own modest sandcastle. In 2005, whilst I was working in HR at a local factory, my Brazilian friend Bert and I decided to start our own school. I had recently managed to wriggle out of a honey trap I’d set for myself, when I offered to give a free English course to my colleagues in the factory’s Training a...
19 comments
Read more

TEFL ANTHEMS VOL. I

An interesting debate over at ELT World in answer to the question, Are your students learning anything? has got me all reflective. Many rock songs are claimed by religious maniacs to include subliminal messages when played backwards or by missing every sixth word or summat, but others are more easily deciphered. As TEFL anthems go, perhaps one of the most memorably haunting has to be Dave Gilmour/Roger Waters' bitterly ironic collaboration reflecting on TEFL one-to-one classes being taught abroad , Wish You Were Here : How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here. As TEFL mongers we often feel like we're in a fish bowl, year after year , not least because the majority of our students exhibit the retention capacities of the goldfish. After painstakingly explaining that we use the preposition to after various verbs, the ...
14 comments
Read more

I AM OFFICIALLY A TIT

Show recently extracted the wind from my sails with typically well-intentioned down-to-earthism. Armed with several diagrams and a kitchen knife , she extolled her opinion that I should concentrate on doing what I can do and stop fannying around trying to learn how to do things I can’t , in yet another feeble-minded attempt to divorce myself from TEFL. Yet again, I believe her to be right. It all started back in May, when I went to Poland with my male voice choir and on the plane to Frankfurt found myself sitting next to Jetro, one of our second tenors. I’d never really spoken to him before, but during the trip I discovered that he ran a small yet growing Internet company , an online system through which owners of used car dealerships could manage their businesses. He explained how previously he’d been something of a factotum, working around the country in various jobs and starting various businesses, until he discovered that he could neither work for somebody nor manage others –...
16 comments
Read more