Well, the saga of my washing machine seems to be over (knock on wood!). After many more calls and promises, they finally came on a really rainy Saturday afternoon, a week ago. It seems to be working so far, though, and I have been able to catch up on all my laundry, so I am pleased.
Yesterday, I had to laugh because I had my first experience at the post offices of Sao Paulo. Granted I have only visited one branch, and others may be better, we'll see. But I was in awe of how difficult it was to mail just three letters (maybe that's why nobody mails anything in Brazil!). I waited 35 minutes, and that was just talking to a postal worker - there wasn't any line when I walked in! As soon as I got up to the counter, though, the line behind me started accumulating out the door, and each of those people and more, proceeded to pass through the line, be helped, and finish mailing their items before me - incredible.
People had told me that I could buy envelopes at the post office so I didn't bring one with me. But the problem was that there weren't any simple manila envelopes as I was expecting. Instead, they had these super expensive ones with hearts on them in very small sizes! Why wouldn't a post office offer basic envelopes in all sizes?! And also you have to wait until you reach the counter to ask for one of these. It would seem much easier to be able to take what you want before reaching the counter and have it all addressed, etc. The way it's set up now, you have to wait for them to find an envelope and then they wait for you to stand there and address everything, meanwhile the rest of the customers are still waiting in line.
In my case, I've never seen a postal worker move so slowly. She would tear off one stamp at a time, put it on the pad used to wet the stamps and then slowly place them on the envelope one by one. And unfortunately, Brazil doesn't do "cute" at least in terms of stamps. In the U.S., France and Japan there are so many options for commemorative stamps representing the country. Here all I've seen are animals or scary cartoon drawings, so sorry to anyone who will be receiving letters from me - no nice stamps:)
Anyway...if you want to have them print out the label with the price through a machine (instead of actual stamps), they have to go to another area and do it there; it's not connected automatically to the computer at the counter (at least it wasn't at this branch). When the woman helping me added the price to my larger envelope, she ripped off a piece of regular white paper, stamped it, and then wrote in the price herself, dabbed it on the stamp pad and added it to the envelope. I've never seen anyone do that before.
I wanted to send just a few papers priority mail to the U.S. and it was going to be R$48! However, they didn't bother to tell me the prices beforehand (I guess I should have asked) and so only after going through all the rigamarole of getting an evelope and printing out labels, did we then have to then throw everything away and start over! I just hadn't thought before of how organized our postal offices are in the U.S. We have computers that customers can look at with all the price options and the time it will take to arrive BEFORE we decide the option we want, not after spending 15 minutes finding an envelope and writing all the information on it and then finding out the cost! I should know better, though, to have asked first. I just didn't imagine it would be $20 to send some 8 1/2 by 11 papers to the U.S. Yikes!
Naturally some of the differences in convenience are simply due to lack of funds compared to the U.S., but other aspects are just complete disorganization and inefficiency. How is it so hard to do more than one thing at once and to work fast enough to help a customer in under 30 minutes! I guess they figure they are working for 8 hours and it doesn't matter how many people they help, whether it's one person for 1 hour or 20 people in one hour, it's the same thing for them. To be fair, this is a funcionario attitude in all countries, including our own, not only Brazil.
But as I wrote in another blog entry, the differences between being able to do things by yourself v. having to talk to others to get anything accomplished are huge between Brazil and the U.S. At our post offices, we also have automatic machines to do our mailing and buy the stamps, in addition to picking out stamps, tape and envelopes first before we get to the counter, leaving minimal time for communication - just the essentials. In Brazil, everything is set up so that you MUST speak to at least one person for everything you want to do.
I noticed the other day that many times the bus stops are just a post with no sign, so you have to speak to someone there to know if you are in the right place, going the right direction! Not easy if it is your first time trying to get to a new place.
And even at the bank, you have to take a number to wait in line to be helped. But often there is a man sitting at the computer who you tell what your reason for being there is so he can choose the kind of number to be printed out for you. Because of course, there is a different letter to match the number for all different services - like having your driver's license renewed v. getting a passport, etc at the government buidling. But yesterday I had to go to the bank too and speak to this person at the comptuer, and I thought, what, am I an idiot!? I can't even print out a number by myself? What is that????
There are rarely clear signs to show you where to go either. So, when I entered the bank, I had to ask the guard which floor I needed to go to, and then talk to the man printing out my wait number and then to the person who eventually helped me! If I had a Brazilian bank account, I may be able to avoid some of this by using the automatic machines. But as it is, that's not an option for me which only an international card.
I miss being able to take care of things myself, but I guess on the bright side, I am able to practice my portuguese every day; it's inevitable;)
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