Brazilian Stress

One thing that totally freaks us out here, and by "us" I mean internationals, non Brazilians and maybe specifically Scandinavians, is the queues at the counter in the supermarket. I have never in my life seen anything so unneccessarily ineffecient and frustrating. First of all, the area around the counter is really small and crowded and even if there is just two persons in front of you in the line, it takes for ever and you feel squeezed from all sides. The band where you are supposed to put your things is very short, and even if it is movable they never move it until they have finished with one customer. Instead they keep stretching and bending to reach all the stuff and you have to wait until you can unload your cart. And they will proabably all have their necks and sholders destroyed way before retirement age. (The Swedish unions would never have accepted these working conditions!)
Not even considering that all the moves are very very slow, there are so many moments that the poor cashiers have to do, so I can in a away understand they don't hurry to get the next customer. Enven before they start reading the bar codes of the goods there are at least three questions they have to ask every EVERY customer: "Cliente mais?", "CPF na nota?" "Nota fiscal?" In my case the answer is no to all three of them, but in case the customer before you says yes then it will take even longer time. Then the cashier has to register a lot of numbers before starting to registre the purchases and sometimes the customer has difficulties remembering their CPF or the cashier, doesn't hear or enters the wrong number it can take for ever.

Then, finally efter ages, the things are registerd, the sum is calculated and the payment done, which of course also takes for ever, as the customer needs to dubble check the bill and always need to discuss some matter, but then the cashier doesn't start with the next customer. No, instead he or she starts packing the purshases into one million minuscular plastic bags, which of course the client didn't start doing while waiting for the registration to be finished.

And often the clients just leave their shopping cart in the small gate betweein the counters for the one after to remove before you can even get close to the counter.
This is such a frustrating stress moment that I just can not get used to. Every time I need to remind myself to relax, breathe deeply and not start shouting or hitting at anyone. But this is definetly one of the moments I feel the cultural difference the most. No Brazilians seem to get stressed about this at all!!

To make a small comparison I sometimes think that if they would speed up processes in lines in supermarkets, banks, bakeries etc etc, they would have so much more time and would not have to stress so in traffic. Cause there all patience seems to have vanished completely all of a sudden...

And somehow, I still believe casualties are still higher in traffic than in the supermarket, so slowing down in traffic and speeding up in the supermarket would for sure have a double positive effect.