at two different grocery stores.
After much debating, a little beer last night, and a chat with my dear friendly neighborhood gourmet chef Andrea, I've decided to attempt a veggie pizza for today's Bears v Packers game. I had brought some dill from home (it was in a weird cupboard and while looking for juice found it) and they have a version of pizza crust here.
This morning I ventured out to the store. The past few times the market I go to has had awful produce but I thought with it being the weekend, perhaps they would have gotten more in. Alas no. This store however, is more like a traditional American store and have things like cream cheese, mayo, the pizza crust and so on. So I actually ran there first. I really ran thinking I'd get some exercise in at the same time. I arrrived and went to the produce department first. Again, crappy produce. I quickly realized I'd be visiting a second smaller more produce-based market as well which was fine.
The point of this post is that in both stores, I waited in the checkout line for over 20 minutes. The hilarious part is that in the first line there were only 4 people ahead of me and we were in the 10 items or less line. The second line is explained more below. That's 40 minutes I spent in lines today. Nobody else seems to bother. That's the thing here. Brazilians could care less about the lines. What's interesting to me too is that they're never on their cell phones and rarely read magazines to kill the time. I wonder when Brazilians travel to the U.S. and they visit grocery stores what they think of the pace of the check-out process.
Now, of course while I was trying to fight my line rage I analyzed why it took so long. Here are a few reasons:
1. people forget something and must go back so the entire line waits for 5 minutes,
2. checker doesn't care about speed,
3. size of bags is minscule so bagging takes longer,
4. checker doesn't know code for a type of produce,
5. a manager of sorts comes during the middle of the line to count the checker's cash box,
6. people obtaining a nota fiscal (a financial note) *
I thought I'd gotten used to the lines and it wasn't even like I needed a quick trip but seriously 40 minutes? I spent more time in line than actually shopping in either store. I spent about 50 minutes total walking between the stores and my apartment. I guess I'm gonna have to work on my line patience again. Maybe I should just have a drink before I go to take the edge off.
* My second line was delayed due to this. 3 people ahead of me. 2 chose this option. Brazilians can claim food as a deduction on their taxes. I really don't understand why they are able to do so but usually the process is quick and they just say their Federal ID number to the clerk. UNLESS...you are in a line that is a "manual nota fiscal" not an automatic one. Sometimes you don't realize why this is happening until the sign which notes this is seen on the metal stand which holds the debit/credit card/keyboard for the cashier. That makes the line even more annoying. The cashier physically on carbon paper writes down their ID number, name, the total of the groceries and some other things that I couldn't understand.
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