Rio – are you being served?
One day, a few weeks after I arrived in Rio, Miss Eat Rio (as she was back then) had a headache. There were no pain-killers in the house so I was just about to go to the pharmacy when my future mother-in-law simply picked up the phone. 10 minutes later a guy knocked on the door, delivered the medicine and then got on his bike and rode back to the shop!
“Wow!” I thought. “They delivered a single packet of pain killers? How can that be worth their while? They must charge a hefty delivery fee”. But no – I was told that this was just normal service, no extra charge.
These delivery tricycles are used to deliver all kinds of things in Rio – from ice and drinks to gas canisters and goods from the supermarket.
In the following weeks and months I learned that many other aspects of Carioca life were similarly taken care of. My mother-in-law had an empregada (maid) who did the cooking, cleaning, washing and other household duties. I had mixed feelings over the idea at first, but man did I love having someone else iron my shirts…
This pattern continued in Rio’s many bars, botequins and pé sujos. I quickly realised that my days of queuing and jostling at the bar were over. A few moments after I took a seat, a waiter would appear and take my order – a few moments later I was sipping an ice cold beer.
“Run that by me again – I just sit here and you bring the beers to me?”
If you’re not accustomed to all this service, it can be a bit of a shock at first. As a slightly awkward, middle class Englishman, there were times that I felt that I “didn’t want to be any trouble”. Maybe I could be helpful by collecting my beer from up at the bar? Well no actually, that just messes up everyone’s system.
The thing about being served is that however uncomfortable it might make you feel at first, it’s incredibly easy to get used to. I realised how much Brazil had changed me when we were holidaying in Bahia a few months ago. As we relaxed on the most beautiful, deserted beaches I caught myself thinking “Sure this is great, but where are the guys selling ice cold beer?”.
I have to bring my own beer?
It makes me wonder what it must be like for people moving in the opposite direction. If you have grown up in a ‘served culture’, what is it like to move to a country where most people take care of their own washing, cleaning and cooking? It seems rather paradoxical – first world countries are often depicted as being full of luxury and decadence and yet I expect many emigrating Brazilians must get a shock when they arrive and realise that they have to do their own domestic chores!
Sometimes I think that being served the whole time makes people feel rather incapable. I know plenty of Brazilians who don’t have a clue about how to cook a meal or change a flat tyre and really who can blame them?
Let’s not forget that for every person being served, there’s at least one other person doing the serving. Is this a reflection of Brazil’s need to improve its education system? What do you think about all this service? Is it a guilty pleasure or just a convenient fact of life?
Really great post! I hope it provokes a thoughtful discussion. But I just wanted to say that I loved the title. My grandparents made me watch that show with them all the time. :)
Thanks Danielle! I wondered if anyone would get that! :) For the uninitiated…
In my other life, I have never felt comfortable about having maids around. Always a strange person moving around in your private space… In the jobs I had in Brazil there were people serving coffe, cleaning the toilets, the kitchen, etc. I felt embarrassed sometimes.
Now in the NL I have the extreme opposite. Here when you move to another address you are reponsible for packing your own things and hiring/driving a truck or something. Absurd ! At work I frequently hide some sweets behind my desk or place them on the floor in a corridor… and they remain there for weeks. I show those old candies to my colleagues like a trophy, they think I am crazy. I scream: “Look at this chocolate coin near the fax machine: two months already !” My black shoes and boots always get very white from dust at the office. It is soooo disgusting. Last week my job moved to another address. Boy, me and my co-workers we had to pack our computers, monitors, telephones… Move them into a mini bus. And then INSTALL them when they were delivered in the new address. Holland has a very poor service at shops, with extremely dirty fitting rooms (especially H & M, rolls and rolls of hair and dust on the floors). The restrooms at my kids’ school is below acceptable standard. The mothers regularly organize “cleaning days”. I work already very hard to make a living and then at home all those chores are waiting for me… I don’t dream about becoming a helping mom at school, thank you. I regulary give my kids disposable (lemon) cleaning wipes to be taken to school. They clean their desks and sometimes the toilets seats when they visit the wc.. Cause it seems nobody is cleaning them. Or cleaning enough. (Note: The Dutch homes are SUPER clean, though).
Thanks Ana – what an interesting insight! :) Now that I think of it, houses (and offices, etc) here are very clean.
I was against getting a cleaner when we moved into our apartment but Mrs Eat Rio won that fight. Now we have one that comes once every two weeks and I really like it. As you say, I work hard (and long hours) and I just don’t have the effort to clean the house in my free time.
I can imagine that if you’ve grown up in a clean environment, many parts of Europe must be quite a shock!
“I show those old candies to my colleagues like a trophy, they think I am crazy. I scream: “Look at this chocolate coin near the fax machine: two months already !”
I just laughed out loud at work and now everyone is looking at me.
Ha ha ha! I want to give the cleaning staff at Ana’s office a tip-off!
Pssst! Guys, make sure you check behind the fax machine… ;)
Tom,
Good post, by the way, I love the picture with the shirtless dude and the two dogs, a Rio classic… ;)
It was very hard when Gil and I first moved to the US, we are, like most other Brazilians, clean freaks, and have very high cleaning standards, so we suffered a lot when we first moved here, but not because we didn’t know how to do things or because we were used to being served, we suffered because we couldn’t believe how low the cleaning standards were all over the place, just like Ana Fonseca described on her comment regarding the Dutch, public places in the US are very often disgusting, dirty, and just below what we were used to in Brazil.
We can easily keep our own house as clean as we want, with our higher Brazilians cleaning standards, and quickly learned to take our shirts to the cleaners, they have awesome deals here, if you take more than 10 shirts, you pay 50 cents per shirt to be washed and ironed, they are returned to you impeccable, in neat little hangers and sometimes with individual plastic covers on each hanger, no maid will ever do that for you ;)
We also quickly realized that the high school kid down the block will gladly cut your grass for you for a mere 20 bucks, or if you don’t have a high school kid on your block, you might have to cough it up 40 bucks to the Guatemalan from the inner city that travels around the suburbs looking for people without high school kids to cut their grass for them.(living and learning)
My middle class family in Sao Paulo never had live in maids, we had the occasional “faxineira” that my mother would pay by the day, once a week, to do the deep cleaning. They would do the washing and scrubbing kitchen and bathroom floors with plenty of water and bleach, cleaning windows and helping to wash heavy blankets, curtains and so forth, so we always had daily chores to help keep my mother’s house in perfect order. We made our beds daily, took the trash outside, washed the dog, polished the piano and the wood furniture, help load and unload the dish washer, folded and put away towels out of the dryer, dusted the furniture and ran the vacuum cleaner.
I can totally relate to you when you say you felt uncomfortable having a “stranger” around the house, serving and cleaning around, we also would feel awkward with that in Brazil. Many people in Sao Paulo and the South of Brazil don’t like live in maids either, it is much more common in Rio and Minas Gerais and other parts of Northern Brazil.
I hear what you are saying, the serving culture in Brazil is much stronger than in the US, and Gil tells me it is stronger than Europe as well, however, I have always been under the impression that it’s even stronger in Rio and places like Minas Gerais for example, and we could write an entire book about it, but it’s cultural, and it has to do with the strong slave culture that still lingers much stronger in places such as RJ and MG, opposed to Sao Paulo and the South of Brazil, which were areas of the country that developed much later, after the slavery was over in Brazil, if you go to Salvador for example, it’s even stronger than in Rio.
Having said that, Sao Paulo also has a stronger “serving” culture than the US or Europe for example, but that is changing rather quickly, it is really expensive to hire a maid in Sao Paulo nowadays, and baby sitters are becoming rare and have always been very expensive as well and that worries me a bit.
My concern is mainly regarding the cleaning standards, see, Brazilians have a very high cleaning standard, it’s easy to have high cleaning standards when someone else is doing the cleaning for you, and since I first step foot in this country I have always noticed the cleaning standards are way lower than in Brazil.
Just as an example, you will never find a drain on an American Kitchen or Bathroom floor, ever, people just don’t see the need to really wash their floors like we do in Brazil. In Brazil, house bathrooms, Malls, and schools and every other Public bathrooms have drains on the floors, because they are washed daily with plenty of water and bleach, bathrooms smell really clean and fresh, because they are cleaned for real, not wiped down with disgusting dirty and staph infection contaminated mops. (yeap, I can’t stand mops, nothing disgusts me more)
The standards of cleaning here are too low if you ask me, people wipe things down surfaces with chemicals and rarely ever rinse it, as if the chemicals drying around all surfaces are an acceptable form of cleaning, they are not, not in our book, it’s like this people don’t fear cancer from chemicals, I swear. In Brazil, if you are talking about cleaning, there has to be plenty of water and bleach involved in the process, good luck if you don’t have a drain for all that water and bleach.
So, my fears, are based on the fact that Brazilians are improving the education system, the economy is red hot and there is a lot of hiring of the maids and baby sitters into the Industrial Parks, they are hired with higher salaries and perks impossible to be offered by a middle class family.
Here is an interesting article from the Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21541717
Maids will most likely be a thing of the past in Brazilian homes in the next 20 years or so, will Brazilian’s cleaning standards vanish along with the maids and available affordable help?
Did you watch the movie “The Help” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/), Americans seem to have had maids just like in Brazil until very recently, and they faded away from middle class life around the 1960’s.
Were cleaning standards higher around here when everyone had a maid? The million dollar question.
I am not saying Americans are pigs, they just don’t clean things “the way” we expect them to clean, not much water involved, it’s a lot of chemicals sprayed around and wiped down with paper towels.
I also noticed buses, subways and trains in London are very dirty, windows that you could barely see thru, newspapers and wrappers all around littering the floors and seats, gum stuck all over the place, you will never see that in a Brazilian subway, Sao Paulo subway is as clean as an operating room, will it be dirty like the ones in London when the “poor” Brazilians that worked as janitors get jobs in factories? I hope not, I hope we keep our higher cleaning standards and find a way to clean windows and floors without the help of cheap labor, there has to be a way!! Maybe a Brazilian will invent a method out of desperation and fear of germs… ;)
Long story short, there are pros and cons of having or not having a “serving” culture, surely is not cool to have people cleaning your house for you for a very low wage and living in a FAVELA nearby that helps hide the thug that might mug you on your way to work, but it’s also not cool to live in semi-filth because there is no one to clean for you and you are too tired to clean it yourself because you worked all day.
Food poisoning is so often in the US it’s scary, we have to rely too much on mechanized production systems that often fail, labor is too expensive, there is no one to “serve”, harvest and work in massive farms, and that results in poor hygiene, it’s contaminated Spinach, contaminated Tomatoes, contaminated Lettuce, contaminated Eggs, meat, you name it, it’s always something with salmonella or e.coli and the said part about it, it causes a lot of deaths all around the United States every single years, it really is scary.
I never ever heard of any kind of contamination in the Brazilian food chain, Brazil doesn’t have such huge mechanized farms. I say people are better than machines for many types of jobs, and food handling is one of them, for sure.
Ok, Tom, I will stop now, I told you, we could write a book about it.
Disclaimer: Tom, I hope you didn’t get offended with my “dirty London buses” comment. I really love the British and London more than any other city, I can’t emphasize enough how much I love your country!
On a good note, London have the best Taxis I have ever seen anywhere, awesome, super clean, very cool, spacious and stylish cars, and the most polite and well informed drivers I have seen anywhere in the world… :)
Great post
Abracos
Ray
Wow Ray! Great comment – very interesting. No offence taken about the London transport system – it is notoriously grubby (especially the subway – the rule is to try not to touch anything!).
I think you make a great point there Ray – it’s very nice to have people clean for you, but plentiful cheap labour generally means that there is an imbalance in wealth, education, opportunity, etc.
I guess the bottom line is that if you clean someone else’s house as a job then you really take pride in doing a good job. When I clean my own place, I just want to get it done as quickly as possible…
p.s. that was an interesting article (the Economist link). I like the quote from Voltaire:
I wonder how Voltaire would explain comforts such as air conditioning. Does it take poverty to develop the technology that allows the temperature in a given room to be regulated? And would he not be amazed that air conditioning is usually found in homes of those who aren’t even rich in many parts of the world?
It never ceases to amaze me that artists can get away with saying most anything, regardless of how senseless it may be. You would never trust a brilliant brain surgeon to fix your car solely on the basis of him being a doctor, nor would you expect the most renowned accountant to fix a leak in your home; but a guy like Voltaire (or Bono, Satre, Saramago, Brecht, even a linguist like Chomsky) can babble endlessly on economics, global warming, the stock market , and even garness public support and hence influence policy – without really having a grasp over the subjects they are pontificating about. How can these people get away with this while fortune tellers are ostracized?
Hmmm, I always thought of Voltaire as more of a philosopher than artist. I know what you’re saying about artists whose (often unqualified) views are given disproportionate coverage/importance. I think that can be extended to celebrities in general.
I guess everyone is entitled to express an opinion – you could actually blame the media for asking the questions (and publishing the response). Or you can push the blame one step further to the people who buy the papers or watch the TV shows. The sad fact is that people are more interested in Bono’s views on the causes of poverty than they are in the views of an experienced researcher or NGO worker.
But returning to Voltaire and that quotation, I think the broad point he was making is sound (it certainly was sound at the time he wrote/said it when slavery and indentured labour were common).
The economics of the situation are pretty basic aren’t they? While there are large numbers of poor, poorly educated people, wealthy people can comfortably afford to employ one or more domestic workers to clean their houses, wash their clothes etc. When education and opportunities improve, it becomes more expensive to employ these workers – this has been widely reported in Brazil over the last few years. Surely that is the essence of Voltaire’s statement.
Voltaire’s quote states “The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
If this is true then why is there more wealth per capita in middle class socieities rather than poor ones (with exceptions found in places like Kuwait which is oil rich and hosts a diminutive population)? And why are the rich, well, richer where poverty is reduced? Perhaps it is because the comfort of the rich depends – above all – on them being rich; yet by forcing poverty upon a certain segment then wealth creation is extinguished among that population, which means there will be less money circulating since able bodies and minds are not allowed or encouraged to develop their talents and create ever increasing wealth. Overall everyone is worse off in this scenario: the poor are poorer, the middle class are stiffled at best, as are the rich. In other words everyone tries to maintain a mediocre status quo. I find that in dynamic economies where poverty is insignificant the rich tend to live much better, and make much more of their lives.
Looking at Voltaire’s quote, on its own, it seems he just studies the rich in certain societies – looking more at moracatilism and/or slave based economies – rather than those of mature capitalism.
I would much rather be rich in, say, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, than Paraguay, Kenya or any other place where poverty reigns. I think I would just live better, and better enjoy the comforts of my wealth.
Sorry , I meant to write ; “He just STUDIED …… looking more at Mercantalism”
Awesome comment, Ray! I just wanted to say that I LOVE the floor drains; they’re so useful, and I don’t know how I’m ever going to go back to drain-less floors if my husband and I move out of Brazil.
Although my cleanliness standards are not quite as high as my Brazilian husband’s, I did get a bit of “cleanliness culture shock” on my last trip back to the U.S. – particularly in the kitchen.
In Brazil kitchens really do need to be kept spotless because of the simple practical reason that any crumbs of food left out will attract ants, cockroaches, or worse, rats. Also I’ve come to enjoy keeping the kitchen very clean because it really is much nicer when you go in there to cook :-)
Ha Shayna,
I don’t know where in the US you are from, but in Rhode Island where we live we must leave our kitchens spotless as well or we might get a rats, ants and cockroaches invasion!!
;)
Ray
So good to know that the tricycle dude in the pic delivering groceries and other things allows dogs to hang out by the goods, and probably rub their business all around that given area every once in a while . . .
Oh, important Grittip: when ironing put a bit of saliva (preferably your own) around the folds. The enzymes in your spit will break down the starches and give you a smoother result. Only on the folds though Tom, don’t go sneezing over everything and then applying the iron for maximum results – that’s just wierd.
Ha ha! :D Funny how we can look at the same picture and see completely different things!
I remember those enzymes from Biology – “Salivary Amylase” if my memory serves…
Off topic; but I find this astonishing: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/12/ubs-and-libor?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/horriblyrottencomicallystupid
Yes, absolutely astonishing. Outrageous that so much inter-company collusion was going on.
“. I quickly realised that my days of queuing and jostling at the bar were over. A few moments after I took a seat, a waiter would appear and take my order – a few moments later I was sipping an ice cold beer.”
Come on, you guys do have bars with waiters in Britain…
“I have never felt comfortable about having maids around. Always a strange person moving around in your private space…”
I completely agree! I live in Rio with my girl and we don’t have a maid! And we don’t have a maid because it scares the hell out of us to have a poor woman (probably living in a dangerous part of the city) taking care of our stuff. And note that we are both Brazilians! I think we’ve heard too many creepy stories involving maids. LOL. Our dishwasher and washing mashine probably do 70% of the housework anyway.
“In the jobs I had in Brazil there were people serving coffe, cleaning the toilets, the kitchen, etc. I felt embarrassed sometimes.”
Well, this is not uncommon in the US, maybe in Europe. I’ve seen many “wet floor” signs and (fat) maids pushing “cleaning cars” inside private companies and shoppings etc in the US. And to be honest with you, the only places that I’ve seen people hired only to serve coffee in Brazil were restaurants, bars and (very) fancy stores.
“first world countries are often depicted as being full of luxury and decadence and yet I expect many emigrating Brazilians must get a shock when they arrive and realise that they have to do their own domestic chores!”
Europe is kind of different from the US. The US is much more similar to Brazil. There they have services for anything. I always say that a Brazilian will adapt easier to the US than to Europe. The truth is: for a upper class Brazilian it’s VERY HARD to live in Europe! We don’t know how tide our bed until 25 years-old. We are really spoiled, I believe. But notice that Ray’s link says that: “According to Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), household expenditure on domestic service has quadrupled in real terms. It estimates there are as many domestic workers in London now as in Victorian times.”
So… You guys are becoming like… us.
But I can’t have maids, I just can’t. Too creepy.
Cheers.
Hey Brazilian Soul – as Anna says below, there are some bars in Britain that have waiters, but they are quite unusual. We call the service you get in Brazil “table service” and this is really quite rare. The normal situation is that we have to queue up and try to get the barman’s attention. On a busy Friday night after work, it can take ages to get a drink and if you’re not pushy/assertive then you can spend ages waiting while other people get to the front and get their drinks! Ha! Can you tell I have suffered from this in the past? ;)
Good point about the differences between Europe and the US. My impression is that service is of a much higher standard and is more highly valued in the US. I’ve experienced some very grumpy, surly waiters in Europe.
I think you’re right – over the last 10 or 15 years there has been a large influx of poor immigrants from eastern Europe into London. Voltaire’s abundant supply of poor I guess…
Wow, Brazilian Soul, I couldn’t have done better job myself! Love your reply! Nothing like putting things into (a Brazilian) perspective (for a change). :)
Tom, as far I can tell, you’re the only blogger out there really trying to explain Brazil to the foreign community without those snide little comments about our culture causing them to bitch and bully their way through more serious debates. Great post, by the way!
Gil
Thanks Gil! :D During my time blogging I’ve noticed that it’s very hard to say anything without upsetting at least some people. But I have a great test audience (Mrs Eat Rio) to help me see things from the Brazilian point of view!
I know what you mean, Tom. Some Brazilians get easily offended with the most innocent remark. I suspect they are those who suffer from that old Brazilian low self esteem, that’s why they get so mad at a foreigner talking about anything less than positive about their country. But, boy, I can tell the lack of tact of some foreign bloggers is the cause of so much offense taken by the Brazilian readers and, in THIS CASE, I am one of them. But it’s NOT your case at all. Even when you (rarely) say something negative about Brazil, you never do that with an underlying poor-spirited meaning.
Naturally Brazil is full of problems, especially those of social nature and some of its cultural norms can be quite troubling for a less seasoned expat or immigrant, so it’s natural that you may talk about it all.
I’d never go to your jugular because you’re just pointing out an undeniable fact – even though, sometimes, it may be a painful one for a Brazilian to admit.
What really matters here is what you want to achieve with your comments and, as far I can tell, what you want is to make the discussion useful, so your blog is USEFUL. Unfortunately, though, I can’t say the same about some other blogs out there. I hope they can learn from you how to criticize and even complain (although you hardly complain at all) without the need of being cynic, sarcastic or just nasty. For good or for bad they are living in our country for God’s sake!
Well, I can tell Mrs. Le Mesurier married the right “gringo“ (I know you don’t like the term but it was just to illustrate the idea). :)) I think you are well above that category anyway. :)
Happy holidays, Tom.
Ah, thanks Gil! Happy Holidays to you too! :)
I love London and England!!! I love the architecture , the culture , the accent , etc.
but I was soooo shocked how dirty the houses were!! I visited many british friends’ houses from middle and upper class and they were incredible dirty!! I could not believe since it was not a money problem I guess they just didn’t feel the need or did not think it was dirty in the first place.
ps: I still LOVE british people :)
Brazilian Soul they do have waiters there but you have to pay up front at the cashier and the waiter will bring it to you on your table. but you still need to get up and order it.
Hi Anna,
Ah, I love England too! And in fact the whole of the UK. Being away from it for so long has really made me appreciate how many good things we have. Can you believe I actually got a bit misty eyed when I was watching the latest James Bond film – all the lovely Scottish countryside! And also the city of London! I do miss it sometimes.
But back to the point, I’m not surprised with what you say. Of course there are plenty of British people who are very house-proud and keep their homes spotless, but it’s a lot of work to keep even a medium sized house very clean. If you leave the house at 7 or 8 in the morning and return home at 8pm, then that doesn’t leave much time for cleaning. And bottom line: I find cleaning really boring! ;)
ha! I always contemplate the “are you being served?” culture whenever I wander into a shop. You get mobbed by not one, but two or three attendants and around here if that doesn’t happen then locals will grumble that the service was awful and they’re never, ever going back. I find it absolutely overwhelming. I always wonder what Brazilians felt about stores in the USA where they would have had to wander all over the store to locate a sales clerk…
As for the cleaning, another point is the building construction. It’s easy to slop water all over the floor and scrub with tons of soap & bleach if the floors and walls are concrete. If we had done that regularly in the USA where all the construction is done with wood we would have rotted out our floors!
Hey Malvina,
I have to confess, I really don’t like way that attendants come over to help. I guess I’m just not used to it – I like to be left alone while I look at things and make my own mind up. The worst is when you pick up a shirt or something and they attendant immediately starts telling me how great that would look on me. I guess I’m too self-conscious or something, it just makes me feel uncomfortable. What can I say? I very English sometimes! :D
But, I have seen Brazilians shopping and I can see that if you’ve grown up with this then it’s really useful. My brother in law will send attendants off to get him things in different sizes or colours. He clearly expects the service and uses it very efficiently.
Haha, it’s just so overwhelming when you want to just have a look around on your own. At first, if a store was quite empty of other customers, I would sometimes just not go in, because I knew the staff would pounce. I guess that was compounded by the fact that I was nervous because I knew I wouldn’t be able to speak or understand them though.
One of the first phrases I ever learned in Brazil was “tô só olhando” hahaha
I use that one all the time!!
Another tactic I use is to kind of sneak in when the attendants aren’t looking and then kind of creep around among the aisles, attempting to remain unnoticed for as long as possible. A bit like a secret agent avoiding the guards as he sneaks around some top secret facility, but much more like a shy Englishman who needs to grow a pair! ;)
“I use that one all the time!! ”
At the beach mostly I presume :-)
“At the beach mostly I presume” – only if I get caught olhando… ;)