1) In the airport
There was a newspaper booth with an acrilical box on its side,
full of money. People were suposed to just put the exact change in the transparent box and pick the number of newspapers and magazines that they paid for. By the amount that should have been in that box, I'm almost sure it is exactly what people do!!! I couldn't imagine this system working in São Paulo (but I would like someone to try, just as an experiment!)
2) At H-E-B (a supermarket chain here in Austin)
After picking up all my things, I head to the cashier. No, there wasn't a person over there to assist me. I passed all the products by the scanner, bag them and, at the end, swiped my credit card to pay for them! Another interesting experiment to do in my hometown...
About this "self-service" thing, Americans are long used to not having "frentistas" at gas stations... It's so weird to put the gas on our own car! I guess we're really spoiled... Not to mention that doing those things (self-service at supermarket and at gas stations) in a country with staggering unemployment rates would be extremely polemical and unpopular! (Instead, we pass laws in Brazil making it ilegal for gas stations not to have "frentistas" and buses not to have "cobradores", as you may all remember...) This reminds me of Salvador, where, at the supermarket, not only there were people who put our purchase on the bags, but also to put the bags into the cart, take the cart into our car and put the bags into the trunk of our car! I felt so uncomfortable! (But a friend of mine who used to live there -- Nicolini, now studying in Paris! -- said that this had to be done due to an unemployment rate of aprox. 20%!!!)
