Brazilian motto: The immediate need is the only need.
The other day I watched my pirated copy (they call them “roubado” here – “robbed”) of the most recent Star Wars movie, and spent a few minutes after I’d shut my laptop off basking in awe of how sucky all of Lucas’ new movies are. I see now why he did episodes 4-6 and then 1-3; if he released The Phantom Menace in ’77 there would have been a bunch of geeky little kids coming out of the theater, pushing up their glasses and saying, “That was like, garbage.”
And speaking of garbage, we got a new (new to us – I think it’s ‘refurbished’) air conditioner in the office today. Previously our air conditioner was a table fan, so anything is a step up. The level of incompetence demonstrated by the AC installers was trumped only by the level of incompetence demonstrated by Ivanildo when he tried to put back all the wall and trim installation that the AC guys had taken down.
As he started doing this I asked him “Shouldn’t the AC guys do that, since they took it down?” He shook his head and gave the international sign for “I’m not waiting around for those morons to come and try to put it all back.”
The lesson for today was that the Brazilian motto for getting work done is “The immediate need is all that matters.” This is demonstrated in a number of places other than my work area. The plumbing, for example – you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet (that’s right, welcome to my world … although it’s not as bad as it sounds) anywhere in Salvador because the pipes are too small. And why are the pipes too small? Because the attitude when they were installed was, If no one is going to see it, why bother doing a good job?
I was able to see Ivanildo use this philosophy in action as well, for example when he had to move some piles of books over to shove the crappiest, most unstable and rusty ladder I’ve ever seen against a wall to nail up the ceiling trim. Rather than just pick the stack of books up and place it elsewhere on the floor, he picked them up 3 or 4 at a time (since he had something else in his other hand and didn’t feel like putting it down) and stacked them on some other precariously balanced stacks of books, not even trying to even them up to stabilize things. And just because by some miracle they didn’t fall didn’t mean that it would take anything more than a cricket running across the top of them (a distinct possibility) to make the whole thing start to (quite annoyingly) slide into the middle of the office. But who cares if it doesn’t happen when you’re around, right?
While he was doing this I was standing behind him with his nephew Vinny, and I started laughing because it was so blatantly rediculous. Vinny joined in too, but I get the feeling he was just taking a cue from me, since this sort of activity seemed to be pretty routine judging by the nonchalant way everyone seemed to be just watching and staring while Ivanildo went on a Home Depot Anti-Christ rampage.
Getting back to the ladder – I got on it first, since I way less than Ivanildo and he’s smart enough not to be the first to get on a ladder that looks like it was made during the Depression and barely survived. And it started to break, so to fix this he took a length of network cable that I told him to throw away since it was defective and used it to tie the faulty ladder step to the ladder so that it wouldn’t fall off while one of us was on it. “Better than falling off,” he said, referring to the granny knot he used to tie the network cable together.
Ivanildo used this same ladder to tape up a piece of styrofoam he used to block the space above the air conditioner where the wall used to be (and which I guess the AC guys sawed off). He had his niece, age 13, use the measurements he took by marking a piece of plastic to mark the piece of styrofoam. So it was no surprise that it was an inch longer than necessary. But rather than take the 3 seconds or so to chop off the extra inch, he just taped it (packing, not duct) to the wall with the rest of the garbage that was already up there. Again, it was all going to get covered by part of the trim that overhangs, so unless some drug dealer or squatter is watching from one of the adjacent (abandoned) buildings, no one’s going to see it anyway.
But imagine if you were that squatter. Would you have the decency to yell across the courtyard something like: “Hey man, that piece of styrofoam’s not flush! It looks awful from this angle!” Or would you be one of those antisocial squatters whom all the other squatters say is a dick because you take some sort of secret joy in NOT pointing out your neighbors aesthetic screwups? God! You’re such a … dick.
And speaking of garbage, we got a new (new to us – I think it’s ‘refurbished’) air conditioner in the office today. Previously our air conditioner was a table fan, so anything is a step up. The level of incompetence demonstrated by the AC installers was trumped only by the level of incompetence demonstrated by Ivanildo when he tried to put back all the wall and trim installation that the AC guys had taken down.
As he started doing this I asked him “Shouldn’t the AC guys do that, since they took it down?” He shook his head and gave the international sign for “I’m not waiting around for those morons to come and try to put it all back.”
The lesson for today was that the Brazilian motto for getting work done is “The immediate need is all that matters.” This is demonstrated in a number of places other than my work area. The plumbing, for example – you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet (that’s right, welcome to my world … although it’s not as bad as it sounds) anywhere in Salvador because the pipes are too small. And why are the pipes too small? Because the attitude when they were installed was, If no one is going to see it, why bother doing a good job?
I was able to see Ivanildo use this philosophy in action as well, for example when he had to move some piles of books over to shove the crappiest, most unstable and rusty ladder I’ve ever seen against a wall to nail up the ceiling trim. Rather than just pick the stack of books up and place it elsewhere on the floor, he picked them up 3 or 4 at a time (since he had something else in his other hand and didn’t feel like putting it down) and stacked them on some other precariously balanced stacks of books, not even trying to even them up to stabilize things. And just because by some miracle they didn’t fall didn’t mean that it would take anything more than a cricket running across the top of them (a distinct possibility) to make the whole thing start to (quite annoyingly) slide into the middle of the office. But who cares if it doesn’t happen when you’re around, right?
While he was doing this I was standing behind him with his nephew Vinny, and I started laughing because it was so blatantly rediculous. Vinny joined in too, but I get the feeling he was just taking a cue from me, since this sort of activity seemed to be pretty routine judging by the nonchalant way everyone seemed to be just watching and staring while Ivanildo went on a Home Depot Anti-Christ rampage.
Getting back to the ladder – I got on it first, since I way less than Ivanildo and he’s smart enough not to be the first to get on a ladder that looks like it was made during the Depression and barely survived. And it started to break, so to fix this he took a length of network cable that I told him to throw away since it was defective and used it to tie the faulty ladder step to the ladder so that it wouldn’t fall off while one of us was on it. “Better than falling off,” he said, referring to the granny knot he used to tie the network cable together.
Ivanildo used this same ladder to tape up a piece of styrofoam he used to block the space above the air conditioner where the wall used to be (and which I guess the AC guys sawed off). He had his niece, age 13, use the measurements he took by marking a piece of plastic to mark the piece of styrofoam. So it was no surprise that it was an inch longer than necessary. But rather than take the 3 seconds or so to chop off the extra inch, he just taped it (packing, not duct) to the wall with the rest of the garbage that was already up there. Again, it was all going to get covered by part of the trim that overhangs, so unless some drug dealer or squatter is watching from one of the adjacent (abandoned) buildings, no one’s going to see it anyway.
But imagine if you were that squatter. Would you have the decency to yell across the courtyard something like: “Hey man, that piece of styrofoam’s not flush! It looks awful from this angle!” Or would you be one of those antisocial squatters whom all the other squatters say is a dick because you take some sort of secret joy in NOT pointing out your neighbors aesthetic screwups? God! You’re such a … dick.
posted by n10471 at 6:23 AM
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