Battling Customer Dis-service

Am I crazy? I asked myself on my way home from the supermarket yesterday. Checking with my Brazilian husband, he assured me that I'm not insane and that I've been experiencing a heavy dose of Brazilian-style customer service or should I say "dis-service". I'm not used to having to throw tantrums to get my way, signing heavily and rolling my eyes. I don't like to look like the crazy "foreign" lady who's lost her cool, but at the same time, I can't sit in line behind 15 people when one cashier is slowly passing the items over the scanner as if she had no feeling in her arms and a huge hangover, while the next cashier is chatting up her fellow co-worker and refusing to allow customers to pass through her.

"Are you a preferred customer?" The cashier asks as if I had woken her up in the middle the night.
"I don't know am I?" I wish I could say sarcastically in Portuguese.

I try to stay calm and gently suggest that perhaps she could mention to her manager that it would be helpful to us "preferred customers" if they would open a few more cash registers when the line-up is long. She smiles and chuckles. It's funny that this wacked foreign lady is trying to complain in her broken Portuguese. She brushes me off and slowly scans my things. I focus  on counting my breaths, counting my breaths, counting my breaths.

So you might think it's a one time thing, a bad day, you know, but it's not, it has happened frequently enough that I've been questioning my ability to communicate in Portuguese, and my "people skills". My husband assures me that unfortunately to get what you need, even the most basic service you always have to assume that they didn't hear you the first time, that the information that gave you is wrong, or that they've forgotten you. As a Brazilian, he reminds me that there is much more of a "fend for yourself" attitude that permeates daily life, even on the road, he points out. And he's right, you have to push your way into traffic, otherwise you will sit waiting and waiting to merge whereas in Vancouver, you are much more likely to have someone let you in with a smile. So it's okay, he assures me to be more forceful and make myself heard.

The thing is while I don't prefer to act like a smelly toddler who refuses to take a bath to get things done in my life, counting my breaths can only take me so far.  I should really brush up on simple, polite, but stern Portuguese phrases that I could use to gently coddle the service workers I encounter into actually doing what they are paid to do.

Rant is over.

(Here's a photo of the beautiful view behind our tower to make up for my rant.)