Abby, Zoë and Enzo

I walked to the bank today to pay for Enzo's Brazilian passport, for the application I submitted online and the bill printed out.  It was R$156.07 = US$81.26 at the current exchange rate.  The line was very long and slow moving.  I counted the seconds for 5 or so teller transactions.  On average it took more than 4 minutes per person to be processed and the next person attended to, which I can't understand because my simple payment took less than a minute.  Maybe they are paying more than one bill at a time, as I saw many people with stacks of bills and wads of cash.  There are also many people watching and observing who has money, who is making payments and such, there is little to no privacy.  Apparently everyone does all of their banking and bill paying on the last 2 days of the month until the first 2 days of the month. They close the bank at 4 PM in order to finish the line before 5 PM.  I waited in line for more than 1 hour, from 3:20 until 4:36 which was stamped on my receipt.  There were only 38 people in front of me, thus my average of 4 minutes per person (there were 2 tellers).  I am not sure why this process exists as such. If Brazilians do this once a month for a whole year, they waste 12+ hours a year standing in line to pay bills at the bank. Oi!  Doesn't sound like an efficient use of time, or at least my time.