I am so pissed off with Brazil today!
Not for myself, but I'm sick to the back teeth of my Brazilian girlfriend being shafted by unscrupulous people.
Firstly, there's the situation with her former employer who didn't pay her for 6 months - she still hasn't received a centavo. An audience with the Justicia de Trabalho was fixed for 25th Nov... we attended... but the admin staff were on strike and it was rescheduled for 24th March - FOUR MONTHS AWAY!
Now we've had mega problems with a driving school.
Alice signed up for lessons on 15th December 2008. She passed the pysch test OK and absolutely flew through the theoretical test with the highest score they'd seen.
Then came the practical lessons. She started those but the instructor was very unreliable, would cancel lessons at short notice and lessons were never the full hour. However she persevered.
We continually asked the instructor to organise the driving test, but the bitch always put it off. Finally it turned out that Detran had suspended the school and she had been teaching illegally. A test was organised, but we had to transfer driving schools. Stupid illogical Brazilian bureaucracy makes it very difficult to change schools.
The bitch said we needed to pay R$100 via her to the other school, which we did. She also said it would cost R$50 to rent the car from the other school. It was arranged that we would arrive early so that my gf could practice for a while in the different car (I certainly wouldn't attempt a driving test without first having a chance to get accustomed to the clutch - and I've thirty years' driving experience).
We arrived at the test centre at 0600 as arranged - the car from the other school arrived at 0700. He had no knowledge of the pre-arranged lesson, and we discovered the boss of the new school had not asked for money, nor received it! The only money required was R$50 fpr the car rental which we had previously paid to the bitch. We paid another R$50 to him (as he hadn't received the first paymen)t.
Alice was very stressed and tearful. She was so upset she didn't even attempt the test (which I can understand, as the replacement car was much newer and had a decent clutch, whereas she'd been learning in a car with a stiff clutch). Her confidence was shot by this time.
We went to Detran afterwards to try and organise a new test, but because of the bitch's illegal activiy and dragging her heels about organising the test, Alice missed the deadline by 1 day for a re-test and needs to take all the courses again (psych, theory, and practical). We're seriously considering buying a licence for her.
I honestly don't know how so many Brazilians can sleep at night knowing that they're mindf-ing other people, let alone taking money under false pretences.
It's not surprising that I feel like punching somebody's lights out!
I DO like Brazil but at times it's a backward vipers nest. People think nothing of sh*tting on others, and there seems to be little legal redress. They need to sort themselves out... the old adage "Brazil is a country of the future, and always will be" certainly seems to ring true. They need their own Maggie Thatcher - I may not have liked the woman but she had the guts to sort the UK out. But I doubt very much there's a Brazilian politician with big enough balls to take on that job!
Not for myself, but I'm sick to the back teeth of my Brazilian girlfriend being shafted by unscrupulous people.
Firstly, there's the situation with her former employer who didn't pay her for 6 months - she still hasn't received a centavo. An audience with the Justicia de Trabalho was fixed for 25th Nov... we attended... but the admin staff were on strike and it was rescheduled for 24th March - FOUR MONTHS AWAY!
Now we've had mega problems with a driving school.
Alice signed up for lessons on 15th December 2008. She passed the pysch test OK and absolutely flew through the theoretical test with the highest score they'd seen.
Then came the practical lessons. She started those but the instructor was very unreliable, would cancel lessons at short notice and lessons were never the full hour. However she persevered.
We continually asked the instructor to organise the driving test, but the bitch always put it off. Finally it turned out that Detran had suspended the school and she had been teaching illegally. A test was organised, but we had to transfer driving schools. Stupid illogical Brazilian bureaucracy makes it very difficult to change schools.
The bitch said we needed to pay R$100 via her to the other school, which we did. She also said it would cost R$50 to rent the car from the other school. It was arranged that we would arrive early so that my gf could practice for a while in the different car (I certainly wouldn't attempt a driving test without first having a chance to get accustomed to the clutch - and I've thirty years' driving experience).
We arrived at the test centre at 0600 as arranged - the car from the other school arrived at 0700. He had no knowledge of the pre-arranged lesson, and we discovered the boss of the new school had not asked for money, nor received it! The only money required was R$50 fpr the car rental which we had previously paid to the bitch. We paid another R$50 to him (as he hadn't received the first paymen)t.
Alice was very stressed and tearful. She was so upset she didn't even attempt the test (which I can understand, as the replacement car was much newer and had a decent clutch, whereas she'd been learning in a car with a stiff clutch). Her confidence was shot by this time.
We went to Detran afterwards to try and organise a new test, but because of the bitch's illegal activiy and dragging her heels about organising the test, Alice missed the deadline by 1 day for a re-test and needs to take all the courses again (psych, theory, and practical). We're seriously considering buying a licence for her.
I honestly don't know how so many Brazilians can sleep at night knowing that they're mindf-ing other people, let alone taking money under false pretences.
It's not surprising that I feel like punching somebody's lights out!
I DO like Brazil but at times it's a backward vipers nest. People think nothing of sh*tting on others, and there seems to be little legal redress. They need to sort themselves out... the old adage "Brazil is a country of the future, and always will be" certainly seems to ring true. They need their own Maggie Thatcher - I may not have liked the woman but she had the guts to sort the UK out. But I doubt very much there's a Brazilian politician with big enough balls to take on that job!
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