The Jeitinho

One of the best and worst things about living in Brazil is the jeitinho. A symptom of a dysfunctional system, the jeitinho is basically a way of getting around things, a loophole, an alternative way of doing something. Since in some cases, doing things the official or legal way is very complicated, people use the jeitinho in order to get things done. That doesn't mean the jeitinho is entirely due to dysfunction; people sometimes use it just to accomplish a task faster or more efficiently. Though it makes life a lot easier, it is sometimes an inherently selfish act, since it allows the person to accomplish something that may be detrimental or unhelpful to others, or allows the person a certain advantage others do not have. But without the jeitinho, I'm not sure I could survive in Brazil. Could anyone?

I witnessed an excellent example of the jeitinho a few weeks ago, when we were on vacation in Arraial. We were at the supermarket as it was closing. There was only one ten items or less aisle, and the supermarket was crowded as everyone tried to get in their shopping before the place closed. A couple was in line in front of us with a half full shopping cart. It was obvious they had a lot more than ten items. I eyed them suspiciously. When they got to the register, the woman stepped up and placed a dozen items on the counter, and paid with a credit card. After she finished the transaction, her husband placed the rest of the items from their cart on the counter and payed in cash. The couple then gathered up their bags and left.

If you pay attention, you can witness jeitinhos every day in Brazil, no matter where you live. What jeitinhos have you seen recently?

Comments

[jeanne]

Isso não é só jeitinho, é a mais pura falta de educação e respeito!
Um dias desses eu estava na Shoppers Drugmart enfrentando uma fila enorme. Quando chega a minha fez de passar no caixa uma chinesa simplesmente passa na minha frente como se nada tivesse acontecido. Como as pessoas (com exceção dos chineses, que estão sempre com pressa) são muito educadas por aqui eu fiquei olhando e me perguntando se quem tinha furado a fila era eu! Quando chegou minha vez a moça do caixa ao lado brigou com a outra que atendeu a chinesa furadora de fila.
Comentei o caso com uma amiga que mora na China e ela me disse que furar fila lá é a coisa mais comum que existe. Ela, inclusive, passou por uma situação quando estava na fila do Banco há mais de 1 hora esperando para ser atendida. Nisso chegou um chinês e ofereceu um valor pra comprar o lugar dela na fila. Ela falou que só venderia por um valor mais alto, e como ele percebeu que ela era estrangeira (na verdade é descendente de japoneses e todos a confunden com chinês lá na China)pediu desculpas.
O jeitinho brasileiro é muitas vezes sinônimo de coisas positivas, tipo criatividade e jogo de cintura, mas na maioria das vezes é negativo, é só para tirar vantagem mesmo.

[jeanne]

Isso não é só jeitinho, é a mais pura falta de educação e respeito!
Um dias desses eu estava na Shoppers Drugmart enfrentando uma fila enorme. Quando chega a minha fez de passar no caixa uma chinesa simplesmente passa na minha frente como se nada tivesse acontecido. Como as pessoas (com exceção dos chineses, que estão sempre com pressa) são muito educadas por aqui eu fiquei olhando e me perguntando se quem tinha furado a fila era eu! Quando chegou minha vez a moça do caixa ao lado brigou com a outra que atendeu a chinesa furadora de fila.
Comentei o caso com uma amiga que mora na China e ela me disse que furar fila lá é a coisa mais comum que existe. Ela, inclusive, passou por uma situação quando estava na fila do Banco há mais de 1 hora esperando para ser atendida. Nisso chegou um chinês e ofereceu um valor pra comprar o lugar dela na fila. Ela falou que só venderia por um valor mais alto, e como ele percebeu que ela era estrangeira (na verdade é descendente de japoneses e todos a confunden com chinês lá na China)pediu desculpas.
O jeitinho brasileiro é muitas vezes sinônimo de coisas positivas, tipo criatividade e jogo de cintura, mas na maioria das vezes é negativo, é só para tirar vantagem mesmo.

[jeanne]

Isso não é só jeitinho, é a mais pura falta de educação e respeito!
Um dias desses eu estava na Shoppers Drugmart enfrentando uma fila enorme. Quando chega a minha fez de passar no caixa uma chinesa simplesmente passa na minha frente como se nada tivesse acontecido. Como as pessoas (com exceção dos chineses, que estão sempre com pressa) são muito educadas por aqui eu fiquei olhando e me perguntando se quem tinha furado a fila era eu! Quando chegou minha vez a moça do caixa ao lado brigou com a outra que atendeu a chinesa furadora de fila.
Comentei o caso com uma amiga que mora na China e ela me disse que furar fila lá é a coisa mais comum que existe. Ela, inclusive, passou por uma situação quando estava na fila do Banco há mais de 1 hora esperando para ser atendida. Nisso chegou um chinês e ofereceu um valor pra comprar o lugar dela na fila. Ela falou que só venderia por um valor mais alto, e como ele percebeu que ela era estrangeira (na verdade é descendente de japoneses e todos a confunden com chinês lá na China)pediu desculpas.
O jeitinho brasileiro é muitas vezes sinônimo de coisas positivas, tipo criatividade e jogo de cintura, mas na maioria das vezes é negativo, é só para tirar vantagem mesmo.

[E]

I was at the PF to finish getting my residency and I was missing a document. I would've had to come back a different day, stand in line again and submit the document to get it. I would've been late, thus violating my visa stay. The woman at the PF had a jeitinho: "I'll give you the residency today. Just bring that document tomorrow. Don't stand in line. Just walk in and give it to me." That's a good jeitinho.

Bad: when a policeman stops us for some reason and says there is a "jeitinho" such that we won't get a fine.

[Jen]

The grocery store scenario is one that I'm pretty sure is familiar to American college students planning a party. What do you think of people splitting grocery lines, with each person standing in a different line and then everyone moves over to the fastest one when it's time to check out?

As for jeitinho, I guess it walks the line between creativity and corruption, huh? I was friends with a guy whose father was involved in a paternity suit and he paid off the judge to say the kid wasn't his (even though it was). I was amazed by that. When I was studying at a university in Brazil, government workers were on a major work slowdown, which meant getting an RNE would have taken forever -- hell, maybe longer than I was going to be there. My contact at the university told me that with all the time and money I'd waste in that pursuit, I might as well just not register and, if they noticed at the airport, pay any relevant fine because it'd surely be cheaper. No one noticed, of course.

Americans, on average, hate the concept of "jeitinho," even though the concept is common and accepted in most parts of the world. I guess because we value fairness and think everyone should pay the same, should wait the same amount of time, should face the same criminal charges and jail time regardless of economic standing, etc., and anyone who doesn't is unfairly gaming the system and should somehow be punished for it.

[mallory elise]

In France, it is called le Système D and it accomplishes the same feat. i still use it daily :)

[Bruno Barbaroxa]

Oh my, you sound like a true upper middle class Brazilian talking about jeitinho right there. In fact, that should deserve a post at some point: how Brazilians like to theorise and rationalise their lifestyle more than necessary (usually winding up to completely besides the point theoretical systems of a mere detail in Brazilian life) --- I'm sure you know what I'm talking about: you just did it, and now I'm doing it too. ;-)

Sou caipira, do interior de São Paulo, nasci em Santo Antônio da Posse e cresci numa fazenda de café em Mogi Guaçu. Pode dar google maps nesses lugares, você vai ver quão fim-de-mundo isso não é. :-) Where I grew up --- a place not usually accounted for when people theorise about the metaphysics of Brazil --- there was no such a thing as jeitinho. Then again, life in the sertão paulista is closer to feudalism than anything else --- which is a matter for a later, endless talk. My point here being: when I moved to São Paulo, I was perhaps just as much of a gringo as you were, moving to Rio. My accent was funny, I had a completely different table of values, I didn't have the ginga or the grace to deal with the lively spirit of Sampa: so at first the city felt grey and concrete and evil.

Years have passed, little by little the city has gotten to me, and now within my chest it dwells and beats. (Did I just make an iambic pentameter?) And I have to say, while I totally relate to how you define and react to jeitinho right now, I don't think your perception of it is completely mature. See, if jeitinho were just about the loophole, the workaround, it would be easier to define in a foreign language: and in Portuguese too! ---for that we have a different word: gambiarra. And also: trapaça. Brazilians are very fond of euphemisms, but if jeitinho were indeed just an euphemism to trapaça, we would all know and agree on that.

I'll risk a theory, a short one because this comment is already too large, just a little food for later thought: jeitinho, I'd say, is a grammar. An aesthetic. Like there is a proverbial grammar to what constitutes wit, and to what in particular constitutes good wit, there is a grammar of jeitinho, so to speak. Jeitinho is not a technique for working around the establishment (for that we have other words and slang, for instance ginga and jogo de cintura), and in fact the greatest masters of jeitinho in our daily lives are the people who manage to play with the system, as opposed to against the system. Jeitinho is not a particular action that works around stuff either, like I said, for that we have the word gambiarra.

So jeitinho is an aesthetical judgment we make about something. What's puzzling to people is that this particular judgment is completely besides morality: a great jeitinho doesn't require you to not pull the carpet on good people. Ethical judgments are left as an exercise to the audience, even when it has been commonly established that a particular event was a wonderful example of great jeitinho. Think about that. ;-)

[Bruno Barbaroxa]

ps. --- Me divertindo horrores, lendo os arquivos do seu blogue. Tem umas coisas muito interessantes por aí. Suas recomendações de leitura sobre la nación estão anotadíssimas, suas reações às pessoas e às coisas variam do humoroso ao profundamente insightful, e as dicas ---ah! as dicas--- mereciam mesmo ir parar num livro. Considere editar um guia: não de Brasil, porque às vezes você confunde a cidade maravilhosa com o Brasil inteiro, mas um guia de Rio de Janeiro. E não se surpreenda se, de fato, um livro desses acabe se tornando best seller --- justamente aqui no Brasil! Parabéns pelo blogue, é mesmo muito interessante.

[polyana]

Brazilians are so used to having so many barriers making things so difficult for them that there's no other way of getting what you want if you don't find a jeitinho brasileiro out of anything. this has escalated and transformed negatively into all sorts of corrupt practices on the power holding, upper calsses. But the underlying and original concept and turning a blind eye to certain rules and "bureaucratic processes" for those in the lower classes are the only ways some things can get done around here.

Plus, outside brazil, we're uber-proud of our jeitinho - because outside Brazil we encounter tons of barriers and without this "quality" (?) of ours, we wouldn't have prospered as much as we have (and much quicker than a number of other immigrant groups). Querendo ou não, it's a Brazilian survival mechanism.

[Gustavo B.]

Roberto DaMatta defende no "O que faz o brasil, Brasil?" que nos países desenvolvidos há uma coerência entre a regra e as práticas diárias, de forma que a obediência diante de uma placa de pare é natural. Já aqui essas regras contrariam o bom senso e as práticas da sociedade. É daí que vem a figura abominável e anômala do despachante. E é daí também que surge o oposto do jeitinho, o "sabe com quem está falando?".

[Samantha]

Ow, in fact I saw too many jeitinhos in my whole life as brazilian that nowadays they are normal to me. Unfortunately. Well, once I remember a fact in college.
A teacher was going to apply a test, but he had to re-schedule it. But some students saw a huge pack among the teacher's stuff and figured out that it could be the testes. In fact, it was. A guy managed to steal one of the tests. Everybody did the test together. Those who didn't want to take part in such a illegal thing got marks around 5 or 6 (including me). All those who did the test previosly got 9 to 10.
But it was much more than an inocent jeitinho. It was a horrible cheat, a big jeitinho.
Love your blog, I like to see this foreign look at Brazil.

[camille]

absolutely loved your blog!
you write about stuff that even us Brazilians dont stop to think about!
not to say it's an insight of the US culture, too!
the pajamas thing in "top ten things i used to do...", blew me away!
lol

[Gabriel]

I used to think that the brazilian "jeitinho" was a good thing, that it showed how brazilians can manage to do some hard things and how they are creative, etc.

So I started to work in a federal brazilian bank (Caixa Econômica), with all its bureaucracy and with lots of poor people as costumers, and I started to build up a new point of view. And my new tendency is to think that the "jeitinho" isn't good most of the times, that it is deeply related to a corruption of our society. I would like to be wrong, but as the time passes, I think I'm not.

Congratulations for your weblog. I love it, you write very well. É sempre enriquecedor saber os pontos de vista de estrangeiros inteligentes como você. Tem coisas que só quem é de fora consegue ver.

Abraço!

[Sônia de Souza]

I got your website thinking that somebody else, from "the best place in the world", is writing some good stuff about Brazil, and I got really sad seeing how can somebody lives here and says a lot of things and almost all those are bad... I know that we are having I lot of problems over here... but if you are living, it's because you want to.
I went to USA and I loved it. By the way, I went to NY and so many things made me feel scared, like the place that I stayed; but I didn't come back talking about it... I came back talking about everything that I loved there!
Enjoy Brazil and RJ, because they have so many good things!
Regards,
Sônia