You hand him the receipt, and he surrenders the water. Much of Brazil is still like that, unautomated. Think how much quicker a Taco Bell here, armed with overhead PCs, would process that order. People are plentiful in Sao Paulo. Its population, somewhere between 17 and 24 million people, makes New York City look like Saint Paul.
People arrive every day by the thousands, without skills, drawn by the promise of jobs.
Office technology exists in Brazil. I saw many ads for computadores, and the seminar we delivered was next to a much larger one explaining the Microsoft Office suite. Home computers are becoming popular with the middle class families filling the high-rise buildings that fill the city skyline. But computers are absent in many ways. Price tags are written out by hand.