Every month I receive my pay stub and every month it amuses me. Not for necessarily for the risible amount printed there but rather because it requires my signature in duplicate copies. The duplicate copies are generated by carbon paper. Really! I kid you not! Carbon Paper! I hadn't seen carbon paper since I was a little girl. Brazilian bureaucracy is rather amusing, here stamps make documents official. A five dollar stamp that can be made at any corner store lends some kind of credibility, officiality and credential to what otherwise would be a perfectly acceptable document. The myth of the stamp's official nature goes as far as people requesting that a translation be stamped (with a five dollar stamp from the corner store) rather than signed by the translator. Once bidding for a job, one of the requirements was that the submission be stamped, without a stamp on the page we could not bid for the job. When I asked why the stamp was necessary I was told that it's part of the procedure, without a stamp the submission would not be considered. Even though the person could not tell me what difference the stamp would make especially since there were no requirements for the stamp. It did not have to issued by any sort of accredited agency or contain any kind of specific information or use any sort of special ink. I simply needed to be a stamp with the company's name, that's it!!!
I think carbon paper exemplifies Brazilian bureaucracy to a T. Antiquated, in disuse, superfluous, old-fashioned, obsolete and extremely official.
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