Three hours off work to watch the game Welcome to Brazil!

In these lands the World Cup has its ritual. The whole of Brazil is adapted to make it easy for everyone, from kindergarten children to hundreds of thousands of public officials, to follow each game and cheer on the team with enthusiasm. For something it is considered the country of football and treasures five cups, more than anyone else. National sport is one of the few things that has always united this giant as unequal as it is based on class. That the leadership put enormous facilities on the squad so that they do not miss a minute of play, here it is the norm, not the exception. Everything is easy so that the fan that almost every Brazilian has inside him can put his energy into cheering on his footballers. That’s why the rush hour of traffic in São Paulo this Thursday was much earlier than usual, nobody wanted to be late for Brazil-Serbia. At that time the bars were already filling up with people wearing the yellow shirt, the one that Bolsonarismo has patrimonized in recent years and many would like to recover as a national symbol.

Italo Oliveira, 19, was afraid of missing the big football event because of work. And he got a big surprise when the boss told the team that they would have three hours off to watch Brazil’s debut. “It was a surprise because our work never stops,” he explains in the intermission after a dull first half that he has just seen with more than a thousand colleagues sitting in front of two huge televisions set up for the occasion in this giant warehouse located in Cajamar, an hour’s drive from São Paulo.

When Richarlison scores a dream goal—his second goal—it’s a delirium. They explode with excitement, they jump exultantly on the chairs arranged so that it almost looks like a bleacher. The vuvuzelas sound. “Brazil, Brazil”, they chant. Many have changed the shirt of the work uniform for the one of the selection. Someone has dyed their hair green. They are excited. His team start off on the right foot and are closer to making history again and winning the sixth in Qatar.

The football spree takes place next to a plant that is really unusual to see stopped. This is one of the distribution centers of Mercado Libre (an Argentine Amazon, the Latin American e-commerce giant). And it’s not just any day because Brazil debuts and because tomorrow is one of the most important days in this business, Black Friday. That is why the press has been invited. Watching the game in a company like this helps to understand why companies offer such facilities and why in some countries the passion for soccer is so widespread, even if for some it is only a love that is revived every four years.

In this plant, they always work like an ant in shifts to cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is the invisible part of that order that you just made on your mobile and it becomes a package that arrives at home. They only stop on Christmas Day, New Years, and now, when the Canarinha plays in Qatar. “When they told us that we would have a break in my team, we began to celebrate, to decide what we were going to wear and how we were going to put on our makeup,” explains Talita Neves, 21. Both she and Oliveira work moving around the gigantic warehouse, preparing orders that are then packed and shipped to their destinations. And when they have a problem, they turn to colleagues like 27-year-old Lesli Oblesrczuk — “calm down, I’ll spell it” —” who guides them when a product turns out to be missing or not where it should be. He says that these dates are crazy because both the sales volume and the teams increase.

Brazilians arrived at this World Cup event depressed because political polarization has poisoned even the most sacred. And the national team and its jersey have recently become a reflection of a divided country rather than the symbol of unity that it has been for decades. There are many who trust that the championship will help heal wounds.

Free Market is no exception. Three out of four Brazilian companies give their employees permission to watch the matches. The trickle of ads has been incessant in recent weeks. Public libraries, schools, restaurants, small clothing stores… Banks! They have been announcing to users, parents and customers in general what the schedules will be on the days that the Brazilian team plays. As the championship progresses, the calendar is adapted. And it shows that it is a deep-rooted custom because everyone takes it with absolute normality. Something similar happens in Argentina.

The Brazilian federal government, the state governments, the town halls… have issued decrees with the schedules and the warning that officials have to later recover the hours dedicated to not missing a minute of the soccer Cup. In private companies, it is negotiated. But the premise is usually harmony and keeping the staff happy.

Among the 14,000 employees of Mercado Libre in Brazil, those who had a shift this afternoon have enjoyed the game, the 45 minutes before and after. There were already permits in the previous World Cup. On Saturday, due to the Mexico-Argentina game, they will stop their operations in those two countries. And on Monday again in Brazil, for the match against Switzerland. All this does not affect the squad in Chile because they failed to qualify.

Fernanda Cacita, 36, is an operations manager, the boss of Oliveira, Neves and Oblesrczuk. She is a fan of Neymar and Pele’s Santos, she explains the company’s reasons for offering the squad this soccer leave without affecting their payroll or having to recover a minute. “It’s to encourage their commitment, they’re going to produce better,” she explains before the game. “If they are working and pending the game, they will not be so attentive to the operation. Better to have a committed team than to compromise orders”. It is about the mechanic that ensures that each package arrives at his address on time and without missing any of the requested products, works like silk. And for that this huge army of employees has to operate like clockwork. Even more important now, when the World Cup has started in the middle of Black Friday and will end at the gates of Christmas. By the way, neither Neves, nor Oliveira nor Oblesrczuk know if the day of the final is their turn, they haven’t looked at it.

And what happens when the game ends with such a gigantic disappointment as the one Argentina suffered at its debut? They have it planned, explains the operations manager. After the game and before the employees resume their tasks, each boss has a brief briefing with his team, as at the beginning of each shift. The content depends on the result of the selection. They have prepared a briefing for victory. And another for defeat.

The Brazilians have heard the first one tonight. And with the euphoria of this first World Cup victory, they have returned to work because the most important Friday of the year for world electronic commerce begins at midnight.

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