Next in Line

After grabbing a sandwich and double espresso for lunch, I decided I might as well check in for my domestic flight and wait by the gate, (where I am now). I suppose it's a good thing (or maybe not, read on) that I left plenty of time to do this because it took an hour to complete the process.
I don't know if it's Brazil in general or just GOL airlines, but waiting in line, it seemed like the only thing moving was the clock. Sure, there was some movement behind the counter, where GOL staff milled about, but nothing that looked overly purposeful. Except every once in a while, someone would announce that a flight was boarding, so the ground staff would call out, "Is anyone in line for flight 123 leaving in 10 minutes?!" and a few people would raise their hands. These people were ushered to the front of the line so they could check in and catch their flight. Effectively, this gives zero incentive to check in early and lots of encouragement to wait until the last minute, when you'll be dealt with promptly.
Sadly, it took me 30 minutes to get to the counter and there were only four people in front of me--and one of them was later removed from our line for "express processing". So that puts the per passenger processing time at 10 minutes per person, compared with, say, the minute and a half it took me to check in at Narita in Japan.
But I digress. Actually, once I got to the ticket counter, it didn't take long at all for her to check my confirmation number and issue my ticket, then check in my bag. And all that was done without knowing a word she was saying in Portuguese. Maybe that helped move along the process??
After that, I went through security and then a police check of some sort (not really sure, but it was similar to going through Immigration, but for domestic travel), and all that seemed to go fine. Then I strolled on down to Gate 20 and, luckily, found a power outlet to plug in my laptop (44% and charging).