"I pretended to be street sweeper for a month and lived to be an invisible"

The social psychologist Fernando Braga da Costa wore uniform and served one month as a street sweeper, sweeping streets, University of São Paulo. Ali, found that the eyes of most of the laborers are 'unseen, nameless'.

In his master's thesis, USP, was able to prove the existence of 'public invisibility', ie a human perception completely affected and conditioned by the social division of labor, which sees only to function and not the person.

 Braga worked only part time as a street sweeper, was not receiving a paycheck for $ 400 as co-broom, but ensures that had the greatest lesson of his life: 'I found that a simple good morning, it never got as gari, may mean a breath of life, a sign of his own existence, "explains the researcher.

The psychologist felt in the skin which is treated as an object and not as a human being. 'Teachers who hugged me in the corridors of USP passed me, do not recognize me because of the uniform. Sometimes, bumped into my shoulder and, without even
apologize, followed ignoring me, as if leaning on a pole, or in a phone booth, "he says.

On the first day of work to the coffee stop. They put a thermos on a concrete platform. Only it was not mug. There was a strange atmosphere in the air, I was a guy from another class, sweeping the street with them.

The street sweepers barely talked to me, some came up to teach the service. One of them went to the dumpster picked up two cans of soda cans cut in half and served coffee there in the tin dirty and sticky. And as we were in a big group, I expected them to serve first.

I never enjoyed the taste of coffee. But intuitively, I felt I should take it, and of course, not free of bad feelings. After all, the guy took the cans of soda from inside a trash can, which has dirt, ant has, is cheap, has everything.

The moment that swung the makeshift mug, it seems that everyone stopped to watch the scene, as if asking, 'Hey, the rich young man will subject himself to drink this cup? ​​"And I drank.

Immediately anxiety seems to have evaporated. They began to talk to me, to tell jokes, play. What did you feel on the skin, working as a street sweeper?

Once, a scavenging invited me to lunch in the cafeteria center. Then I joined the Institute of Psychology to get money, I spent at ground floor, climb stairs, passed second floor, spent in the library, down the stairs, I passed in front of the academic center, I walked past the cafeteria, many people had known. I did all this way and nobody at all saw me.

I had a very bad feeling. My body trembled as if I did not dominate, an anguished, and head cap was like burn, as if I had been sucked. I went to lunch, I felt the taste of food and returned to work stunned.

And after a month working as a street sweeper? That changed?

I was getting used to this, as they will also accustomed to unhealthy situations. So when I saw a teacher coming - my teacher - until stopped sweeping, because he went past me, could talk, but the staff as if it had passed through a lamppost, a tree, a phone booth.

And when you return home to their real world? I cry.

It is very sad, because from the moment that you are entered in this psychosocial condition, do not ever forget. I believe this experience cured me of my disease bourgeois.

These men are my friends today. I know their family, I attend to their house in the suburbs. Changed. I never cease to compliment an employee. I insist on the employee know that I know that it exists.

They are treated worse than a domestic animal, which is always called by name. They are treated as if they were a 'thing'.

Be 'ignored' is one of the worst feelings that exist in life!

* Síntese da tese de mestrado do professor Fernando Braga da Costa da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), extraída do Blog de Carlos Escóssia

Traduzido por: Sergio Rocha com ajuda do Google.