Chapter 16
Hard Work and Some Good Results
In my narrative about the overall conditions I ran forward a little too much to leave behind other fields in my life. My work occupied me well as in Amsterdam we made acquaintances and ever more customers were calling on us. Our products were in progress and as soon as they would be finished we would be able to sell them well. At the same time T. was planning on a longer term and he acquired a new office, a whole rented house with about twice as large floor area as our present one was. It was necessary as the present office was too crowded and was slowing down development.
We moved in the new one at the last days of 2002. Alas, as I said earlier, T. was not a good person to manage daily business and this time he overstretched his possibilities. He took the upper floor completely for himself and his wife, all the others were seated on the ground floor. It was my job to organize the move, T. only helped me in transporting bigger pieces of furniture in the car. It was the end of December, but there was no snow and the new place was only about 200 m from the old one. All of us were pushing the two pushcarts to and fro. When things were moved we (mainly I) assembled the parts of the furniture in their new places. Our systems integrator installed phone and Internet lines. Around the second week in January it was already possible for us to continue work.
An innovation was to connect codex and training courses. A so called codex club was established for those who were starting in training courses at the basic level. There was a list of chapters from the codex and items of that list were to be sent by mail after being paid for. Members were very enthusiastic and actually we could hardly keep step with the demand. Many were going on after the examination and starting the masters’ course. The examination software was finished and, as some cleaning companies began to start in-house training courses, several copies were sold.
Soon there were two changes in our office. One was physical, the other in the management. T. realized soon that it was a waste of places and money to occupy the whole upper part alone and moved into a smaller room on the upper floor. Thus the bigger room became vacant and three of us, Kinga, Ildiko, the new secretary after Susan left, and me, moved up. It meant I again had to disassemble, bring up and assemble the big desk for two, as well as the other furniture. I switched desk with Ildiko, they were taking the big one, and I got a normal rectangular desk. The smaller room on the ground floor was occupied as before by the marketing executives who worked by telephone. The bigger one became the classroom for training courses, both basic and master level.
The other change was more significant. It showed the first lines of cracks in the structure. In the first annual shareholders’ meeting after establishing the share company CED the report of the board had been accepted and large sums of salaries voted. Although the first year had been in the red, it was expected that it would change in another year. Before the second annual meeting, however, it was already clear that the turnout curve didn’t follow expectations and also the expenses exceeded the tolerable level. T. felt already that there could be members who would be disgruntled, and was a little afraid. It coincided with the fact that Maria was going to leave the company for a much better job, that of facility manager in a large hotel in the inner city. At the meeting also her place would have to be filled. Well, as her title as financial director had always been a symbolic one – so had mine as production manager –, it was more about hiring someone in her place for the marketing job. The place went to the wife of one of the masters, L.P., whom we had met in Amsterdam. Her name was Betty.
The annual shareholders’ meeting went well, the holders knew everything in the trade, they understood that the management had problems, and even a new project was accepted, that of an online examination system called eLearning. The new financial director became Edina, a former employee of S. in SERI, who went independent as an accountant. In spite of the silence, however, some bigger shareholders began to prepare themselves for a takeover in case of continuation of the unfavourable trends.
A few words about Betty. Their small company had been managed by the couple, but it was kept at a low level because of the master course of him. He took on important roles in MATISZ and education as a lecturer and it meant a more prestigious position for him. Thus she was looking for a job and it met this opportunity. At first she was excellent, even more successful than Maria had been, but later she lost her interest in this work. Also, she had a hobby, a few would even say a folly, she was one of the very few believers of that German historian who invented phantom time. I was always very polite with her, although I don’t believe in this kind of farce.
The company still had its prospects of regain the money spent on equipment and turn a good profit in that year. All the three leading products – codex, pictograms and examination software – were demanded, even there was a new cooperation in development, the Austrian representative of an American company with a brand new anti-skid floor covering system, and several training courses were arranged for making it possible for small cleaning companies to do the job – the foreign company required it and those who completed it got the licence. Also, T. was already a cleaning authority of recognized standing and his expertise was needed in the great hotels both in the capital and in the country.
It was the year before our entry in the EU, even the date was known already, 1 May 2004. There was great preparation for two international exhibitions, one in Budapest, the other in Berlin. The Budapest one was organized by the Italian association in May and again there was a place for us in their booth free. The so called CMS Berlin was to be in September and our booth there was to be a generosity from ISSA Europe. The first one was a great success, all of us gave duty time and we had a lot of inquiries to our different products.
However, a minor problem occurred with the first trade fair. T. had vested such duties on me where forms of foreign companies were to be filled in in a foreign language. Such a form in English from an Austrian online advertising company arrived that asked for our contact data during the fair. However, I didn’t take notice of the fine print: no need to sign, but if I do, I order a website for the company. In a short time a bill arrived. It was the equivalent of my annual salary. I sent it back and asked them to cancel it as it was a mistake of mine. However, the reply stated that the costs of establishing the website had arisen and fifty percent of the original bill was to be paid. I told T. about it and said it was my fault and I was to solve it. Well I couldn’t, but haven’t paid it and that other company had a shorter life that ours.
The trade fair in Berlin was considered a very important event, and T. wanted me and another person – with whom I made friends in Amsterdam – to be present. He wanted to take us with him in the company car. It happened so, but I think I don’t have to tell too much about the confined space we had in the back seats with the baggage. I had already been in Berlin by train and airplane sometimes, but never by car. I understood the small boy in a story, whose parents wanted to take him by their Trabant to the grandma in Sweden, but he had enough before they reached the border of the capital. What made it even more hard was that T. wanted to lose no daytime and we started in the evening. I didn’t dare to sleep, instead I watched T. and grabbed his shoulder always when was going asleep.
It was a brand new experience for me. I had never been in the western part of the town that far, and, although my last previous visit showed me a completely renovated Berlin in 1986, I liked what I saw very much. The long avenue Unter den Linden was only half of the axis of the town, over the Brandenburg Gate – no more a state borderline – the road went further as before the war. We had to drive to its end as the exhibition area lies there. Every day we went that way, except one afternoon when T. and his wife were together with a foreign guest, then we used the excellent Berlin S-Bahn for transport. In the former GDR territory on Alexanderplatz we enjoyed the mild autumn weather and the fine beer.
It was even very hard to tell where the former borderline was. One exception is near the Reichstag building where the Wall has been left intact. We also took our turn to see the glass dome of the building with that special spiral road up and down. It was a short walk, just as the whole visit was very short, and it was crowned by the nightmare backward trip during another night. The event itself was again very successful for us, we could have done anything with high profit, had it not turned otherwise.