Chapter 19
Derailment
I mentioned above that around the middle of the year 2004 my employer reached a tipping point when there was no other alternative as slimming the company completely by firing employees and doing only collection of royalty fees on intellectual property. Only S. would remain as a non-paid general manager to answer exceptional letters. Actually this situation was a direct consequence of the plot against T. described in one of the previous chapters. As ever more cleaning company managers decided to join the current leadership of the association and T’s base contracted, the company earned ever less turnover, went into red and even public dues as taxes remained unpaid. Although the company had a lot of money due from customers, that was mainly bad debt and there was no hope to collect it. At the end of the year the account of the company was frozen by the tax authority and liquidation looked not impossible. It was the only way out to make the company a sleeping royalty collecting unit. T. got a lot of offers from shareholders getting uninterested in the company to take on their shares and he bought them at low value. That made it possible for him to decide alone with the board and the decision was made. KonfirMATISZ carried on all activities.
All of us got our notices. The younger women began to look for jobs, the mother-in-law of Ildiko, Judith, was transferred to KonfirMATISZ, and I became a freelancer of that firm in translation, graphic and text editing. I had to finish textbooks for the training courses and a new monthly magazine of the nostalgia kind. The tax authority placed a ban on our account and office equipment, that means the company could not collect any money, it was taken by the authority at once, and pieces of equipment were not to be sold. I wanted to buy my PC in the office, but I had to wait until the ban would be lifted. However, I took it home, first the PC, a table and the scanner, then also the monitor, as my first two ones, the monochrome and the Chinese one from Moscow, were doing bad for my eyes. After Christmas I took it all home and assembled them in the small room of my flat. Since that time I have been working there.
As it was clear what would happen I subscribed for an ADSL line at the ISP supplier. It took a considerable time to reroute my mails on the new address, and it took me even more time to learn how to avoid silly catches the technical equipment was causing me. It was only six years ago, but that state in IT is history today. What caused me the most failures was the dialling software. It was solved reliably only when I bought a router. This helped me also to share the line with my son and from that time he didn’t need to use the telephone line for getting Internet and it made very good for my purse.
As soon as I had my ADSL line I began to go on work as before. My task was to edit the textbooks, send the finished files to T. – the former office went over to KonfirMATISZ, they occupied the upper section and T. presented the training courses downstairs – by email or took with myself on a flash drive. On weekdays I went to the school kitchen for the lunch and called on the office if needed. I worked about seven to eight hours a day as before. Every month I was to get a certain sum for my activity – I accepted only half of the sum T. offered. T. arranged printing for the textbooks and the magazine “IRKA” (it means exercise book and scribbling in Hungarian).
Before CED went asleep I tried to reroute orders for products to KonfirMATISZ, but it took about two months to get rid of all mails loafing about and send them to T. At the same time some of them was replied by me as I had almost all the material on my PC. Especially would-be buyers of pictograms were very insistent, they saw a lot in that system and wanted to develop it with their company. At last all became silent and it was good as there came news that the tax authority wouldn’t lift the ban, they would take the equipment instead. I wrote out everything on CD-ROMs and was starting to format the hard discs when Kata called me and said that it turned out differently and I can go in and sign the contract about buying the devices I wanted.
I was waiting for it very much. Near the office there was a shop specializing in IT products and I wanted to update my PC with a new motherboard, processor, RAMs and software. I wasn’t content with the Windows ME operation system. Well, it took some months to organize this rebuilding, and it caused me additional problems with other software products (drivers for scanner, printer, etc.). XP was a very fastidious system that wouldn’t work with anything. At last I succeeded in getting the proper application software, but the ultimate solution would be the replacement of scanner and printer much later.
T. wouldn’t accept defeat as final from the gang. As soon as it became clear that MATISZ was a dead end for them, he and the core of the old guard started to launch the forming of a cleaning section within the Department of Artisans at the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In contrast with the establishment of MATISZ five years earlier, there seemed all in place and this new section was soon functioning well. So much so that in a short time even the issue of making cleaning an independent profession was solved. In that road T. got back almost all of his honour and he could work again.
With the acceptation of cleaning as independent trade and thus including it in the list of professions to take its part in the field of education, things became again much more complicated. While six years earlier it was enough for T. to contact the district employment agency to be able to launch the first training course for cleaners, that time state bureaucracy stepped in. Besides, the market of technical education of cleaners became a battlefield, so, although his dreams were being realized, T’s life didn’t turned easier.
As far as my work during that time is concerned, I did it for ten months. Then the annual proprietors’ meeting – I took part in it as I also had, or better to say still have, a proportion of about seven percent ownership – showed that the competition was so fierce that the firm could not get even during the business year. That was the last such meeting I took part, always try to find an excuse for being absent. The firm suspended all activities beside training and collecting royalty. As my tasks melt away I told Kata, the director of this firm, I wouldn’t draw any money for doing nothing. At the same time I offered my free help any time the would need it.
With that my extra income beside pension stopped and I tried to get a source. For a long time it would be in vain and my reserve began to drain out. Especially as my son was always asking for money to buy the necessary material for his construction work. I registered on a number of websites offering translation work. It did not do any difference.
From that time on the firm I have an interest in moved three times. Actually T. was acting as a freelancer, but as his wife was the company’s director, he always had a desk there. He was organizing without a moment’s pause and he got back his importance within the trade. The section in the chamber helped a lot. Their first move even resulted in a little extension, but they had to leave that place for not being able to pay the rent. Then they got an office free for expertise, but in a year they went to another place. I have never been there yet, but we are in contact by email.