Chapter 9
Mis-corrections
Well, everything became more complicated. The frigo department signed a contract that almost destroyed the company’s finances in a short time. It was only my hard work, sometimes up to 9 p.m. in the office, no week-ends, and my son’s help to take various tasks from my shoulder, that saved the project from complete failure.
The project has been about transport of Italian champagne from Italy to Moscow. I have to cite the joke of one of my West-German partners with Machine Tool Works, who said the most important export ware from Hungary to West-Germany was Russian champagne, as he had always taken two bottles with him on his return trip. And to Russia we have transported more than 2,000 tons of champagne from Italy.
Anyway, real problem has not been quality, but addresses. Many of the consignees did not have any offices. They had established their limited companies for a single case and soon after they would dissolve them. The addresses given have been small shops of other firms with their man seated there to get the message about arrival of trucks. Unloading has been made from trucks to trucks. The conspiracy has been so well organized that many times I would have the call of the driver only after unloading.
The fly in the coffee emerged, when different consignees gave the same address and one took the goods of the other. One evening at the beginning of December I was dealing with drivers of arriving trucks, recording them in my register. It was past 8 o’clock. We all have been there, Joe, Gabriel, my son and me. The room was full of people, and others were waiting outside the room, even outside the office smoking their cigarettes in the staircase. I became aware of some people standing too near to me, almost touching.
"Would you stand a little apart, I have no air”, I said, but nothing changed. I looked up and noticed strange faces. I repeated the same, but they were just fixing me with their eyes without recognition. I realized they had to be strangers.
Using Russian I learned at once they were looking for their goods long due. I apologized and looked it up in my register. I found that their goods have been delivered. From that time on, I had to instruct all drivers – in case they called me in time – not to unload, until our man has not seen the papers.
Of the 120 truckloads about 15 has gone aside. With hard negotiations 11 has been turned back or corrected by redirecting subsequent transports. But as far as I know, four of the customers would have had to be refunded.
By these damned assignments I have met my cousin, Louis. The lion’s share of the project has been over before Christmas, when one evening a driver called me. He said, he was Louis so-and-so. I did not understand his surname.
"Hello, Louis”, I said, "could you repeat your surname?”
”Komaromi”, he said, this time articulated.
"Louis, is it you?” I asked surprised.
"Of course, it is me, but who the devil are you?”
"I am Joe, your cousin.”
It was a great joy for both of us. Of course, first I registered him, but after we agreed to meet. At that instant it was not possible. He was in a closed place in a large complex of duty-free stores. He would remain there until the next day. Anyway, I told him to hand the receiver over to the Russian in charge there. I asked him to do his best for quick unloading of that truck.
The next day has been a Friday and he managed to offload. At the parking I found him and took him to us. My flat has been rearranged by that time. When my family first arrived, the juniors pushed me out of my bed, even my bedroom. My bed was taken by Clare and she would use my phone wired to the bed. At least until one evening when she called her mother at home and wanted to speak to her pet dog over the phone. Then I asked her decidedly not to use that phone. "Accidentally”, it soon went out-of-order with an open in one of the leads.
When we succeeded to buy a sofa for the juniors, they occupied the dining room, made it their bedroom and I could regain my bed, until my wife took it from me. The dining table and chairs have been transferred to the sitting room. When Louis came my home looked like the above.
Louis remained with us till midnight. He had a fine draught, all the half full and half empty bottles of brandies have been made fully empty. Nothing could be detected on him, I would have died from half of it.
He narrated us about his aborted marriage and warned my wife to use her head instead of being insanely jealous. With little success. He also warned me of the dangers of being too humane in my job. With the same results, but now I know he was right. That is the basic difference between my wife and me. (There are other differences, of course, as the teacher said to the boy, when he wanted to know, what was exactly the difference between his two parents, as both wore trousers, both smoked, etc. The teacher asked about shoe sizes of them and, when the boy said, her mother used small-size shoes, while his father big ones, he said: "Well, you see, the difference is between their feet.”)
Between my trip home about black-load charges and meeting Louis there was some confuse in my family. The juniors could not have helped going home to arrange something and my wife fell into panic and went after them. It was followed by an insane period when she went to the public phone on the street every dawn and hindered me to prepare for work by her calls. She was crazy. At last I had to phone to Clare at her parents and tell her she was the key figure. If she came back, my son would do so and at last my wife. After about one month and a half and a lot of wasted money for air tickets they were again in Moscow.
Before this intermittent period my wife succeeded to make me ill. In October there was a cold front, the weather looked wonderful through the window, but it was 20 degrees F with a strong wind. She wanted to walk and would not listen to me. I caught a severe cold with a high fever. It would take me four years to eliminate the consequences of that folly.
In January I was instructed by the sales manager to fly home for a briefing. Before that I had to receive the man selected originally for the Ukrainian office at the airport, take him to the office and train him to be able to take my work during my stay at home. On my question why here and not in Ukraine, he told me to do as he said.
In Budapest he informed me the situation has changed and he would take my place, while I was to go to Ukraine. It would take me long conversations with the man to see clearly what had happened. He was the relative of one of the managers in my company. At a funeral in the country town, where he had lived, they met and he was promised to have a mission in Russia.
As the topic emerged, the sales manager had not been agitated against me yet, he said he would not be against an office in Ukraine. He thought it was settled. He briefed me in that sense during my holiday. In the autumn of 1992, when the state of Ukraine regulated use of Russian language and made Ukrainian compulsory in schools, the man convinced my boss through his relative to send me to Ukraine instead of him. He had a son of 14 and did not want to register him in a Ukrainian-language school.
Of course, the above true reason I had to learn, when he was a little less sober – he liked vodka too much –, but it has not been very hard.
My absence in the Moscow office has also been utilized to separate co-tenants of the office. I learned about it in Budapest and could only communicate with Joe through phone. He was determined not to wait for me with the moving. When I returned a week later the office was empty except the conference table and its chairs taken from the other room. I had to replace the snatched desks and file cabinet with new furniture. Our young titan from Eurogate wanted to furnish it so, that only his desk would have cost 1,500 dollars. I filled the room with furniture from a Russian shop and I got some change back from 300.
I went to Kiev to arrange my new office and housing there. Before that I handed over responsibility of the office – in paper I have remained the office chief until my return home – and the car.
I arranged all in Kiev and made a list of necessary furniture. The Aeroflot and Air Ukraine still made their flights as domestic ones. Next time I would face a makeshift international airport’s checking.
I had to fly to Budapest to organize purchase of the furniture. Louis D. had been succeeded by a reasonable young man, Zoltan, and it was a pleasure to work with him. Through all my persecutions that followed, I could always feel his presence on my side. I have got a truck to take things to Kiev. Then I flew to Moscow to prepare the move of my things to Budapest and to Kiev. My successor was envious for our status and hindered me, where he could. He objected my arrangements with a familiar driver to Kiev, but, when it led to shouting, the driver disclosed him something: it had always been the right of the leaving chief to select the truck for his own move.
My family left before the Budapest-bound truck and I did after it. I flew to Kiev to unload my truck. I discovered with a pleasant surprise that another familiar driver has been there with his truck to be offloaded. He came to my home and helped. We were in a hurry. In the next afternoon I had to fly home to organize clearance of my things from Moscow. But before departure I helped both drivers to find their unloading or loading places.
When all was ready I wanted to take my holiday, but my boss said:
"You have to open the Kiev office on July 1.” As it was June 23 I had only time for 4 days. After that short rest I flew to Kiev and began to assemble my furniture delivered in boards.
Also I had to drill 24 holes in the granite-hard concrete to put up curtains and shades. It took me 6 weeks to bring everything into order. During daytime I have been in the office and evenings, as well as on week-ends, I worked in the flat. In the middle of August my wife flew to me, she has been followed soon by the juniors.
In July I flew to Moscow to take my service car back from my successor and drove it to Kiev. Until that time I used my private car, an old BMW in a terrible condition. I had had to buy it in Moscow, when my successor took the service car. After repair in Kiev I drove it and my family used the service car.
My boss who instructed me to move to Kiev has been fair to me to his last days in the company. Alas, he had to give supervision of the abroad offices to another manager, his former subordinate, who was on good terms with the general manager. He did not like me very much, as two years before I had not been mild to him, head of the frigo department then, about the mismanagement of his trucks. He seemed to have the memory of an elephant. It was he, who would instruct me to close the Kiev office and move the equipment home.
My Kiev career has been short, but until that time, when it became public it would be closed, I have been successful. The presence factor made traffic grow 3 times that of before. Technical assistance for transit vehicles has itself paid the costs of the office, let alone return loads, mainly raw hides to Italy and prefabricated furniture to Sweden. Unfortunately, my new boss could not read between the lines, he saw only direct income from tariffs of return loads. It did not cause in him any pain to cut presence in our largest neighbour country.
Remnants of my holiday for the previous year I took from the end of April to the end of May. My replacement has been a riddle-question girl – somebody’s something – who could, however, not destroy all my work. I went with my family together with both cars. At once I gave the service car to the company workshop, the other I made it repair properly.
In July, after a year of unfulfilled promises, my son became an employee again. It has not been by chance, as my Moscow successor went on holiday, and nobody could be found to replace him. I was instructed to do that and my son replaced me. First it seemed to last four weeks, but it became six, as he could not come back on time.
I took my wife with me and we lived in the hotel of the agency. One evening in the second week I had a cramp in my leg and a vein has blown up. I had pains at walking and had to use bandage all the time left. Fortunately driving has not caused me pain. Work in the office has been so much – all the three persons I replaced alone – that to fill in registers – my successor developed my routine to separate frigos from the rest – could only be done evenings in the hotel. I saw with pride that the system of recording I established survived my term.
There were problems during my time in Moscow. One evening a sick driver has been found in one of the cabins. I had to organize his transport home by plane.
There were drivers who did not want to go for load assigned to them. I asked to report it to their bosses. To tell the truth, it has been neither their fault, nor mine. Our man in Rotterdam, a fool in that respect that he would not listen to real problems from my info or from news in the press, was accepting orders for Moldavian goods long after, it became dangerous to go there.
There was a case, when the return load has been stolen from our company by an outsider – probably he overheard the CB radio conversation between our drivers and went there to take the load himself – and besides, he alleged he got it from me. There was an investigation of the case, where only the nonsense of the outsider’s claim decided in my favour.
Very slowly that six weeks have passed and we could leave back for Kiev. During that period, however, I met again Louis, my cousin. I took him to Zagorsk, there were two other drivers with us. One has been a man with southern Slavic origin and name. He was the most intelligent of all our drivers.