As the inflation's rate kept soaring, so we made paydays more frequent. There was a general rule that the salaries were paid monthly, but last year it was relaxed first to twice a month, then in the fall we switched to weekly. It's a hell of a job, there's some 40 virmans to print and it has to be correct to the last dinar, or else sdk won't allow it to pass - they made sure all the taxes and social are paid - but c'mon, we're a programmers' firm, we automated the stuff long ago. On top of that, sdk was in the spitting range, Milka would simply walk back to the office, Brata would correct whatever they found wrong, print it all over again and she'd repeat it within the hour. Wouldn't be a problem if they found an error three times.
The fuckup was that our payday was on friday noon. The idle madams (then for sure Sale's, but probably Brata's, Blaža's and possibly also Fefi's, she came a bit later) would march straight out to the nearest banks (on Žitni, or downtown), and with some luck they'd get some cash before the banks run out. We in the field were thoroughly fucked up. First, we wouldn't even know we had a payday. By the time we return to the office, it was already 16:00 or later, when the banks were already dry. So we have some money on our accounts, but not in our pockets. We have checks. But who in his right mind would be so stupid to accept a check on a friday afternoon, what to do with it? He may cash it on monday, when it will be worthless.
To salt the wound, the weather was raw shit, snow thawed, dirty puddles and smeared mud everywhere, some chilly drizzle coming down, me on a bicycle, going shop to shop, nobody accepts checks, if they are open at all. Finally, somewhere in my end I find one which is both open and accepts checks - ground floor of Rile's house (used to be his shop but he moved it somewhere downtown and rented this out) - but the shelves were mostly empty, what you see is all you can get. Bought two bags of macaroni and two lightbulbs. There went the weekly salary.
We made it through this period mostly thanks to yet another compensation, which was a stroke of Nena's genius. Some agricultural firm, farm, whatever it was, didn't have cash and offered sausages instead, and she took that. Turned out that each of us got some 20kg of excellent sausage, just meat and a perfect proportion of spice, can be added into any meal. That's how we survived the time between the move and the new dinar. Until then, we managed with soy steaks - genuine fake thing - so you fry two real steaks first, then fry the soy in their gravy, and they soak the taste so well that you almost forget that these never saw meat.