28-XII-2014.: Last call for retirement
She is sixty now and could retire, but there was some change in the law. The women always needed five years less of staž than men did, i.e. I'll have to wait until I'm 65 to apply, while she could do it with 60, but there was the decision to gradually make us equal. So her year of birth would retire, by age, with sixty and a half.
But, out of the blue, Đenđi called today to ask her whether she has submitted her paperwork, because the old law still applies until the end of the year. Ah great, now you tell me when there's three workdays left and I can imagine how eager will the bureaucracy be when sixty hags rush in those three days to catch that last train, and the last of these days will last until noon only and will be spent sipping booze preparing for doček. Specially as she didn't have any papers ready anyway... so she refused to shift the process into the fifth gear, press the panic button, nothing, just calm. Her cow saw that and said "well it seems you don't really need the retirement, eh?". "No, I don't", she said completely deadpan. To which she heard the headset land on the phone. We never heard from her again.
So what now, the comment went, we aren't in the same poverty solidarity circle so we can't be friends? And what about her cow fucking off her own mother, never visiting her for years, not even when she was dying, what about her inheriting the house on time (not like us who will inherit one when we'll already have a few), or about her always being sent to various ekskurzija (conventions, seminaries, whatever - paid by ministry of education) and squeezed a nice amount from the system, had only one son and no elders to care about while we had three of each... Fuck that, we peed thin far longer than she did, her number fell only when her husband lost the job. Us refusing to press the panic button as soon as a chance to pinch something from the state comes along... is a matter of peace of mind, not status.
And even if she did succumb to the urgency, it wouldn't work. When she finally started taking the papers for a walk, some time in april, it was discovered that she doesn't have enough staž - the ministry of health (i.e. the employer) wasn't paying her dues for 1993, 1995 and 1996. Which was a widespread thing, they weren't paying at the time (probably whole government did so), didn't repay later, they just waited for a retirement application, and paid then. Which is net profit for the government - those who have cast their little spoons* meanwhile, won't need the refund. Refund she got, it required only one extra trip downtown, to the social insurance, rear wing of vodotoranj, next to gimnazija. For the work booklet, however, she had to make a trip to Belgrade, to the ministry, to get it, even though the booklet is completely unnecessary nowadays, the social don't trust it too much, the authoritative source is their IT.
The fine touch was her first encounter with their administration re retirement. Two sit in the office. On the wall, big calendar, advertising. What, a tourist agency? Almost... a funeral home. You're in the right place.
The guy first tells her she can't get the retirement, unless for invalidity. Then looks at her papers, at her, at papers... doing eye pushups several times, comparing date of birth with what he sees. "Well well, who'd a thunk... it seems you meet the criteria". It took a couple of weeks but finally got settled. The pension is, of course, a wee thingy, below 200€, she mustered just 16 years and a bit, while the legal minimum is 15, but as they say, it's not measured in meters, but in count.
Nice snow outside... I made lots of shots of it, as I was visiting dad during the day - there's a shot of the saxo in the old street. The two shots here I made at dusk, from upstairs.
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* the legend of lapot says the villages in some dark Wallachian areas of east Serbia were so poor, that they euthanised their elders, by throwing stones over a mound. During the last lunch, the star of the show would lean his spoon to the pot, as he won't be doing any work that day, or ever again. Thereafter the expression "leaned his spoon" meant "died". Later, in 1976, I heard this as "threw his spoon into shit", which soon got abbreviated to just "threw his spoon"
Mentions: doček, Đenđi Todorov, ekskurzija, gimnazija, staž, vodotoranj, in serbian