One of these days there was a neat event at work. R., the chief of Working Community i.e. RZZS, aka common services of the stour, came by. Her office was down the hall, to the yard, while ours were streetside. We were sitting in Radoje's office, which is where we'd have coffee, breakfast, discussion or whichever event required more than three people around the table. R. just opened the door to ask something, then engaged in a chat with S., who was the biggest programmer among us (if not member of club 100 yet, would be soon, judging by his girth), who eventually said „why are you standing in the door like that, come in and sit“ „ah no, I prefer to stand, to avoid catching the accountant disease“ „what disease is that?“ „it's when your head shrinks and your ass grows“ „I didn't notice that your head shrunk“. And that was that, we had a laugh and she left. Five meters down the hall she stopped and came back to say „and you didn't mention the other matter, eh?“.
Now, those breakfasts... Usually the operater girls would go out and buy pogačice and yogurt for everyone, or bread yogurt pašteta and salami, or whatever we'd fancy that day. We ate in the coffee kitchen, at Zlata's, and it was often screwy, because the table is too small. One would spread the pašteta on his bread while another would pick a yogurt and shake it - see the article, there's a whole yogurt theory there. It also contains my way to open it, I make two holes with a key. Now Radoje took my chair while I was at the other end spreading pašteta on my bread, and didn't notice the holes - he thought it's nobody's yogurt, took it and shook it...
Then we got the idea to expand the whole breakfast matter: I'm on a bicycle, and the big market is just 500m away, so... I took it on myself to go get the ćevapčići in a bun, or a pljeska (i.e. pljeskavica, similar to a hamburger but different recipe, there's minced onions in the meat) from Trpana's kiosk. This went great, we even developed a notation with abbreviations, similar to Vaha command line syntax, so /lu meant „s lukom“ (with onion) etc.
The trouble was money. Not in the have or not sense, but in cleaning up the accounts. Who gave how much before, what's the cost of what he had, who gets how much back and who has to add how much to the pile. So we sat there, four or five mathematicians and an occasional economist, and by the third coffee we still wouldn't be in the clear.
Living in socialism meant that the state strived to provide anything to the working man (except a chance to be rich, though), and since mid-seventies the lunch at work became a normal thing. The bigger factories already had their own kitchens and mess halls - dad ate two lunches for years, one at work and one at home (sometimes beans both times). The practice was made into law by this time, and the law had a stipulation for the cases when it wouldn't be practical to organize a kitchen for smaller units. While smaller factories in kombinat still had mess halls but no kitchens - the meals would be brought from the larger ones in the neighborhood - the solution for small units like the RZZS or retail was to fund them and let them manage personally. So we'd get these coupons „for the warm meal“, which would be redeemable at some place where food is sold, and that would be considered a cost of production and untaxable. Good for everybody - we'd get something which wouldn't be taxed the 30-40% of tax, health/retirement, earthquake relief for Montenegro (which was when? everyone forgot already); the retail would get a customer who doesn't have much choice but has an amount to spend; the enterprise felt good doing something for itself, i.e. its workers, and eventually the state scored politically for catering to the working class, which was nominally in power. Everyone happy and satisfied, except perhaps that the goods were sold with tax included - the prices were same as for cash - so I guess it was compensated somewhere else, didn't ask then and nowadays nobody remembers how that worked.
True, the meal was almost never warm, but nobody complained. Actually, I think we had these coupons in MPSŠC as well, but they were valid only at LebarProm. And I think I paid most of those monday lunches between shifts in Trpeza with them - back then in 1980.
So I'd take these coupons once a month, not the same day nor week when they were issued, if I got them, the whole stour got them or at least the RZZS did, so I'd do that a week later, when the shop restocks. It was an elite supermarket, in a classy building in the middle of main street, where a bank used to be. It belonged to NuProm, but the HQ of Čelik was upstairs. It was posh, the front of the house being all stone, some better tiles inside, maybe marble, not the vinyl-azbest like the periphery shops had it, and quite an assortment of goods, having the space for them. We'd fill the big cart full of whole bars of salami, wheels of cheese, all the best stuff, and still when we'd bring that to the cash register, we'd still have more coupons than the cart cost. We'd usually add a carton of cigarettes (I smoked the škija, she F57) and pay less than half of it in cash. Don't know how we hauled it to the car, I tried my best to park as close as possible, right in front of erc, someimes even in its yard, and knew all the shortcuts to there.