The outfit was put together from whatever initially belonged to stour, but then went independent. Was independent previously as well. Since last year or two, they made great strides, actually incredible, considering they were a minor retail chain in an undeveloped municipality on the border. In just these two years they developed into a strong contender, including now the fruit juice factory and a coffee bean roasting unit, and possibly a couple more units. The reason I've put them under this month is that this is when we went there most often.
They were a big customer of DBA, and their accountant, some hungarian guy, old school, did a few miracles there. By just legally shuffling a few things he managed to save so much money from the jaws of taxes, that they redid the lobby of their HQ in all marble and leather armchairs, plus a fountain under the stairs. And that's just that one year.
The guy was allegedly so old school that when they bought a fancy dl2400 (bigger one, and color at that), the reason for color was so that he could print the ledger properly, in red digits where red was due. But then they were very happy with the software, they were finally able to expand. Expansion was costly in terms of workforce, because the retail (and wholesale, separately) tax system had the goods in some 40 categories, and the tax for each had to be calculated separately and the probability of an error was enormous - a mislabeled item, or one fit into wrong category, if caught by a commerce inspector who got up on his left foot that morning, could cost some serious fine, and likewise be a cause for a huge waste of time in subsequent, more frequent, inspections. So just having an app, which would do the taxes automatically, relieved them of a huge burden, and enabled them to expand - now they had opened a warehouse in the next village, and, daringly, in Zrenjanin. Because now they could, they didn't have to have a specialized guy who'd do just taxes five days a month per warehouse. The premise was that nothing goes in or out of the warehouse without being entered in the app. That rule was respected, and everything went smoothly. They had just one machine, a 386 SX with a simple 12 inch gray monitor, and that was more than enough.
Actually, it went so smoothly that this Kuburin guy who ran it in the Zrenjanin unit had time enough to become very proficient with blockout. He made it to the top ten, was third I think, better than what score Grgi and I left there (well, packaged it from the office disk, so whatever was there, probably not our best scores ever), and signed as „Dr. Kule“... except that he already pressed enter when he realized that the game didn't take any spaces or dots or uppercase, so he was there as „drkule“, which means more or less a jerk, and was very similar to his nickname. So he stayed overtime for a few days until he beat that score enough times to push it off the list. (died in march 2024 at age of 60)
The other warehouse had a problem with a phone line, which existed but was quite bad, probably a few decades old, so the guy there was shouting into the headset. Grgi immediately had two questions for him: 1) why does he use a phone (with a voice like that, he could just open the window and they'd probably hear him better), 2) why doesn't he use the phone (if he did he wouldn't have to shout).
The person in charge of relations with us was a jolly guy, Lujo Ležajić, with a rascal's moustache, always ready to laugh at something or say something funny, even to poke fun at english („I bring you bad newspaper“). Once, about september this year, he went to their local šećerana, with this accountant, to „flatten the open items“, i.e. to cancel out the mutual debts to the maximal possible extent. Because they were selling their sugar, and the šećerana was buying a bunch of other stuff from them, so they were both suppliers and customers to each other. They printed the latest IOS (izvod otvorenih stavki - derivative of open items, as the report was called) both ways, and he kept it in his pocket. They chitchatted with the other side's CEO and chief accountant over a long coffee and a mandatory vinjak, and when this official part was over, they went down to business. The host presented his own IOS... up to four months ago, and we more or less know the two guys whose app they were using, and then a few more pages of hand written lines. Then Lujo pulled out his IOS, and it was correct down to the same morning, said „here's the data, and I'll leave it to your staff to see through this“. They parted ways, and while driving back he said to his accountant „don't pay them anything until at least the end of the year, they have no clue, they don't know where their ass where head is“.
Had lots of fun with that Sava Brandić guy (v 13-IV-1990.) this month, in that textile outfit in Batajnica. First off, one of his machines had the housing which was somehow off, so when we were installing the modem we couldn't possibly fit everything where it should be. If we screw the board to the housing first, modem gets misaligned against its slot in the back, and if we aim the modem first, then the board pulls lower and can't be screwed to the housing, being so heavy. And then we found two wine corks which we wedged under the board to hold it at proper height, and everything suddenly fit. We concluded we should always have them corks around the office.
The director of that textile firm once waited for me in the yard, guess he saw us parking the yugo from his upstairs window, and greeted me with „I'm going to kill you, and your Sale and this Mika of mine and myself“. I replied in stride with „c'mon man, why... in that particular order“.
During one such occasion we (Brata, Grgi and I) stayed there quite long, there was lots of stuff to do. We barely managed to find a slot on their parking lot, which had space for fiftysome cars. While we were there, this Sava Brandić comes along. We recognized him right away, although he shaved his beard and moustache. The girls at the keyboards and this Mika himself („when [he] types [he] stutters, when [he] speaks [he] doesn't breathe“) noticed something was off with his face only some fifteen minutes later... and one of the chicks said „I know what it is, you shaved [your] moustache!“. „Yup, and the beard“. „You didn't have a beard, only the moustache.“ And all of a sudden nobody remembers the beard, only the moustache, except us three. An incredible case of collective hipnosis.
By the time we were leaving, it was already quite late, the parking was completely empty, there was just one car right behind our yugo, butt to butt. We got in, tired as we were, Grgi at the wheel, and he said „now let me get this into reverse“. We thought he was just joking and didn't react. And he really shifted into reverse. We thought he was taking the joke one step further, smooth. When he started releasing the clutch, Brata and I started yelling at him, hey man can't you see there's a car behind. Okay, nothing happened, he froze on the spot. We were so tired that between entering and starting the car he completely forgot about that other car.