The day shit hit the fan at DBA.
I went to the house early in the morning; I think I had one of the office yugos with me. Don't really remember what was it - I guess it was something about the chimney, which needed to be built, from the basement up on the terrace, leaning to the garage wall (aka "I built The Great Wall"). Needed to explain to the masons (Prletić and three others) where to drill and how should it all go.
When I came to the offices under the bridge, the atmosphere was as if someone died. Nobody talked to anybody, the only voices coming from side rooms or whoever was answering the phones, which didn't ring much that morning. I was late, though, came after 8, so the first wave of those who'd try to catch a field team visit would have passed already.
Then I heard the news: Sale has fired Vanji and Rade, for disloyalty. Formally, the reason was that they owned private businesses of their own, and there was a fresh law, coined by Milošević's parliament, that the CEO has the right to fire anyone who owns such a business. That was a populist measure, to gain some popularity among the workers, by blaming the entrepreneurs who still sucked at the teat of society owned enterprises, having a job and probably not working it at all. It did make sense for these, but in DBA? We're a stockholder company, we just got past the privatization - we're the fucking owners. That law has nothing to say in our case. But Sale has read it thoroughly, and it doesn't make a distinction, just gives the CEO a free hand to do what he thinks is right.
I immediately took a dissident stance, probably blurting out the above "n/a" text. Don't exactly remember how the day ended.
Turned out that these two guys did have private companies, sort of. Vanji's was registered and had an account, but never had a dime on it either coming in or out; he opened it while it was cheap, as something to pass on to his sons. Rade didn't even have an account; he and another guy (who later went to work to Czechia) tried to build an app for Vlasta, but went only as far as to ask him what he would need. When they saw what it would be, they got cold feet - the app was too involved in thermal engineering, pipes, thermodynamics etc.
Outside, the inflation was all the rage.
19-XI-2014 - 19-X-2025