A typical apparatchik, most probably a snitch for The Service, worked (... 2 words...) at the health inspection. Took bribes left and right, knew the right people in right places, signed whatever was required. Had a half-college (two years) and yet somehow managed to get recognized as if with a degree and paid better than a doctor in the same position.
From regulations he knew only the minimal height of the spaces for this or that purpose, which caused many shops around town to have entrances with short staircase outside, to climb on the foundation, and then more inside, to climb down. Because if you can't raise the ceiling, you can lower the floor.
He once recounted the story of how he got married. They overslept, so his parents found him with a girl in his bed, and immediately went on with „look at that, who just got married... don't move, off we go to schedule a wedding“.
Once he heard the word „mediocre“ (mediokritet, i.e. a person who is such, not an adjective) from Tereza, and completely disregarding the fact that he never understood what it meant, inserted it in conversations for months.
(... 78 words...)
Another similar case was when his son was in the vojska, somewhere amid Croatia, and he had a mistress in Bosnia, not far away. He planned the trip to get both birds, spend the day with his son and night with her. Something went amiss with the reservations, the woman kept calling to see if he was in the office, and he was buzzing around, probably nagging the girls at putnik... And eventually comes back to the office, and spreads the yarn about his problems and how it all got so difficult and endlessly complicated, wouldn't stop yammering. She says „know what, this is your problem“*. As they'd say in those years „take the pressure off me“. He took that as an insult. Some liked that, though, I've heard Tereza say „as she would say, that is your problem“.
He once even tried to accuse her of pocketing the on-the-spot fines for the current period. The accusation was ridiculous, for several reasons. First, the number of such fines was in single digits. Second, the amount was not adjusted for inflation, so the nominal fee for paying through a virman was larger than the fine itself. Third, everyone paid it in cash, so she'd have to take it to a bank or post office, pay the fee from her own money, and bring the virman to the office and register it. Fourth, any check would show that the number of copies of the fine was equal to the number of virman chits. He just threw that out, hoping the slime would stick.
(... 65 words...)
His daughter, however, turned out to be a regular person, teaching something in electro school.
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* not the answer to the american „what's your problem“, but rather „this is YOUR problem“, IOW the rest of the world doesn't need to know about it.
22-XII-2021 - 19-IV-2026