Chapter 17
Home Again
Having spent the night in Belgrade, we set on road the next morning. A hard day’s drive took us home. Before complete darkness we arrived, but our baggage has been carried up on only in darkness. Our new car would arouse the interest of the neighbours only in the morning.
Before leaving Addis Ababa I have ordered goods from different mail order companies. Some of them arrived before us, my brother-in-law carried the home. We spotted our new Philips colour TV-set, and my first action at home has been to install it. It was easy as the country had only two channels back then.
We arrived home on the eve of our national holiday, August 20. Until 23rd nobody would go to work as the holiday has been followed by week-end. We utilized our time to visit all our relatives. It has not been all fun.
My sister had done me an unpleasant thing during our second year in Africa. I mentioned the site we had inherited from our mother. I went back to Africa with a belief that my case was in good hands. Around February I have got a letter from her asking me to send her an authorization to enable her to sell both our shares in case. My wife sensed something, she would not let me send it, but I wouldn’t listen to her and did. In May she wrote she was selling her share soon. I did not get any reply on my letter, in which I asked her not to do so.
Following our final return at our visit she would not plead her mistake, although she disclosed to have used my paper only for renouncing in my name of my pre-purchase privilege for her share. And she sold it to the owner of the other half of the site, as well as the house. We went into a hot dispute, and at last we parted with anger.
She really drove me into a hopeless situation. My money I have saved up during my mission has not been enough to buy a house. And my share has been too small to build a house, unless I would do something.
The owner of the rest of the property – actually my co-owner – felt himself in saddle. He would not talk about anything else, than buying my share on a price set by him. I thought it over and turned for advice to the social legal helper of my company. My idea has been to win the right of usage for my share by lawsuit in a way, when the piece in my use would be situated at the end of the long site opposite to that, where the house had been built. Any sane judge would decide against my opponent’s proposal to select me a 10-foot-wide stripe along the longer side of the property.
My search in the technical department of district council has brought results that have proved, that in a clear distribution for usage the size of the site would be enough to build another house on it. After gaining usage rights and getting a building permission, my chances to sell it on a proper price would be ten times higher. Process has been under way, but it took too much time. At last my co-owner raised his offer, and I agreed to close the matter by selling it to him.
Our relationship with my sister has been ruined completely. Neither of us would visit the other any more. Fortunately, her daughters would not mix in the topic and remained friendly.
After return from Africa I still had some holiday to spend and I utilized it to get a number plate to the car and getting my goods, ordered from abroad, through customs. I also went to my employer to see my chances clearly.
The company had got into financial troubles during the period after my leave two years before and, the Ministry of Industry that was the holder of owner’s rights from the state, sent to retirement six of the seven managers and deputy general managers. The only remaining one has been the technical deputy general manager, he was promoted to general manager. Successors of the fired managers have been selected partly from inside the company, as the production manager, the technical manager and the personnel manager. Others have been taken from other state companies, even from the country. One of the key persons, the sales manager has been found at the partner foreign trade firm, Technoimpex. His career is worth a few sentences.
As a freshly graduated engineer he came to one of the company’s founding factories. After creation of the trust he found his place, where I began to work for this employer, as sales engineer. In a few years he went over to the partner Technoimpex. His motivation was the prospect of being sent to Mexico as Hungarian director of a newly established joint venture to sell Hungarian machine tools. First selection did not bring him the job, but, as the man sent there instead of him let his Mexican co-director ruin finances of the venture, in two years he would succeed that first man. To tell the truth, his mission has been planned by his enemies within the foreign trade company to throw him into a hopeless situation.
Against all odds, he has put the venture into order, fired the thief – and survived his revenge – and became a hero. But, as his enemies became even more numerous by his success, he did not get any fix job after his return. He has become a “Jolly Joker”, but with no authority. One of his favourite sayings was, which he said to a colleague, who was trying to draw him into a misuse of travelling expenses: "I am no partner to misuse 100 German marks. It is quite the opposite with 1 million.”
The restructuring of Machine Tool Works found him in that situation, and he has got the position of sales manager, not a much better place, than years before his Mexican mission. For 10 years he would be able to stay at that post. He and the new general manager would make an alliance to sell the company in their own favour. And they would do it. In eleven years, of three factories in the capital, four in the country and a research institute near the capital there would remain only the trunk of the general management with five employees. And the bank accounts of the retired adventurers.
My place has been spared during restructuring, and with my education and experiences I could be a favourite – depending on how many sponsored favourites there would be –, if only real perspectives were to be turned into results.
When I took my job I helped first to my deputy department head to clear his overdue tasks. Our sales manager has been on a business trip and was expected in a week. Soon, when I was working on a report, I heard someone come and speak loudly to our department head: "Oh, I know him, he is not only malicious, but a fool, too.” He was speaking about an executive at the foreign trade company. It was he. I realized him at once having seen him three years before at a meeting. Then he had said about state companies in the West: "The managers there are even bigger fools than our ones, as they are there, because they would not get any job at a private firm.”
When he saw me, I introduced myself and he called me into his room. He informed me about his concept of the company. It was a nightmare for any thinking person. He wanted to create an autocratic ruling system with all decisions in his hand. A caricature of management by exceptions (MBE) structure, where the conical shape of management would be pressed down to the shape of a pancake.
I was impressed by this conversation and had great doubts about my role in this pancake. This doubt would rule my attempts in the next few months in answering ads for jobs and taking part in interviews.
One of them has been a chief designer’s job in a construction bureau. I was the favourite, but my inability to lie torpedoed my chances. On the question what I would say if TESCO offered me another mission, I answered I would take it. The examiner said, they would not risk their own business that way. Had I been an oracle I would have answered I would reject it, for more than a decade nothing has been offered me by TESCO.
There was another ad, which has been published by a head-hunter agent. He said it was the last time for me to change jobs, as my mental capacity would only go down after 40. That year I reached this age.
Actually I did not find any job that would have looked much better than my existing one. I began to look for other chances. The Ministry of Foreign Trade has published a whole-page invitation for commercial councillors and secretaries in different foreign countries. When I tried it, I was called in and given some hope. There were such places as Tirana, Albania or Kiev and Warsaw. For Tirana I would have been selected, had I not have a 10-year-old son, as there were only possibilities either to give him into an Albanian-language school or leave him home. The latter was impossible, as my wife would have been necessary as financial executive. The other places have been given to people, who had studied there.
These fiascos did not take away all my hope, but I began to read these invitations more cautiously. At the same time I did not ceased to fulfil my tasks and unexpectedly I have got an assignment fit for me.
One of our factories that was specialized to produce cylindrical grinding machines, had had another product family for years. It was compressed-air brake-units for railway cars manufactured on licence from the West-German company Knorr-Bremse AG (KB). At the end of the ‘60s Ikarus had been allocated a large sum from the government for investments to be able to meet higher demands for buses all over the Comecon. It was the time when Comecon stepped into its integration period. Actually for two decades the output number of buses by Ikarus was to be growing and in 1987 it would reach 14 thousand buses in a year.
For that large production of buses the government had selected our company to buy another licence from KB, that time for the manufacturing of air-brake units for road vehicles. Up to that time there was only a small factory in the country to produce such units of their own design. Till the time I returned from Africa, the number of buses reached 11 thousand in a year and production of the brake-units happened in three of our factories, not mentioned the one not belonging to us, which had been the original profile host before our licence agreement. Our licence allowed us to sign a sub-contract with them for certain units from KB’s line.
I came to the picture with the retirement of two executives. One has been my teacher at the university for lessons to design construction machines. He had left his job there and had become a department head for air-brake units with our company. When I joined the firm, he was the totum-factum of brake systems. His close colleague took over from him when, during my stay in Africa, he retired. That time this job did not involve a title of department head, only sales executive. Two months after my return he retired, too. Actually he did it on health excuses, namely, his blood pressure has been high all the time from the vicinity of our sales manager.
That was the job I have been offered and, being more an automotive engineer than an expert of machine tools, I accepted it at once.
The situation has been similar to that in the shipyard with the raft-towing-tug project. I had to be ready for talks with the German partner KB in two days. I could hardly read through all German-language documents before the event. It was to be a great fight. The old agreement was coming to the end of its validity time, and KB wanted to make us the export of our products much harder. They realized during validity time that we were competitors.
Actually KB had been taking a risk 13 years before and lost. Similarly to MAN, a manufacturer of Diesel engines, as well as buses and commercial vehicles, they had believed we would not be able to produce their units with a quality high enough for export vehicles and had allowed to put the clause of our export rights into the agreement. Both German companies lost. RABA manufactured MAN engines in the same quality as it has been done in Germany. Our Machine Tool Works produced full OEM-quality brake-units.
The reason of that miscalculation might have been, that Romania and Hungary had been both within Comecon. Romania had bought licences from both German firms and to the day, when I took the job, they had not been able to issue good-quality goods. Well, the history of the two countries also has been somewhat different.
My boss, the sales manager, headed our party and the general manager of KB that of the partners. He was an old man with a Bavarian German accent, a pipe in his mouth constantly. It was lucky nobody considered me a translator, I could have done it only with difficulty. He was a good-humoured person anyway and, although the meeting had a bad air throughout, the break between the partners has not happened. The sales manager of KB has also been present, he was an Englishman with an Austrian mother and he liked Germans more than the English. Only his German has not been perfect yet. The two sales managers had an everlasting hate for each other.
One of our factories, where these talks took place, was in the state of director change. Both the former one to be retired in two months and the would-be one have been present. The former director was a lawyer and spoke some German. His successor was a production engineer just in the course of correcting his mistake to have gone over to the party apparatus. He had served there three years and has just decided to come back to his trade. He did not speak any languages. I liked him all my time in the company, but only as a friend. On company matters I would never consult him.
He made a fool of himself in those talks. He was introduced to KB’s general manager and the old man asked if he spoke German. As it was evident that he did not understand a word, but everybody was only waiting for the good fun, I helped him by translating the question. He answered no, that far it had not been necessary for him. But he said he spoke Russian. As I finished translating his answer the general manager addressed him in fluent Russian. That was too much. Even to laugh, we could not.
During these talks I got acquainted with the only KB man, I was able to like without reserve. All the others, I sensed, were patient, but they placed themselves high above us. This man I speak about was Herr Dieter Kappler. He had a similar executive job at KB as me in our company.
Some years later MAN would not extend its licence agreement with RABA, but KB has had better politicians among their managers, we have got their consent. During my six years in that job, all the KB people I got to know then would be succeeded by others, except Dieter.
Getting that job I said farewell to machine tools for a time. I had to work with another foreign trade company, the profile of which had been automotive export-import. Within that firm, depending on where I wanted to sell something or with whom to sign an agreement, I had to cooperate with many sales executives and price specialists.
In our company I inherited a colleague for this job, a girl. She had come over to our firm six months before from the automotive foreign trade company. She was a dispatcher there, and my predecessor has been a great admirer of her gender. Especially of her. She was a person of limited mental abilities, not a very attractive woman and spoke no languages. But she was always unsatisfied by both tasks given and her salary. I have suffered a lot about not being able to make her realize the true situation. She had a great envy for my participation in talks with foreign partners.
Actually she has been the secretary of our department head, but the duty to type his letters and reports she would always shift to somebody else.
In a short time she realized, that she would have to get into direct contact with a male boss to be privileged. Let alone myself, her first attempt has been the deputy department head. His marriage was on the edge of collapse, and he accepted her. But he could not fulfil her expectations, and she went further. After a number of detours, she could catch the sales manager – first it seemed impossible, he was always near firing her – and he would do.
At first she liked me, sometimes even wanted to dominate me, later we became estranged. To the time when I would leave the company, she would hate me. As I have never done anything against her, it could only have been the anger of a female not cared for in a way she expected.