with a trial period.
February sixteenth, 1993 – my first working day at JSC Financial Association Holding.
– While you sit here, – Felix Andreevich allocates me a table in his apartment, and sends my colleague Sergei Nikolaevich behind the wall, to a separate office. By the way, today is his birthday, but I’ll find out about it later. Sergey Nikolaevich Muzychenko has been working for two weeks, has a humanitarian university with philology behind him, a former English teacher, a head taller in a foreign language than me, a rocket technician, and we have a polite mutual understanding with elements of rivalry in the same boat.
And here is the first task. Intelligent Felix Andreevich said that the company’s management had an idea – the organization of assembly production of video recorders from imported components in our building (!), and I was instructed to work out this idea promptly and report on the results. By entrusting this, he made it clear to me that the money here is not paid in vain, and took away from himself the beloved sword of Damocles of imminent reckoning and possible consequences. He deliberately did not indicate his attitude to this idea, leaving me to think on my own. Intuition told me that the second day could be the last if my conclusions did not satisfy someone. I got bored, but soon I realized that there was a chance to present it in a language understandable to the customer. Fifteen years of experience in the scientific and industrial sphere is no joke, I am an engineer and a patent specialist, I have been to workshops and worked out technologies from blanks to the final product with my own hands, tested detonation means (in other words, I lit a fire – a conductive cord with a detonator). In other words, he smelled gunpowder in the literal sense of the word. Therefore, in this situation, it was necessary, without going into technical and organizational wilds, to tactfully say «no» in a language understandable to the management. Felix called someone, and I was offered to inspect the «future production facilities» – being located on the territory of Rumb, the holding used the services we were interested in (for example, a printing house), crowding the native institute and gradually seizing corridor after corridor, floor after floor, peacefully coexisting.
So, on the second floor, a stranger from the institute accompanies me and leads me to a local apocalypse – a huge room cluttered with various kinds of metal fasteners, remnants of ventilation, hanging wires and construction debris. The employee who met us looked at me with great interest – as a resident from another planet. I didn’t meet his expectations by asking a simple question:
– Was there an EC-1020 here?
– Yes, – he replied with surprise.
The secret is simple – I have already seen this computing machine in my research institute, so it was not difficult to guess from the standard equipment. Keeping a solemnly serious expression on my face, I examined all the corners, the floor and the ceiling, mentally estimated the dimensions. The event took place.
The next step. Without questioning the possibility of organizing production, recruiting personnel, training them, obtaining permission to launch from various commissions and technical supervision («we can do everything»), I was studying the process of purchasing components. Yes, and there are customs duties on components in accordance with the codes of the commodity nomenclature of foreign economic activity. This is our bread – CN FEA! To bounce off the tooth! And now the disappointing conclusion for the anonymous initiator is that the payment of fees for components of the assembly units of video recorders increases the cost of production and the project may be unprofitable! This is stated in writing with the attachment of copies of leaflets from the customs primer, and for clarity of perception – tables with calculations. Which is handed over to the authorities. Felix Andreevich studied the material, lit up a little (appreciated, apparently). A couple of days later, the answer came that the management took note of the conclusion, and this issue was no longer raised. The first barrier has been overcome!
Chapter two. In our office
A week has passed, the adaptation period is over, I’m moving in with Sergey Nikolaevich. We are located opposite each other, but the office is spacious, everyone has a living space. We unpacked and assembled my desk, requested new imported telephones with memory, two for each. And it started – calls, faxes, faxes and calls. The business card proudly flaunts – a business representative of the foreign economic department, there is an option for foreigners: Business Representative Department Foreign Trade. The position obliges – outwardly we try to match: strict suits, ties, we absorb corporate culture. We are trying to defend our independence from the pressure of those divisions of the holding that have been functioning for six months – the financial service, the supply department and the investment department. The latter got used to throwing us English-language texts for technical translation, they allegedly needed it badly, but we regarded it as a loss of sovereignty – such translations (except if it is our direct duty to the authorities) were regarded as a distraction from our main function – to conduct foreign trade transactions and earn money. The investment department was represented by two respectable people, and both in glasses, a candidate and a doctor of sciences, were doing some kind of development on the design of a line for the manufacture of something. I was not interested in their work, but at joint meetings of our organization, these guys reported solidly on the next stage of their highly intelligent work, finding understanding in the person of the management, who set this service as an example to us, the freaks from foreign trade, from whom it is of no use that goat – milk. Look up to the leaders!
Contacts, contacts: that’s what we really need. We offer metals and other products to foreign firms and organizations, chambers of commerce of different countries. Inevitably, phone bills are rising, the chief accountant – an imperious lady – scares us with expenses (in my opinion, the chief accountant is not a position, but a diagnosis). But our president (praise him!) cut it off once and for all:
– If they call, it means they are working.
And we tried to justify this trust with all our might. We carry bundles of commercial offers to the information department for mailing – there two girls fax them from morning to evening. But there are no results yet.
Meanwhile, there is a project – the import of clothes from England. Felix Andreevich signs a contract with some Londoner who speaks English poorly. A container with suits and shoes from London is sailing to us, and I am instructed to clear the valuable cargo at the port and deliver it by car to our store.
– Vladimir Ivanovich, do you know what an invoice is? – Felix Andreevich is interested in me.
– At the top of your voice! – I’m pronounce my version of the quiz «What? Where? When?» The chief’s smile once again proved his endurance and ability to work with the brave soldier Schweik…
The next day I survey the morning landscape of the St. Petersburg terminal. My container is already in the warehouse, that yellow one over there, I found it in even rows among its twins, but first this forty-foot-long box needs to be put on a special platform for customs inspection. I, like a madman, ran for an hour and a half, gesturing to the driver of the gantry crane – take this one, please! Finally hooked! I run to the customs office, and there it’s lunch time, holy business! I look at different ads and read:
– The cargo of the MST company is serviced out of turn!
Who is so happy? Perhaps this is Matvienko Sergey Timofeevich, the namesake of the well-known Valentina Ivanovna? (we didn’t use the word «corruption» then). A female customs specialist floated out of the cherished doors, asked to open the container, and there were large cardboard boxes. All seventeen, as indicated in the invoice. For the sake of order, one box was opened: it’s true clothes, but men’s. Oh, if perfume, then it would be possible to make a present to a beautiful lady, and here – men’s trousers. We put the customs seal on the container. We go back with a solemn gait and draw up the documents, the stamp is «Allowed». Time is inexorably ticking – the car rental is paid