December 1–12, 1993
In early December the Terem’s renovation spread to the second floor. Yura and his caravan of small clients relocated to the new office.
The pyramid structure we had taken as our base turned out to be unviable. After debates with Yurik, Pavel and Kostya we constructed a silo structure. There is a director – that is me. The director sits in his office and thinks about the bright future and how to bring it closer. Next to him sits the Manager with a capital M, that is Yurik. The Manager deals with important clients, receives reports and draws up orders. To the three existing departments we added three more alongside: small wholesale under Pasha, transport-and-warehouse under Vovka, and analytics under Konstantin. What small wholesale does is clear. Vovka was given the task of buying two «KAMAZ» trucks and running them into the ground. The analysts were obliged to collect data on sales and warehouse stock, to calculate orders from the big wholesalers and then to compose the supply order for the Poles.
Zhorik worried that we had no idea what was going on in Khryakino; Gena is a good lad, but oversight is needed. An audit once every six months is like jerking off to a poster of Samantha Fox. On the one hand you have done a big thing, on the other you have dirtied the visual propaganda. Oversight has to be taken seriously.
The last decision: the empty office number twenty-one would be leased out to the information-and-advertising agency «IRAMS.» Maria Sergeyeva was appointed to run it. She had no connection whatsoever to «Proma Impex.» We pulled Masha out from under Kirill’s wing and made her director with a fifty-percent stake. She’d earned it.
The staff took the reorganization without much interest. Duties hadn’t changed, salaries stayed the same. Changes to the org chart without a raise are empty theater. What emerged was a single boss for everyone, Yura, onto whom I offloaded my problems, and that was that.
Yurik and I shut ourselves in the office, I spelled out his new duties. Finished by informing him the salary was fixed, same as Kostya’s, two hundred fifty dollars a week plus a quarterly bonus. Total: a guaranteed grand a month and four more grand-sized bonuses a year, colossal money. Yurik didn’t fall out of his chair from joy – on Kalyazinsky he’d sometimes made more.
I asked how his studies were going. Yurets answered: «Screwed.» He was in a department where they treated truants ruthlessly. Expulsion wasn’t on the table yet, but he needed to show his face to the professors regularly, not like now.
We worked out which days and hours Yurik could be absent from his post, provided I could cover for him. Then we remembered the other MEPhI guys. Called them into the office, held a brainstorm – who’d go to the institute on which day and who’d cover for whom at work.
We drew up the schedule fast. Sat around, chatted, toasted Yurka’s new post, and, buoyed by the prospects, went our separate ways.
