Collection of Stories

* A SINGLE MOTHER

I’m sorry to hold you up but you must sign these forms before you go in tomorrow. I’m happy the meeting is over. It dragged on and I got irritable too. It took me back to the times I worked as a secretary in the court. OK, thanks a lot! See you tomorrow!

Now I have to go home. I’ll have to drive ten miles at rush hour. Yesterday there was an accident and a pile-up of ten cars caused a long tailback. If there are no hold-ups today, I won’t get stuck in a traffic jam. So I must arrive by about seven o’clock. I have to call my kids and hurry them up. Their French lesson ran on longer than expected, so they won’t leave school till 4.30 p.m. and I’ll have to wait for them in the car. Then they’ll be complaining they can’t keep up with me on the way to the gym.

OK, I am having some time to sort out the post now… Three weeks passed by before I got a reply to my letter of complaint. Here it is. They got around to sending the reply. How can I plan anything with such hold-ups? Nobody knows what lies ahead. All I can do is just take it one day at a time.

7. MEMORY

* WHO DARES WINS

When I first appeared in Cherry GmbH’s office I thought I might be promoted to the position of Senior Regional Sales Manager but I was a long way out thinking that. Sales Director Mr. Suesmilch, in all innocence, sincerely told me there were enough taxi drivers in Germany and they didn’t need one more. The best offer was to come back to Russia and try to succeed in climbing the ladder over there. I spent ten years in vain. So when I was offered another position in a successful multinational corporation, I jumped at the chance. One of the main reasons for my immediate acceptance was the opportunity for a large amount of foreign travel. One day I was sitting relaxing in a cafe by the Seine after a hard day’s business, before jetting off to an important meeting the next morning in Rome. How romantic it all was. It took me five years to start recognizing that my emotions changed. I can’t say I understood that a life spent on planes and in hotels is lonely, dull and exhausting – not at all. I didn’t long to be back at home and didn’t dream of the simple pleasures of having someone to watch television with, of being asked how my day was. I had a nice family and three kids.

However, one day, my mindset changed. As I lay on the bed in my luxurious hotel room, I could see no benefit other than a high salary. “What’s the point being a hunting dog in an expensive suit with an indulging, patronizing smile, doing the same job day after day, year after year?” I asked myself. “I talk to the same people, I tell them the same things and every company in every city in the world is the same.”

It was at a Chinese exhibition when I first thought the unthinkable. I warmed to my computer-related topic with a Chinese colleague and we found a lot in common. He offered me the chance to set up a common business and I thought to myself, “Why the hell do I have to go on like this?” To tell the truth, I was scared, but for the first time in my life I was truly content. It took us two years and a number of false starts with the wrong products, but finally we succeeded in getting it right. Who dares wins!

DON’T LET THEM EAT AWAY AT YOUR NERVES

My Grandma loves looking at her old photographs. She says memories come flooding back and relives them. She says they are “good’ and “bad’. The former ones make her happy taking her back to the times when she was young and beautiful. The latter stir up sad memories and remind her of the things she would like to change but can’t. My mum often sympathises with our Grandma and tells me we shouldn’t let bad memories eat away at us, we should put bad experiences behind us. We have to always try to live in the present and live for the future. But I think it’s easier said than done.

* FRAGILE MEMORIES

Our grandparents and parents store up so many memories over the years, good ones and bad ones, that it’s worth trying to write them down or record them. My mother keeps an old photo of me and associates it with my early childhood before she divorced my father. Looking at the photos she always smiles and sighs. It suddenly came back to me how fragile and unstable the happiness might be. So when I saw my Grandma looking through the album, I took my notebook and asked her to tell me something about those photos. Of course, they stirred up lots of happy memories and some sad ones too. For example, when she and her husband lost their jobs, my mum was very little and they tried to get along on just their Social Security checks. She added that happy ones stuck with her forever, though. People try to block out their sad memories, but there is no use in doing that because you might forget the good ones. It’s true that you can get an unexpected flashback to your unpleasant experience, but it can help you learn a lesson or teach others how to avoid it.

* DOES IT RING A BELL?

For me this picture conjured up a series of crazy events. I was the only girl in the group and when I got my diploma I was on cloud nine and wanted everyone to see how happy I was. So when going out in the corridor after the graduation I couldn’t hold-back my feelings any longer and started jumping like a child. Little wonder I didn’t notice the steps on my way and fell down. As I fell, I grabbed another boy’s gown and he came down on top of me. Then we both were taken to hospital with a broken wrist and foot. Guess what happened next! We got to know one another and eventually married. It’s amazing how one picture can call up an event in such detail. When I look at it, my thoughts always flash back immediately to that moment. Sometimes I ask him “Does it ring a bell?”

“Not just one – a thousand bells!” he usually replies, smiling.

8. LOCATION

* ODD MAN OUT

Eric was a reliable colleague and excellent employee. He was not greedy and never had money to burn, but he managed to get by. However he always said he felt uneasy in our corporation and wanted to try something else. He was content, and never worried about promotion or a great career. To me he was the odd man out because he even didn’t have a girlfriend. So I wasn’t surprised when he said he was going to get a new lease on life. As the big day arrived, all folks were incredulous saying, “How can you throw all you’ve worked for down the drain?” However, Eric was ready for adventure. He left the office and never looked back. I’ve never met him since then but I’m sure he’s happy, if not wealthy.

* LONG-AWAITED REST

It was the first time I had a week off and we set off for a lovely hotel which was tucked away in a deep forest. Our room on the first floor opened onto a balcony with lovely view of a charming lake. Woods stretched away to the horizon. Early morning I could see a few fishermen who were spread out over the lakeshore. My wife and I went out onto the balcony wrapping ourselves up in tweed blankets, drank frothy coffee and felt we were completely cut off from the crazy modern world!

* A NEW ROOM

“Come in, mate. Do you like it?”

“What a great room!”

“Well, I like it too. I rented it at a knockdown price. The landlady was kind. The room was a bit dim and dull when we moved in, but my girlfriend bought these nice curtains, which helped to brighten it up. In fact, I like it so much here that I’d rather stay in than go out most evenings while she’s working in the cafe.”

“You’re a lucky, man! The cave I rent is so miserable. I hate it. I stay out as long as I can! I even stayed on at college tonight until it closed!”

“You may need to find a girlfriend too.”

“No, thanks! They all are ‘high maintenance’, you know. Too expensive for me by far. Well, I’ve come to bring you your powerbank with the cable – you left it behind at the lecture this morning.”

“Oh, thanks! How stupid of me! I owe you big time.”

“Never mind, I stayed behind to ask the girls about a revision and then saw the powerbank lying there.”

“I see. Thank you very much. So, interested in girls, are you? Well, take it easy and remain calm!

“I’m OK. Just hate talking about it.”

“No problem, understand. Would you like a coffee now you’re here?”

“I am in a hurry. Gotta be off. But I’d love to call back another time, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure. Let me know when you’re free. It’d be great to get together with the others tomorrow evening. Feel free to drop in.”

9. CHANGE

* FRIENDS ARE OK WHEN THEY DON’T GET IN THE WAY

Now I’m sitting and dreading Luisa coming back. I am wondering if it’s really her flat and I am the one staying here as a guest. It all started so easily and innocently and looked like a favour to a friend. Luisa called and asked to just put her up for a couple of nights… Now, more than three months on, Luisa is still here, in my flat and shows no sign of keeping her word to leave.

The thing is, I can’t bring myself to tell her. She’s taken advantage and treats the place as her own, even borrowing my clothes to go out or for interviews. Of course, she always asks me first, saying her clothes seem really boring and when she sees mine, they all look great. She even wants to look like me at interviews. “People judge you by what you wear, you know!” that kind of thing. So if I said “no’, it would sound like I didn’t want to help her in a friendly way. Of course, she always washes all the clothes before giving them back, but my blood is starting to boil. The truth is, I’m scared Luisa will take offence, accuse me of being selfish and not caring about her situation because she is in trouble. I vividly imagined her crying and saying I’m throwing her out while she has no job, no money and no other place to stay.

I tried to think up some excuses in order to get Luisa to leave, but it was unfair. So I decided to make my feelings clear to her and bring the subject up this evening. I realise I will sound selfish, saying that I value my own privacy and don’t want to live with her on a permanent basis and that our arrangement was meant to be temporary but it has gone on far too long and has taken advantage of my good nature.

It will be hard to say that but I know I’ll be honest. Sometimes friends are OK when they don’t get in the way.

* IT’S HEATING UP

The factory closed, we were laid off and the number of problems started to increase. I asked my friends to get together in a café. I was afraid no-one would come but it was filling up gradually. Things got worse last week, we got no reply from the city council and the situation is obviously now not looking good. After the owners started moving production to the Far East at the beginning of the year, all business in our area was down, but the mayor says it is picking up now. I think our discontent is heating up and we can no longer stay calm. The city authorities have been ignoring us for ten months and even the most patient and long-suffering agreed to sue them. So the governor and the district attorney eventually woke up to what’s happening.

* A PROBLEM OF THE POWER BUTTON

I’d been working in the IT department for 7 years until a total changeover happened. A new CEO was appointed and he decided to make most staff as mobile as possible. I could not make my mind up what to start with but he said I would be in charge of moving all data and applications to some cloud platforms as well as developing and supporting the new infrastructure. So I was promoted. It was not so bad.

On the other hand, it didn’t make my life easier, though. I had to commute to the office and an avalanche of problems didn’t make me and my colleagues in the IT department mobile and flexible either. “The bodies were out but the minds were in’. We had a year from hell – we have phased out all the old computers and phased in completely new ones – mostly servers. We didn’t have to work it out from scratch and to come up with a new idea. We implemented the existing mobile network solution. My colleagues weren’t sure how things would pan out at first and we faced a few problems with securing data and online traffic. However, the arguments about the new system blew over quite quickly. Our management, sales and marketing staff started appearing in the office once a week and now I may not see some of them for months. Yet I can watch them emailing, chatting and meeting online around the clock. They have a chance to plan their life and work according to the result they have to achieve, but sometimes I wonder where the border between their private lives and office responsibilities lie. My wife says it is “a power button’ problem – as you switch your mobile or laptop off, the border is crossed.

*GETTING OVER

Last year my girlfriend and I broke up. It took me a while to get over that. I fell into depression and suffered for a long time. I knew I had to get over my depression, but decided to give up smoking first. I felt awful and sick for the first few weeks but that’s all worn off now. I also quit hanging out with my friends in the evenings and started poring over books trying to catch up with my classmates. Morning jogging helped a lot too. Six months had passed before I got used to it all and stuck with my new regime. So now I feel much better than before.

* SURGICAL INDICATION

Surgical indication is an intervention aimed at benefitting a patient when no other kind of treatment can help. It is established based on validated criteria. In business it is profit. Last year I was brought in to turn around SSMicro when the company had been in the red for three years. The quality of their products was going down and so did the profit. The main problem was that they saw the result but could not see what caused it. So they needed surgery. I soon realised that SSMicro had been sticking to the only supplier who was no longer able to meet new market requirements. The management thought it was enough to just tinker with the design and product range, as well as the channel support without getting bogged down into the minutiae of the whole company structure, as they said. The shareholders, though, supported my plan to shake things up completely.

I suggested to both change suppliers and make some drastic changes to the company’s processes simultaneously. The obsolete procedures had to be turned into new effective ones. I started to change things around slowly. At first staff were not happy with those changes and it took a lot of time and effort to explain to them that it would pay off. We had to restructure a few departments and change employees over but no one was laid off. The idea was to “fine-tune’ the whole structure so that it could work smoothly and efficiently, plus, prevent it from going back to the previous inefficient procedures. It was hard for all of us. Only now, some staff are beginning to perk up. Of course, I was putting a lot of pressure on them but it was the only way to ensure an effective turnaround. Now that we’ve achieved the targets I planned, I can ease up a bit. I knew staff wouldn’t be keen on me messing around with their routines, but the company had to catch up with its competitors. Without breaking obsolete schemes, they were unable to achieve a new way of working and prevent profit from declining. This led to improved efficiency and enabled us to keep up with the latest changes to meet customers’ requirements.”

10. DESTROYING ANYTHING

* PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

I crochet dolls for toddlers and adults and I’ve been making them for about six years. Now my technique has improved and they’re getting better all the time. You have to make a lot of very bad dolls before you make a good one. You learn from your mistakes though and it’s useful. I’m sure it’s important never to give up and always just keep on trying until you get it right. Practice makes perfect, that’s very true in my case.

* “BEWARE OF GADGETS PROMISING GIFTS”

It didn’t start yesterday but what you can see today really looked completely different just half a century ago. Now I’m falling apart like an old dilapidated book and a light gust of wind can easily knock me off my feet. I’m not crying watching the big crowd attempting to pull down that ramshackle house. It used to be called “a school’. This word stands for nothing today, but it was the whole Universe for us then. Your mother and I met in there.

She was standing by the window and tears were rolling down her cheeks. I saw her tearing a piece of paper apart and screwing it up. It was her maths test. She was beautiful in her fury with her cheeks blushing and lips pursed tight. I couldn’t take my eyes off her and knocked over a bucket and spilt water over the floor. She looked at me and said “sorry’. Those barbarians in the Government don’t need schools anymore and tear them down all over the world. They think they are mindreaders. How naïve they are! It won’t work, believe me. They kindle the fire they won’t be able to put out. I taught you to speak and you started thinking after you were able to speak and read fluently. There is no other way to make a human think. They can root out education and schools and they’ll end up dying out because they can’t stamp out

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