Looking south towards Bucharest almost 7 years ago I was thinking I could be a capital city boy. This deserves capital letters. I could be a Capital City Boy.
Tags work. Moved into Bucharest and became Capital City Boy. Got a job in a corporation and became Corporate Boy. Black suite and Shit.
I remember thinking I can out-smart the general public of Bucharest, e usor sa traiesti printre straini, doar sa inveti sa fii rechin intre rechini. If you move to Bucharest from a cultural city, Regie is the place to be. It’s a mess. It used to be dirty, too. They cleaned it up a little bit, but it still feels like it’s a mess. Only students and the sea can grind rocks and buildings. That’s especially true in Regie. However, my college doesn’t have dorms in Regie; so I did what any student does when he feels like he’s about to be thrown out of a party [or not allowed acces into one]: attempt to offer a bribe. That didn’t work.
Hail the principles of democracy! Romania is a bribery-free zone and corruption has been abolished! Easy there, sea-biscuit, I was just kidding. Bad joke, I know. No, the truth is just my bribe wasn’t acceptable. Not because I walked into the admin’s office wearring a press tag or because I had a camera around my neck. I was just young and foolish and had nothing but the first clue on how to offer a bribe.Never got a place in Regie. Life can be deceiving, indeed.
Fast forward 3 years and I joined the ranks of a multinational corporation for the 3rd time. For those of you who never had the horror of these easy steps, there’s smart, then there’s wise, street-smart and street-wise, corporate-smart and corporate wise. By now, I’m probably all, except one. At that time, I was corporate-smart: that’s the worst kind. It’s usualy an intermediate step between a wise-ass and a fucking liability. You’ve seen these corporate-smart kids before. They drive a company car with no brands on it. When they step out of the car, they have a round-about look on their faces like they are looking for the next victim. That’s how you know they are on the clock, working. They are well dressed, but it’s easy to see that the suite is not a natural extension. Watch one walk by you and you might think he’s having his mind elsewhere, but make no mistake, this is a dangerous species: bust a move in it’s direction and you’ll get the creature focused; it can probably think of 5 ways to make your life misserable in the next 30 working days and scheemes to make an adversary suffer involve a level of imagination that can find a similar use in space exploration. 3 years in Buchale and a shark was born. I was selling pharmaceutical over the counter products back then. A nice way to define a range of products which included pregnancy tests and sliming chewing gum. I got the job because, during the interview, I used a napkin to write down an ecuation about selling fridges to eskimos. They said they needed a guy like that, but it still eludes me why.
During my first days on the job, I was trained in bribery. That makes for 40% of the added value of 98% of the items you can possibly buy in a pharmacy. That means that a particular pharmacy will sell your product if you offer the pharmacist a gift. Offer a big one and your product is practicly off the shelf. Please try it out, dear reader. Walk into a pharmacy and pretend you are not sure about which product to buy. The girl behind the counter will sell you the product that she wants to sell with more conviction then any sales rep. During my visits in pharmacies, I learned a lot. For instance, I learned that the Dona Pharmacy near Tineretului Square in Bucharest also sells shoes. Not medical shoes, women shoes. Not very nice ones, tough.
But best of all, after 6 months on the job, I could offer a bribe to the Pope. I even offered a bribe to a police officer in a court of law, while at least a dozen people were watching. I seriously doubt that any of them caught to the scheem. I think not even the police officer realized what it’s happening, but he bended the rules my way, anyhow.
Corruption wasn’t a product that just ran out of stock in front of me. It was a blessing from above in a country that has more freedoms than all western democracies combined. On a large deal of pharmaceuticals, I offered a BMW 1st series to a pharmacy. The deal was sealed, but so was my conclusion about this immaculate working environment. I started being slopy, just to see if it works. Stopped offering bribes, but instead hit on the girls in pharmas. This also worked well for the company and my boss [the best you could wish for], was encouraging the attitude, altough I can’t say he was indulging in it himself. Maybe in his younger days. Then I totaled the second company car.
On the smartness list, there are quite a few more steps to go from where I left it above. As a general rule, you can’t be more of those things at once, that’s against the rules. And the rules also say you have to move forward, upwards, untill you get so high that you get tempted of rock-bottom. Funny enough, after I surpassed the phases named above, yesterday I get talking to a friend and I find out he is the son of the preacher-man. A teacher, that is. Thus, has a free spot in Regie but doesn’t wanna stay there. “Can I have it, please?” – “Sure, man. You know you can ask me anything.“
