When I started there, in the fall of 1999, they assigned me to the installation team. We travelled to different locations in Vienna and worked in dusty and filthy rooms full of buzzing, hot, and flashing equipment in basements or on top floors. Everywhere, they could rent a bit of space to shove their equipment in. I had no desire to continue with this team under those circumstances, so I asked Ertl, my mate from college, to put a word in for me. He established himself rather well at the company, and I thought he could pull some strings. He asked around, but since the installation team needed people desperately, it was not a walk in the park. It was crucial for the company to have as many people as possible out there running and maintaining those powerful hubs. All fault-finding, equipment replacement, patching, pinging, “ponging”, and who knows what else, was done by the installation team. As important as my job might have been to the company, I could not see myself there for too long. I had my fair share of working on building sites from the tender age of 14. During the summer holidays, my father dragged me along quite a few times.
My parents and I were also working on two houses simultaneously. We built one in Austria from the ground up, and we rebuilt an old cottage in Hungary, which became our weekend house. All those dusty, cold, and rigid sites were putting me off for life by the time I was 21. I wanted to be in the office, pressing buttons on the keyboard, and after the 8-hour shift, I would go home and make music, write a song, or make love to my girlfriend or any other girl who wanted to experience my love cave and was available on short notice. That was my agenda, how I imagined things developing and progressing. Seeing Ertl sitting in an office did not worry me since he deserved to be there, but spotting Ton there, who was also a classmate but failed to graduate with us, really bugged me! He was a decent fellow, but not the sharpest tool in the box, and he was sitting in the main office in front of a PC, which did not sit well with my psyche.
However, I met Ton on the street one day, and he told me about this job opportunity and the possibility of getting it, so I applied and got it. I thanked him for the information he shared, but it still bothered me that a guy like him, who was at school just like me, at best average, except that I was untouchable in the electronics workshops when it came to building PCBs and also in the mechanical workshops on the lathe and the milling machines, while he gazed around like a cow in front of the new gate. For practical hands-on work, it is fair to say that nobody could hold a candle to me! Either way, on a chilly, rainy day, a message came through by word of mouth. Of course, those who genuinely contributed to the company’s success were not granted internet access. Even a shared communal PC with a login would have been satisfactory. No, no, that was just for the important people, who were pushing pencils around in a warm, dry, cosy office, taking 20 cigarettes and 10 coffee breaks, and bossing the labourers around. I mean, it kind of makes sense, to be honest, because if you give a bricklayer internet access, they will easily get side-tracked and end up laying fewer bricks. This is the fact of the matter.
Anyway, an important installation team meeting has been scheduled for next week, and everyone working on the building side is required to attend without a reservation. Huge restructuring changes were reported. It left a terrible taste in my mouth right from the word go, because how can those changes benefit us if none of the office workers need to attend? There was no other alternative, so I joined the crowd. After a brief introduction of himself, a stocky man with a beer gut announced that all people in the installation team must, from next week onwards, climb up mobile phone transmitter towers and put up, fix, and maintain these transmitters. I recall he came across as very confident and also aggressive. To him, it did not appear to be a big deal, and he spiced it up with little teasing nuggets like: “Any of you happen not to know how to operate a battery-powered hand drill? Of course, it created a humongous ha, ha, ha, and the crowd was ecstatic except for me. He realised I sat there with no emotions and started walking towards me. Suddenly, time seemed to have stopped, my common sense prevailed, and for a nanosecond, I pictured this situation: December 15th, Vienna. Descending fog, four degrees Celsius above sub-zero, fine drizzling rain, and a moderate wind blowing at 25-30 km/h. I am wearing glasses, dressed in extremely heavy clothing, and suffering from vertigo. I am alone up there, 10–20 metres above the ground, with a battery-powered hand drill in my right hand and a 20kg transmitter in my left. My visibility towards my left, my right, and to the front is less than 1 cm, because my glasses are full of rain beads, so I cannot see my nose. To put this in context, my bum cheeks are being squeezed, exerting enough pressure that if I had placed a piece of barbecue charcoal in the crack, I would have formed a 529 carat diamond. I am up there in the freezing cold and need to prove to Mr. Laddy Daddy that I can swing that battery powered hand drill just like John Wayne, “The Duke,” swung his Smith & Wesson pistol in a 1950s Telecolor picture during Hollywood’s golden age. Suddenly, my 10 millimetre drill bit breaks into the flange. I had to pull off one of my heavy rain-soaked gloves to take a spare drill bit out of my tool bag, which was hanging on my right side. It’s “Slippery When Wet,” and the broken sharp drill bit glides through my frozen fingers and fades into the distance, submerging into the depth of the heavy fog.
It’s closely followed by my glove, which was trapped under my armpits, but I unintentionally released it in a reflex action move, trying to grab the broken drill bit. I send out a yell, which curls your hair, and because the speed of sound is faster than a free-falling object, trouble and misfortune are improbable. My colleague, who is standing on the foot of the pillar for health and safety reasons and whom I can’t see even if I were to remove my face bicycle, because of the thick fog, hears my yell and looks up while asking: Is everything OK up there? By the time I take a deep breath of the richly carbon dioxide polluted city air, which lingers all over big cities and Vienna is no exception either, to inform him that an extremely sharp and pointy object is coming in free fall towards him, and as it gathers speed, it becomes heavier and heavier. By this time, it has already coincidently and accidentally cut through his retina of his left eye, pierced through his eyeball, and is stopped by the skull wall.
One second and fifty-six microseconds later, the water-soaked leather glove arrives and pushes the broken drill through his brain, which then exits through his right ear! Since I do not have any drill bits left, I lower my frozen and scared body via the security ropes down to feel solid ground, and on my very last step I realise that the ground is not firm at all, because I just stepped on his head, slipped down, and snapped his neck. He kicked the bucket 15 minutes before. This was the time it took me to lower myself centimeter-wise down from the cold, freezing, and slippery pillar, which swung around like a pine tree during a hurricane in my imagination because of vertigo.
Now I ought to explain in court of law to the persecutor and to my ex-colleague’s wife and four young children that I coincidentally took their father away from them and that it was an accident, while they show the evidence of the food prints of my boots on the deceased’s face and neck. On top of all this, a good lawyer and a bribed medical professional could easily put their heads together to work out that he was still alive after the torpedo of the broken drill bit shot through his brain, but I, with my heavy, water-soaked, steel plate working boots, was the one who actually finished him by not being careful, extremely clumsy, and not on top of my game. After a urine check, they also claim that three years earlier, on June 12th, 1997, at 22:57, I had a puff of marijuana, which made me a drug addict, a “Kiffer” according to Austrian laws. I did not smoke any weed at all back then, but the urine was from a washed up rock star whom they paid handsomely to leak into my cup. I mean, if Russia pulled it off in Beijing on an industrial scale, then we cannot discard the possibility that someone could pull it off in Vienna too, if the money is sufficient.
If I am lucky, that’s 15 years for manslaughter in the rough penitentiary. It could also easily turn into 25 years for 1st degree murder, depending on who has more money for the lawyers and the post-mortem examiner, me or them. I might even take the prison sentence, but the stories I heard from people who spent substantial time behind “Schwedische Gardinene” are mortifying. Apparently, they use more Vaseline than toothpaste.
They also said, “It doesn’t matter if you put your bum against the wall; if you sleep with your mouth open!”
This short movie clip flashed through my mind in less than a second. Mr. Laddy Daddy loaded up his gun and laid his sausage-like index finger on the trigger to fire the ultimate tease into the crowd, but by then I had already decided and was happy to lose my job and walk out of the meeting, even from the job! As the query left his tongue and he opened his mouth wide, featuring a surpassing work of dentistry of fake teeth, displayed in the hue of fluorescent white, he asked while putting his right hand flattened vertically on his brow:
“Anyone out there who does not have the testis to climb up on one of those pillars with a battery powered drill, which we supply, to drill a couple of holes and hang up a transmitter? The crowd of working-class heroes were submerged in a sea of ecstasy and laughter, exactly as it should be. Mr. Laddy Daddy was the man of the moment, no question about that.
He knew how to work that crowd of hard-working men who spend their lives labouring to make someone else’s dream come true. They are being heavily taxed and taken for granted, just like everyone who works for money, and just before they can enjoy their pensions, they drop like a hot potato.
His one minute of hay fire fuelled fame came to an abrupt end as a tallish, rock star hair-wearing, clean-shaven-faced, young skinny lad with a well-maintained goatee covering his lower lip, sitting in near proximity to the exit door, raised his right arm, which his index finger pointed to the ceiling, expressing a strong and deterring feeling with the words: “I do.” As these two words arrived and pressured the tympanic membranes of every individual, one could hear a pin drop on the carpeted assembly hall. The governor took only a couple of seconds to approach me, asking where the problem would lie. My answer was simple and straight-forward: “Vertigo.” Well, we are not expecting you to do this with no training, of course, which we will supply to all of you, including going through all the health and safety procedures, of course.
I was clear in my thoughts, strong in my mind, and with uncompromising determination, I answered, “It won’t be me going up there!”
He was a trained hustler. He realised that carrying on with me would interfere with his show, and if he went on, I might poison other people’s minds too, so he walked off, saying, “We will discuss this later. As he turned his back on me and walked towards the front of the room, I added, “We won’t have much to discuss, because I will not go up there. My last sentence fell on deaf ears while he continued walking away from me. Plenty of the participants turned their heads towards me and pulled their lips phlegmatically. For me, it was a clear-cut decision. I had a handful of companies behind me and a couple of years of work experience under my belt. I did not fear anyone, either mentally or physically.
Just three years prior, I was driving trucks full of “Jagdkommando” soldiers up and down the country, as I was a driver for the Austrian army’s special forces. Those guys in the back of the lorry, without eating for a week and having 7 litres of water each for a week while sleeping 1 hour a day for a week. So imagine what I had to deal with after I took the wrong turn and added another 100 kilometres to a 300 kilometre journey after I took them back to the base after a week of survivor training.
I opened the back of the truck and they jumped out, verbally attacking me and blocking me off so I could not go forward. I said, “Guys, chill because it is going to be painful. 16 of them came towards me with the full kit, a 40kg backpack, and the STG 75 in their number 2 field boots. I had 70 kg, including the clothes, and I was in my number 1 military boots, which were much lighter. I was fit as a fiddle. Seeing them all week, plus with all this kit on them, there was no way in this world they could catch me. I jumped into the truck, exited on the other side, and into the building. On the way in, I met the instructor who was with me in the cabin, and we got along well. I made him laugh all the way through; we had a bawl. I said, “Sir, I have a problem. They were enraged with me and appeared to want to fight. “Who?” he asked. The guys from the truck we took, I replied! He said, “Oh, those girls. Let me sort them out. You follow me.
He rushed outside. I followed him closely. They stood around near the entrance.
He said, “Ladies, a little bird tweeted in my ears that you have plenty of energy left to chase a person who was driving you back from the field to the base. When I qualified for this unit, we walked back the 300 km after the one-week survivor training, because there weren’t enough drivers. Since you seem to have plenty of energy left, immediately go into a push-up position. Now imagine, these boys had barely a bite for a week, next to no water, and then had to go down in a push-up position with their backpacks and guns.
He said, “Driver, you go back to your truck and put on the music. Put your feed out the window, take note, and report to me when one of them drops.
OK, it was fun to watch for a minute or two, but then it became inhuman. Minutes later, the instructor was still not back. Not one of them dropped, but it was torture. I felt for them, so I got out of the truck and went inside. The guy was sitting there with the other instructors, drinking beer. I said, “Sir, none of them dropped, and I think it is enough. He said, “You can do the thinking on your math exams. Come back when the first two are down. I went out; they were all just about hanging on, with shaking arms and feet. Their red, blue, purple, and pink faces were mirrored in the pool of sweat in front of them. Two minutes later, one went down, then another one. A few seconds later, the instructor appeared with two bottles of beer and two “Leberkäsesemmel”. He must have watched them from the inside or he knew their limits.
He commanded, “All up, backpacks off. Everybody goes back to the same position, but this time, ladies, we add a little twist and strategy to it. You’ll be doing push-ups while the driver walks on your backs, enjoying his well-earned beer and sandwich.
Can you imagine that? I was walking on their back, drinking beer and eating my bun.
The rule: the one I stepped on needed to lower his body to the floor. Then I have a bite and a sip of the beer. When I was done, I had to kick his butt with my inside foot, and he went up. The guys to his left and right needed to be in the upper position, so I could step over easily. I could go back and forward, but the one I stepped on was only allowed to lower his body when I was on his back with both feet. The others continued to do push-ups. He sat down in a chair and began making fun of them while munching loudly on his bun. He was drinking the beer and blowing the burps towards them.
He said, “If any of your losers approach this man, or any other driver, the outcome will be biblical. Vietnam was just a war. Wöllersdorf is a living hell. I told them that if they attacked me it would have consequences, but they wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth! Thereafter, I had no problems with any of those special unit soldiers in the last 5 months, and they recognised and greeted me from a long distance.
The world was my oyster. I was young, handsome, healthy, and I did not give a flip!
At our meeting, which was one-on-one with Mr. Lady Daddy, he sort of accepted his defeat but played it down and was extremely cool by saying, “It’s a good thing you can’t do the task, because I need someone like you in the warehouse dealing with stock.” I sat there gobsmacked, thinking, “Is this guy completely nuts? Did he not read my CV at all? ” It would have been acceptable if he hadn’t paid attention to my curriculum vitae, to my schooling, education, or work experience, but at least he should have read about my freaking country of origin. He is seriously considering getting someone from Transylvania into a warehouse. I am going to steal his anus while he is emptying his bawls. I’d rob them blind. No, no, no, no. You do not put this kind of person in charge of stock or equipment. Come on, man, use common sense, I thought!
Aside from that, I had a college diploma in electronics and some work experience, so what business would I have in a warehouse?
It was about time to get my trusted friend, Ertl, into position. I went to his office, sat down, and started my sales pitch. He knew me like the palm of his hands, but he always fell, better said, gave into my ideas and projects and more or less happily joyed in and helped where he could. The last project I presented him with in the passing days of my stay in Austria was an exception. I offered him a position and to be part of WOOCOURT. COM just after 4W—TATA, the programmer and developer, jumped the boat, too. On this one, both of my trusted companions chickened out and confirmed that they do not feel the need, nor are they eager to become billionaires. So I must respect men like them, so I am back to square one, except I have a working website to show off with.
Anyway, after I convinced him that I was the right man to replace that porn-addicted weirdo, Richi, who resigned just a few weeks ago, he said, let me make a phone call. Within an hour, he conveyed the information to me that tomorrow at 9:30 am, the 3rd biggest boss of the company would see me in his office.
I have seen the guy around in the corridor a few times, but to me, he did not appear to be a boss. In fact, I always thought that he should let an electric guitar wipe someone on a festival stage because he was the spitting image of a young David Gilmore by Pink Floyd. He did not appear to me like an IT professional at all, but hey hoe! I dressed smart casual and stood there knocking on his door at 9:25am. This is something I learned in the army, what it actually means to be on time. “To be on time is five minutes before the time.”
Come in, he shouted, pointing to the chair in front of his table, while he was continuing with his phone call.
My mate Ertl handsomely vetted him, and he refused to waste a minute with me explaining the big story again. He hung up the phone, picked it up again, and took Mr. Laddy Daddy out of his misery.
He explained in a fast, slightly raised voice while nursing a polite and diplomatic wording that decisions had disappointed him several times in the past, losing good people because we did not put them in places where they belonged. He would strongly recommend that Mr. Baxx be presented with an internal job opportunity as a replacement for the departing Richi, who would fill him in accordingly before his withdrawal.
Mu, the rock star boss, told me after the phone call. It’s all done. Go into Ertl’s office, hang around, and absorb what they do, and then we will sign the new contract tomorrow.
The case was closed. The next day, I started as an IT engineer in a suit and tie in the very office where my mate sat. Ertl gave me a crash course in PC handling. Switch on; switch off, but not by pulling the mains. No, switch it off (shut it down) via the software. What’s the software? I asked, out of curiosity. The software runs on the hardware, he replied! Hardware? Yes, the stuff you build. Your PCBs are called hardware. But the stuff you build at home to control your lights, and so forth, this is analogue technology. So it doesn’t need software. Computers are digital, working with 0s and 1s. They have microprocessors running software. Software developers and programmers create programmes.
Let’s open a folder! He continued with his education. Folder? What’s that, I asked? So, bit by bit, I learned a lot by my standards, and by the time Richi downloaded his blue videos to an external hard drive and deleted all the “work-related” emails in which he communicated back and forth with teenage girls, a week had gone by. By this time, I could operate the computer to the point where I could actually do some work on it.
Richi spent a week explaining how they configure routers, but simultaneously he ran some sort of business, buying and struggling to re-sell some vintage flippers and mechanical fruit machines, which seemed to me much more interesting than router programming. Every time he said, “I need to do this now quickly; we will come back to it. I was game. ” I used my time sensibly and sent tonnes of free text messages to a torrent of girls whose numbers I had gathered over the past three years. It took ages to explain to them who I am, and after I succeeded, they said, “Listen, that was three years ago. Sod off. I’ve been in a relationship for the past two and a half years. I am sorry it took me three years to send out free text messages! Did they really expect me to pay 1 schilling for a message to random girls I met at a party or on the train? Well, it didn’t really matter, because I had an endless array of numbers. Some of those girls had been in 10 relationships since I met them, and since they were single at that moment in time, they welcomed my message by saying, “I was waiting for your text. I am glad you still remember me. ” I did not know what they looked like, but I had the free SMS from the computer, and after reading through the message exchanges, I could recall who they were. Every message drained them financially, because they replied to my phone. They asked, “Why is your message always coming from a funny number?” I said, “I am using the PC because my boss doesn’t let us text while working. I can read them on my phone but can’t type them up. So it was all good. They believed it every time!
There is a trick to this, and I have become the master. Let me share it with you guys in a simple example.
It does not relate to this story, but the procedure is the same in all kinds of situations. The other day I drove down a street in London and I saw in front of a house a van full of logs. Someone chopped a tree and put the logs outside their house, but it was on their property on the patio and not directly on the street. I went to the door and knocked twice, but nobody opened up, and I had my partner and the kids in the car, so I told them. Look, I will drop you off back home and come back to get the food so we can use real wood for the barbecue. I drove back and started uploading the locks into the back of the Vauxhall Corsa Club. Halfway through, an elderly woman opens the door.
Her: What are you doing?
Me: Hello!
Her: I am asking you, what are you doing?
Me: I am taking the logs!
Her: Why are you taking those logs?
Me: Well, I knocked on the door (and then suddenly I stopped talking and waited).
Her: Did John tell you to take these logs?
Me: Yeh!
Her: That’s OK then. Here, the logs are yours.
This works in many situations. When someone calls you on the phone or texts you and you do not know who this person is, you just have to get on with the conversation, but you must talk as little as possible. Repeat the stuff you want to say, but wait until they talk, and never interrupt them. Throw in a few questions now and then, such as:
You: Do you still have that car?
Them: You mean the Volkswagen Golf?
Then you know, Ah ok, alright, this is the person. You will have a better picture.
If they go: “What are you talking about? I’ve never had a car! “
You: I’m referring to them. Do they still have that car?
Them: Who?
You: You know, the gang we used to go out with?
Them: What the hell are you talking about? We never went out.
You: Sorry, I am tired and confused. What is this phone call regarding?
They will explain.
Then you will know who they are, and you will have saved the situation. Even after 3 years, I knew which girl it was 9 times out of 10. They always dropped something, which took me back to the meeting.
Well, it was all fun, but then on Monday morning, Richi wasn’t there anymore. He was gone, and left me with a lot of information on how not to do business with vintage flippers and plenty of girls to talk to, but next to no knowledge about programming routers.
I started configuring them anyway, left, right, and centre, but the people who were supposed to install them at the customers’ house sent them right back to me because they could not connect to the internet. Ertl to the rescue! Hey man, I have these issues. Do you know how to configure these things? He said, “Of course I do. Strike me pink. I thought only Richi knew, and now that he is gone, I am screwed. Ertl asked, “What seems to be the issue? I said: I don’t know, they just sent them back to me, and this will create an issue soon, so please help me out. He said, “Let me look.”
He popped into the router configuration via the software and said, “Look at what’s there:
0.00.0 IP Address
255.255.2550 Subnet Mask
Tell me! “How should that work?” It’s impossible!
What’s wrong with it? I entered the entire figures which were on the configuration sheet. “I doubt it,” he replied.
Here you go, have a look. I put the sheet under his nose, stupidly but confidently. He replied. This is not the same! Can’t you see?
The sheet reads:
0.0.0.0.0 IP Address
255.255.255.0 Subnet Mask
“This to me is the same,” I replied confidently. He said, “Don’t be stupid.” You forgot two full stops! ” I wondered if they were noteworthy, ” I added. He looked at me smiling and answered, “They can be!”
Well, it took a while, but then I grasped it and made some genius changes to the mad set up of the departed Richi. I grouped all the cables and adapters for all the routers I had to configure in the past neatly together, so every time I had to upload the software, all the cables, adapters, connectors, and power supplies were right under my hands. This saved a shed load of time, which was fortunate because this was also the very moment when I discovered the internet properly, and then the good times really began.
I didn’t smoke, nor was I longing for coffee, but I frequented the vending machine, which had hot chocolate at its disposal, while grazing my eyes on those well-groomed office ladies, who would choose to mirror my smile now and then.
On an unforgiving rainy, gusty, cold late afternoon, a crew of filthy, wet, overworked men galloped through to the main office while I was enjoying my 5th hot chocolate in the past 45 minutes. I did not recognise any of them because they had hoodies on and looked like the Michelin man. A young lad, around my age, maybe a year my senior, looked up at me while I was sipping on my well-deserved hot beverage and said loudly, “While we are working our guts out in the cold and rain, the coffee is flushing out of your ears in the warm office.”
I recognised him right away; he was one of half a dozen people who smiled when I admitted in front of the entire hall a few weeks ago that I have tiny balls. Normally, I am not a child of sadness and, under any other circumstance, I’d have resonated and promptly responded to any person with this kind of attitude. However, in that moment, I dared to doubt myself that it would have been appropriate even to think of a reaction, let alone to expose one. I was in a warm, clean, dry, secure environment, and I filled my days with fun, laughter, and a huge amount of excitement.
I outsmarted them all, not only him but every single one of them, including Mr. Laddy Daddy, because I was the only one dropping out of the bunch and not even Mr. Fluorescent Teeth could do anything about it. Anything I would have said could have fuelled, maybe even escalated, a situation in which I didn’t have a role to play. If I stayed in my office to wade through my 5th refreshing hot chocolate, I wouldn’t even have seen those workers marching through the main office like geese on a narrower path in the countryside somewhere in Serbia.
What happened next, I thought, is predominantly the reason I gave this accruing event such a great deal of exposure.
The leader of the pack, who looked a bit like the young Ozzy Osbourne, shorter and slightly older, pushed his tired body up from his computer table. He had internet access because he was the boss of all of them. He was approaching the vending machine with big but slow steps, the kind one cannot hear but feel. I stood there slightly petrified, I must honestly confess, because the entire labourers’ gang surrounded me. As he arrived at the double circle of people, he just pushed them aside without an excuse or any type of means. After he broke through the ring, he put his right hand on my left shoulder and looked at the young lad, but he meant every single one of them. You just shut your mouth once and for all, because on the day in question, when every single one of you was commonly asked if you could do this job, you were all laughing, as far as my memory serves me correctly. This man, standing here enjoying his beverage, was the only person who had the balls to complain, and he started looking towards my groin while commenting, “His testis are possibly bigger than all of yours combined, because he stood up for himself and was ready to sacrifice his steady job, which puts meat on the table, because he couldn’t or didn’t want to do this job, which one of the two has zero relevance right now. You muppets all signed up for what you are doing right now, voluntarily, with laughter on that given day, so stop freaking complaining.
He deserves respect because, without him, our efforts are secondary and, as I heard recently, he is very reliable with the router configurations, and without the rightly programmed receivers, our transmissions are going into empty space!
There I was, the man of the hour and the employee of the month. Here I quote Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse: Be nice, until it’s time to not be nice.
I was irritated, disappointed, and frustrated by the filthy basements, the cable pulling, and the constant running around from one side to the other, like a headless chicken, but I kept my head down and my mouth shut, hoping that one day there would be positive changes and I could do some work inside as well. After they wanted me to climb up several meters, which was mentioned nowhere in my initial contract, on a pole, carrying heavy and expensive equipment, even though I needed the money, the time had come when I decided “to not be nice”.
The moral of the story is:
“Stand up for yourself, given it is the right or a justifiable time. If it’s not, stay put, shut your mouth and wait for the right opportunity, and do not hesitate or doubt yourself. ” “Just grab it by its horns and thrive.”