Stavros, a big, burly man in his mid-fifties, had already demolished a cold chicken his wife had packed for him and was into his second mortadella sandwich.
Lakis, a small, nervous man, was nibbling at a stale cheese pie bought from the factory canteen and looking extremely agitated.
“We’re going to lose our jobs, I tell you. They’re selling everything off or closing it down. We’ve been a problem company for the past 12 years and I read in the paper today the government says the firms that can’t be sold off will definitely be closed down. I tell you, we should start looking for another job pronto and quit this one while the going’s good, because when they close this dump down, there’ll be 3000 of us looking for jobs, instead of just you and me. Why won’t you listen to reason?” Lakis said.
Stavros swallowed the last bit of mortadella sandwich and began peeling a large, succulent pear.
Lakis watched him in distaste as he slurped through the pear and then wiped his hands on the dirty handkerchief he had laid on his knee as a napkin.
“They’ll never sell it and they won’t close it down. They won’t sell it because nobody’ll buy it. You’ve been here long enough, my friend, and you should remember the time when we had about 1000 people on the payroll, and when business fell off,the boss reckoned he’s have to fire half the workforce to keep going. But, of course, he wasn’t able to do that because the law said he could only fire two percent of the workforce in a year.
And then the government kept a lid on his prices, even after he had to pay twice as much for the imported raw materials we use here, because the drachma was going down and prices abroad were going up. On top of that, the government piled on a whole lot of new and retroactive taxes, and our boss had to borrow from the bank to pay them. And if that wasn’t enough to sink him, we went on strike for higher wages and organized a sit-in that lasted three whole months…”
“I know, I know,” Lakis interrupted him.
“I lived through it all, didn’t I, when we were all aiming for the plant to be nationalized so we’d be classed as civil servants and nobody could ever fire us and nobody would care if we did any work or not. You don’t have to remind me.”
“Well, then I don’t have to remind you either that the company eventually became super-duper problematic. The old boss couldn’t pay his debts, and the bank stepped in and we all cheered because we were now sitting pretty, with a new management that either didn’t give a damn or couldn’t tell the difference between a nitrate pellet and a Rol-O-Mint, and took on 2000 more workers to please some politician or other. So who’s gonna buy a plant in this condition, with machinery that was old when Trikoupis was prime minister and with 3000 workers who sit around most of the time like us, eating salami sandwiches and tiropittes.
“Somebody might be interested, and now we’ve got these fancy-pants foreigners advising the government on how to go about selling us off. Don’t you remember that tall fellow who came yesterday and was looking at us queerly. I thought he was going to faint when you offered him a bite from your mortadella sandwich.”
Stavros waved his hand dismissively. “If he’d taken a bite from the sandwich, I’d say there’s a guy we’ve got to watch out for. As it is, we’ve got nothing to worry about. Anyway, we’ve got our own organization that’s trying to sell us off and they’re on our side.”
“How d’you mean?” Lakis asked.
“Have you noticed the starting prices they set at the auctions?”
“I don’t know anything about that, but I heard they were too high and nobody made any bids.”
Stavros nodded.
“Those people like their jobs and they’re not prepared to lose them when there are no problem companies around anymore. This little enterprise is being auctioned off again one month from now. And how many times has it been put up for sale before?”
“Three times,” Lakis guessed.
“No, four. Next month will be the fifth.”
“Yes, and what if someone does buy it then. It will be liquidated, we shall all be fired and that’s what I’ve been trying to get into your thick head from the very beginning of this conversation.”
Stavros closed his eyes, sighed, and shook his big head, “Would you, my friend, buy a concern from the government when the old owners are raising hell in the European Court like our dear boss, God bless his persistent little heart?”
Lakis shrugged. “O.K., you’ve made your point. But there’s nothing to prevent the government from saying we’re costing too much and closing us down. Putting the lid on us. Kaputt. Fini. With no mortadella sandwiches for you, greedy guts. Just bread and an onion, if you’re lucky.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Stavros said sarcastically.
“D’you thing this government is suddenly going to put 3000 people out of work, just like that? With the stroke of a pen?”
Stavros shook his head again and said: “Who would ever be so bold?”
