Gottland: Mostly True Stories From Half of Czechoslovakia Read Free Page A

department store that sells everything. “Women,” he says in a speech, “you won’t even have to make preserves—Bata will make them for you.”
    During the break the men and women can do what they like, but the following are recommended:
    1.  lying on the lawns in
Práce
[Labor] Square (in good weather);
    2.  not succumbing to idleness (so it is best to read, but with one reservation: DO NOT READ RUSSIAN NOVELS , says a slogan thought up by Bata and posted on the wall of the felting unit. Why not? Bata’s reply is onthe wall of the rubber unit: RUSSIAN NOVELS KILL YOUR JOIE DE VIVRE );
    3.  making use of the movie theater when the weather is bad (because Bata has already set up the biggest movie theater in Central Europe downtown, seating three thousand, with tickets costing one token crown);
    4.  compensating for falling behind at work—during the break, the incompetent are to make up for their arrears at the machines.
    The trade unions and the Czechoslovak Communist Party claim that this is the real reason Bata thought up the break—to gain extra unpaid labor. Strikes are suppressed, and people are thrown out of the factory unconditionally.
1927: SIGNALS
    The press writes about the incredibly high milk consumption in Zlín and the astonishing—for a beer country—lack of interest in alcohol. There is one car for every thirty-five citizens, which is the highest rate in the whole of Czechoslovakia.
    Everything is subjected to rationalization: to avoid having to summon unit managers to the phone by shouting over the machines, a bell gives a signal in Morse code. Each unit head has his own Morse signal, which he can hear even in the restroom. The factory buildings have their own numbers, too, to keep you from getting lost. All the doors in the buildings are numbered, and so are the alleyways within the factory grounds.
    By crossing 21, you get to VIII/4a.
1927: HURT
    There’s a poster painter who works in the advertising department. When he and a colleague bring Tomáš Bata the design they’ve drawn, Bata stamps on the poster, without telling them what he was expecting. The second time, he leans the board against the wall at an angle and jumps right into the middle of it (once again with no explanation). The third time, he throws thirty poster designs to the floor, jumps on them, kicks the paper, and finally gives his opinion: “What kind of an idiot painted these?”
    The poster painter is called Svatopluk Turek, and in a few years’ time he’ll start writing vindictive books about Bata.
1929: AIR
    Tomáš is widening his circle of acquaintances, and his firm is now a world-famous joint-stock company. Bata’s personal guest, Sir Sefton Brancker, shows the beaming Tomáš the object that will be the cause of his death.
    Sir Sefton is Great Britain’s director of civil aviation and has flown to Zlín to demonstrate the latest single-engine, three-seat airplane made by de Havilland. Tomáš is so impressed that he buys four on the spot.
    An airport is established, and Bata’s planes fly all over Europe. Soon, a factory is set up, and Zlín-brand sports airplanes go into production.
    As he is flying over town, Tomáš notices a small meadow surrounded by woods. “That would make a fine graveyard,” he tells the pilot.
1931: GRAPHOLOGY
    Tomáš Bata’s son Tomík, aged seventeen, returns from Zurich, where for the past year he has been the manager of a large store. He becomes manager of a department store in Zlín. He quarrels with his father about something. “You’ll be sorry, Dad,” he says, and writes a letter to Bata’s biggest rival in the United States, Endicott Johnson.
    He offers them his skills. Then he folds the piece of paper, but doesn’t send the letter. His mother finds it and shows it to her husband, because he has instructed her to tell him everything. Tomáš triumphs: what a fabulous son he has, who can cope with anything!
    On the other hand, he has an idiot for a brother. Jan