“HEY COLLEAGUE, YOUR COW WENT BELLY UP!”

IN ALMA I AM RESPECTED AS A HUMAN BEING

1.1. Dušan Gagić (18 years in AQ)

Before Alma I had worked as an auto mechanic.

That’s why my colleagues call me to repair their cars whenever something goes wrong.

Alma Quattro respects employees, regulations, and working hours. However, if my job hadn’t involved what I liked, and that’s mechanics, I wouldn’t probably have stayed here for 18 years.

Tasks were changing, but within the scope of my profession. For almost 3 years I was in charge of maintenance and postering at “Nikola Tesla” Airport, Belgrade.

Within the airport building Alma Quattro had 115 media in the period from 2007 to 2017.

At that time I didn’t work in the field outside the airport, but it was a terrific experience.

1.2. Amel Ibiši (15 years in AQ)

The company has always understood our needs and we have never abused the trust. We always get salary on time, working hours are defined and respected, and we seldom have to work overtime.

Alma is a company that respects me as a worker and that’s why I have been here for 15 years.

The thing that makes Alma different is that we are all one family. We spend equal time at work and at home with our families and this line between the two has vanished.

Amel Ibiši (left), Boris Sotirovski (right).

Interpersonal relationships are really excellent. I feel secure.

1.3. Marko Stevanović (11 years in AQ)

Alma is not a typical company. There is no tension and nobody is breathing down your neck. It’s important to be precise and to complete the work as expected, but the attitude towards employees is humane. Being a single father I often have to take my child to school, so I come to work a bit later. My colleagues have understanding and nobody is making an issue over that. That’s only one of many examples. We are here to help one another.

The work is dynamic, every day is different. One day I repair billboards, the following day I repair scrolls, and the third day I change columns.

If somebody offered me to go to another company and do a “stationary” job involving paperwork, I would turn such offer down. It’s not interesting if it’s not challenging.

1.4. Tomislav Dragojlović (4 years in AQ)

Before Alma I had worked in several companies. I decided to change my job because of overtime work.

My family was sleeping at the time I was going to work and at the time I was coming home from work.

When I talked with my colleague Igor about coming to work in Alma, I told him I needed a job with defined working hours. He said that he could guarantee that.

During the first 6 months of my work in Alma, I had total 4 hours of overtime work. On my previous job I had 4 hours of overtime work every day.

There is discipline in Alma. We know who is in charge of every segment of the work and there is mutual respect.

Marko Stefanović (leftmost), Dragan Jerinić, Amel Ibiši, Dušan Gagić (rightmost)

2. ANECDOTES FROM THE FIELD

2.1. Amel Ibiši (15 years in AQ)

For instance, while attaching a poster on a citylight near the Railway Station, one colleague didn’t notice that he put the poster with a cow upside.

Amel Ibiši (left), Dušan Plećaš (right).

Horns were down, legs were up. It reminded us of a dead goldfish floating in a bowl. We called him the moment we noticed that: “Your cow is dead. It has turned upside down like a dead goldfish”.

2.2. Marko Stevanović (11 years in AQ)

I don’t remember the year, but we were painting a backlight on Autokomanda interchange.

It was inaccessible and I climbed to the top with a bucket of paint in one hand and a paint roller in the other. I was literally holding on to the air while going down the ladder.

While going down, the ladder started falling down. My reaction was to jump and let the bucket fall down.

I landed on my feet, but 3.5 kg of paint fell on me. Right on my head.

A dark blue Smurf. That’s how I looked like. I left my tools, sat in a van and headed to the warehouse to take a shower. I was the main attraction on the motorway entrance. At one moment I saw the people on the bus in the next lane standing up, staring, and not believing their eyes. I smiled, but my smile looked like a grin, a grimace, since the paint dried on my face. Amel was the only one in the warehouse when I arrived and he didn’t miss an opportunity to take a photo.

2.3. Tomislav Dragojlović (4 years in AQ)

Even before I came to Alma, people had known me as an employee who would find a solution and manage in every situation.

During my work in Alma there were many situations in which that characteristic of mine was evident. For example, when we were installing the first megaboard for Alma Quattro in 2004.

I remember that Zole came to supervise the installation. It was extremely cold. Winter, it was snowing … He encouraged us saying that we were doing very well, even though we were actually learning on the fly how to tighten the parts, open the metal sheets, etc. Everything was OK at the end.

People sometimes react inadequately to some advertisements and make damage that we have to fix.

In 2005 there was a poster with a man’s face on a backlight in Jurija Gagarina Street.

We were informed that somebody damaged the poster and that we had to fix it. When we arrived we saw a hole on the poster where the man’s mouth was, and the hole was probably made with a stone. We managed – we drew the teeth on a paper and pasted the paper under the poster. The man on the ad looked like the late singer Šaban Bajramović.

We had interesting situations almost every day, it’s impossible to recall them all.