Productivity

"All Gyuri had done in his two months of employment, out of curiosity, was to take the figures supplied by the Ministry stipulating the amounts the factory should be producing according to the Five Year Plan, and divide these totals by the number of units in the factory. Then, having discovered the unit production figures he added it up again to get the production figure desired by the Plan. What was actually happening in the factory, he didn’t know. Gyuri doubted that anyone knew or even wanted to know. Most of the time that he was in his office, his fellow economist, Zalan, and he, would flick matches (fired from the abrasive strip on the matchbox) at each other’s desks, taking bets on which stacks of paper would ignite."

(From Tibor Fischer, Under the Frog)