There were all sorts of tailors, who worked at home, without any work permit, of course, besides the legal work they carried out openly in the workshops. This was done on their own risk, because if they had been caught they would have been forced to pay a very high fine ? the equivalent of 3-4 salaries at the time, and all the goods they had used would have been confiscated (fabrics, sewing machines, etc.). People generally knew that this person did this and the other did that, but all this was not supposed to reach the higher levels, and people were aware of that. I worked like this too, I fixed his car and he sewed me a suit. The man worked at APACA, but he also worked at home, without any working permit. He managed to get some fabric and he cut it out for me. But since he did not have the necessary equipment at home, he finished it at work, with those machines. When he made the second suit from an Austrian fabric, they had at APACA, he cut it out there, sewed it and in order to take it out from the factory, he put it on and that was how he managed to get away with it. (O.S., 41).

TAXIS (UNLICENSED)

Because there were not enough authorized taxis in Bucharest, and night buses had been done away with (the same bloody petrol shortage for economical reasons) those who went out for dinner and left the restaurants late at night (before curfews were put in place for restaurants to close at 10) experienced major difficulty getting back home. Luckily enough, before long the so called ?biznis (i.e. business) car? started mushrooming; what that meant was that people used their private cars like taxis. The whole thing rather simple: a client was trying to flagging down a car, and a driver lurking nearby, just waiting for the opportunity stopped and took him on. You told the driver the address, haggled the fee a little bit and everyone was happy. The late-night diner got back home safely and the car driver added something to his revenue, without paying taxes. All of those improvised taxi drivers could make in one night alone at peak hours (between 23.00 and 02.00 ) as much as 1000 lei, at a time when the average pay ranged between 2000 and 2500 lei a month.

In 1984 I decided to use my car for this purpose, despite the disadvantage that most potential clients would prefer a Dacia to my poor Trabant that only had two doors and 4 seats, including the driver?s. Besides, I suffered from the ?Trabant driver?s complex? which prevented me from charging too much.