You should be glad you have a job,
you should be ashamed to ask for a pay rise -
cost of living increase,
are you kidding?
This is New Zealand,
we don’t like troublemakers -
stirrers.
She laughed,
as she told me that an interviewee
wanted what she was worth -
decades in industry.
“Who does she think she is?”
The old hag snorted.
Another manager,
seeming decades older,
based on her ideas -
told an employee that she was “underperforming”,
when she asked for the first pay rise in years.
No negative performance reviews,
no negative feedback at all -
just clutching onto money that isn’t even hers,
while staff struggle to make ends meet.
There are many beautiful things
about Aotearoa New Zealand.
Employment conditions and culture
are not two of those things.
Lee Sturgis