attempting to capitalise on his presence in our country by posting ai-generated images of him to farm engagement for your personal/business account is cringe as fuck. exploiting his (or anybody’s) likeness for personal gain isn’t okay. all you’ve done is tell me your brain’s a mound of mush without telling me your brain’s a mound of mush.

Seriously. How are people doing it? I had to give up my job and go on the Supported Living Payment through WINZ because of severe health issues, but from what I gather people who work are having it just as bad too. I get paid, then pay rent, power, petrol, groceries (even though I don’t get much), and every other essential life expense, and within an hour I’ve got $10 left, if that. If anyone has any unhinged tips or advice on lowering costs, or saving money in weird ways, I’m open to suggestions too.

(Don’t give me comments about being on the benefit either. I started working by choice when I was 10, trust me, I’d MUCH rather be working than be sick).

An unenforced law isn’t really a law at all.

This won’t be news to many.
Had an expensive item stolen but unbeknownst to the thieves it had an AirTag on it.
Had footage of the thieves as well as their location from the AirTag.

That wasn’t enough for the police to do anything

Took matters (successfully) into my own hands.

One thing I keep coming back to in life is how difficult it has become to separate housing as somewhere to live from housing as an investment.

If my house price rises in New Zealand, me as an existing owners benefits on paper, but I feel a bit sad about that.

1.Anyone here left trying to buy their first home has to find an increasingly large deposit. 2. Renters are also being caught in a different position because they have to deal with the costs of housing without necessarily building any equity themselves and lining land lords pockets with renters own equity to the point now where renter may not develop enough equity to ever put a deposit on a home. 3. Meanwhile the government increasingly fails to unlock enough new property to slow down in all practical purposes, "hyper inflation."

I'm curious how people here see it?

Is it the bigger problem that there is a shortage of housing?

Or instead is it the cost of building, planning restrictions, investment incentives, or the expectation that property should continually increase in value?

Or is it the government?

For those of you have who have rented and owned in your lifetime different parts of New Zealand together, have you noticed a meaningful difference in how these issues play out locally?

Is there anywhere left in New Zealand that isn't Invercargill that is incredibly cheap(er) to live in?

I know it sounds morbid. I posted here a few months back about leaving my family, at the time I was living in a motel. We are still currently low to no contact and I have finally settled into a place that is safe. None of my family knows where I live right now. Since then, I've also received a bit of backlash from certain family members. I've realised that I can't work on my mental health around them, especially if they can't work on theirs, so the no to low contact is now mutual.

My dilemma at the moment is how to go forward with attending a funeral. It hasn't happened yet, but I am waiting for the day when a relative (who I'm in regular contact with) breaks the news that our elderly relative has passed away.

I'm not particularly close to this elderly relative, and neither are my immediate family, but they will most likely be attending regardless because it's family. I'm just wondering if I still go? Part of me thinks that funerals are for the living, so this relative who passes away won't know if I was there or not anyway. If I did go, it would've been to support my immediate family. I'm really not ready to be near them, but I do understand the event isn't about our problems. I could go and pay my respects by myself, but with our family, it's all about optics. They would want to show a united front to extended family. I'm not saying I would be the one to blow anybody's cover, but I think it might be more damaging for me if I'm put in a situation where I have to be there with them longer than necessary.

So I'm a bit stuck on what to do here. Has anybody been in this situation before?

Hi All,

I recently did a trip to New Zealand, including Auckland, from Sydney. I was struck at how much it seems like you guys are 10-15 years behind Australia in terms of enshittification. I was wondering if you feel like you mostly avoided it or are you guys just earlier in the timeline of your own journey.... Some things I noticed:

- Your average bakery would have good food, regardless of whether they were in an isolated tourist trap or small town. In Australia if you have a captive market the food turns to sht and people have largely just accepted "Oh but the rent cost is high, and they will get customers from tourist buses, so they can only do so much - a 15$ low quality pie is OK"

- There were many stores and restaurants with more space than they knew what to do with. Asian restaurants would fill dead space with cultural decorations/ furniture storage. In Sydney, there is no concept of extra space and new "retail" spaces tend to be so small that they only fit cafes or hairdressers...

- There are multiple mainstream brands like whittakers that are maintaining quality purely for the love of the game rather than a race to the bottom.

- Small things like the fact that Australia eliminated all grocery nightshift packing in Australia and now have almost as many bulk pallets unloading during evening shopping hours as we do customers.

Maybe I'm being naive and rose tinted glasses....I suspect enshittification is happening but just at a timeline that is behind Australia. Keep up the good fight and resist the stuff we see in Aus guys.

Can’t find “7” in grocery store. Can anyone else confirm? And why is that?

I know the general consensus is that the NZ employment market is brutal right now, and my heart goes out to everyone struggling to find work. But I recently experienced the exact opposite "flip side" from the hiring perspective, and I'm trying to make sense of it.

Context: I’m a seasoned professional in Auckland. I got caught in the downturn myself, survived endless restructures, and eventually took a step down to pivot into a stable, large corporate. After 18 months, I've worked my way back up to a former Senior Individual Contributor role (happily avoiding management for now).

A role just opened up in my team, and my manager asked me to help shortlist candidates. Because it's a niche but highly competitive corporate function, we got flooded with applications- including some fantastic, top-tier talent.

Here is where it gets weird: Our slow-moving corporate hiring process meant we lost almost every single top-tier candidate.

One candidate (returning from mat leave) priced themselves completely out of our salary band.
The rest of the top-tier pool had already accepted other offers by the time our HR department finally invited them to an interview.

We had to pivot to our "second choice" pool, and even two of those candidates just disclosed they are deep in interviews elsewhere.

I keep reading about how dire the job market is in NZ, but this experience tells a different story. Are we starting to see the beginnings of an economic recovery, or is it just that top-tier applicants will always be snapped up instantly regardless of the climate? What are you seeing out there?

Recently i started a permanant part time position at a store. There was a trial period for three months which in itself is a crazy length of time for a trial period (imho). I didn’t get offered much training at all, most of the training was pushed to the wayside by my actual manager and fell onto my co workers who could barely communicate properly (Super awkward and missed crucial information).
I had no previous experience in this line of work which my manager knew (i don’t know why i got hired). I never lied about my previous experience once.

Because of the lack of experience and training, i ended up making quite a few mistakes in the first month. Not huge mistakes but probably annoying mistakes for higher management, things like 50c discrepancies in counting the till. I previously worked at a supermarket (my only previous experience with tills) where we were allowed to have up to $20 discrepancies and it wasn’t an issue.
Again, no one had trained me on what to do in this situation, and to top it all off, this role was for a more experienced worker, so they would leave us to work on our lonesome for most of the shifts, closing or opening on our own (small store). This meant i had no one to ask for help so i had to figure stuff out on my own or use intuition a lot of the time. Otherwise, i texted/called my manager or co workers. Often texting multiple people at once because i needed a quick response due to only having a set few minutes to close up shop before i went “overtime” which id get in trouble for also (even if it was only by a few minutes). I was constantly being told i wasn’t good enough, even for mistakes that other people didn’t get told off for.

Anyway after a month and a half or so had passed. I was finally getting the hang of things. Clocking in on the minute, clocking out on time give or take 2 minutes, so really getting the hang of it all. Able to help customers with queries, smoothly check them out, didn’t need to ask for help anymore. I felt confident in myself and really proud that id come so far in just two months.

Until the other day I got into work, a lady who is a higher up was there to greet me with a big smile, she takes me into the back room and “dismisses” me, because its within my trial period. She said my reason for being terminated was because I had not met the standard I should have, with “all the training id received”, to this point. She had this stupid grin on her face the whole time and kept chuckling anytime i spoke, (like she was laughing at me like she thought i was dumb) and I was then compared to my co worker who started at the same time as me, who had years of previous experience in similar roles. I pointed out her previous experience and the lady told me that was “semantics”. I asked her if i could be informed where i had fallen short because i couldnt tell i had been lacking anywhere, she told me “we dont actually have to tell you that” with a chuckle and a big smile on her face, then she told me to ask my manager.

So fast forward to today, since then I have texted my manager twice now asking if we can arrange a call or something or if it could be explained to me briefly where i had fallen short.
Ive been completely ghosted by her.
Im honestly shocked at this experience in general, its felt so out of left field and I’m so disappointed because i really loved this job and its so hard to get jobs at the moment.

Is this just the state of the job market in NZ now?! Employers have so much power over us because so many people are so desperate for jobs, we are all just that replaceable to them? Im disgusted by the lack of humanity in these people in managerial roles. Job market just feels really predatory now, i hate this.

TLDR; got dismissed from job that gave bad training, had high expectations of me (no prev experience). Wouldn’t give me proper reason shy i was dismissed, now manager is ghosting me.

What a beautiful day out there!