You're one of the awake people who sees it, I like that. The problem with New Zealand is not "tall poppy syndrome" or "she'll be right". The problem is that we are a hyper-sensitive shame-based society, but at the same time, we're too afraid to call people out on their bull**** so the crooks feel bold. Mechanics will put busted brake pads into your car so you have to come back, and in the building industry has plenty of tricks too.
New Zealanders need to wake the **** up and stop being so dopey and slow. We have websites where you can write reviews for tradies. We as a society need to stop trusting everyone and being so superficially fake. Just because someone addresses you by name and makes polite small-talk as they invoice you, that doesn't mean you can trust them. In fact, the more fake friendly people are, the more they try to build rapport with me, when I don't even know them outside of their job, the least likely I am to trust them.
A long time ago in 2015 I worked under a house in east christchurch, just for a couple of days on a temp contract. I never did this type of work again. Anyways the house was on jacks and I had to dig the clay and smooth it down to a certain mm depth. Then they wanted me to install insulation in the roof. So I went up there with a cheap fabric protective suit and goggles and a mask. The mask kept expelling hot air from my breath around the edges, which fogged up my goggles. I couldn't see anything and there was all this fibre/dust floating around. In the end I just gave up because I couldn't even see what the hell I was doing, and I couldn't take the goggles off or my eyes would get filled with weird dust from the old bats.
When I explained that I couldn't do the damn job, one of the guys on site scoffed and grunted at me, but didn't use any English words, just a scoff and a grunt. These are the punks and pieces of crap that you will often meet in the construction industry. At least one of them will openly tell you what pornography they like to masturbate to, and their manager will ask every candidate at the interview, if they have a girlfriend. Weird bunch of people with no morality... and no taste in music either. Just perverts and thugs who think that the Rock FM is the best radio station in the universe.
Mechanics often have the same attitude. Every town and city has one punk who is a total asshole. He will do work for most people without any issue, but as soon as a woman or a young guy shows up, the mechanic charges them heaps more and rips them off... Doing jobs that they never actually did, or putting broken components into someone's car, risking people's lives just so the customer comes back a few months later and pays to fix the damage that the mechanic did in the first place.
Basically, New Zealanders are too trusting and gullible. I'm very sceptical about everything these days and I wouldn't hesitate to turn down an employment offer or get a 2nd opinion on something. I don't care how polite someone is, I want to know their reputation, motivations and background. You can look up Psychopathic Personality Disorder to learn more. I always want to know basics: Who knows this person? How can I ensure that they won't do a poor job and run off with the money? What are my options to destroy this person's reputation or drag them through the courts? How far should I pursue this person to teach them a lesson and warn others?
A lot of crap is justified in this country on the basis of "muh struggles to make ends meet" and that's why you'll often hear that the cash machine is broken. People will tell a lie if they think they can get away with it, and you'll be shocked to see how much cover these assholes have. When I worked for an e-scooter company a few years ago, our warehouse was looted by former employees who had the access codes. They came in and stole laptops from the office, they stole a power bank, and they also stole the central hub for all the CCTV cameras. We didn't even notice this for several days. It turns out that there were dozens of PINs that could deactivate the alarm and nobody ever revoked access codes, even though we knew that previous workers were extremely dodgy, never got any work done, and were basically taking advantage of the company.
You can't really trust anyone these days. I also heard a story about a dodgy builder in 2017. I wasn't there at the time, but the guy was installing window restrictors and he claimed that "the job took a bit longer" so he charged a bit more. We couldn't prove anything as we weren't there at the time, so the owner just had to pay what the builder asked. New Zealanders need to sharpen up and start watching people like hawks. There are heaps of deadbeat tradies. Some of them are good and they just happen to enjoy practical work, but there are also guys who just sucked at maths and english, failed in life, and they do tradie jobs because you can be pretty thick and still do that kind of work. Once I worked with carpet layers on a short contract and there was some joke in the van, because the other 2 guys were laughing and I didn't know what was so funny. Must have been the weed or the glue they were sniffing earlier that morning.
Ripping people off, stealing from your own company, driving with no lights on at night (or having only one functioning bulb) - these are just normal kiwi activities and it's our right by birth to do these things. If there are no consequences, if they think they can get away with it, then they probably will. Personally I think there should be more sting operations (even shows like Target), people need to back up their friends and investigate jobs that other people have done, and we need to build bigger prisons and actually punish these people. Start locking a few people up with no exceptions for mental health, and watch as everyone suddenly starts behaving themselves LOL
There is no reason to be reasonable with people these days. Who the **** gives $15,000 before someone even starts a job? People who own houses need to be smarter. As soon as you reveal that you own a house, and have additional money to renovate it, it's just a license to steal. I try to reveal as little as possible about myself. If I catch on that someone is ****ing with me, then I up my security. You can't be too social or reveal too much to people or they'll take advantage. New Zealand has a culture of being back-biting, back-stabbing little twits. Even when you catch someone running a scam they will lie about it and pretend you are just crazy and have got the wrong person or wrong info. The crooks are ashamed of nothing, but are offended by everything. Like if you even accuse them of doing a shoddy job or being dishonest, they will play the victim and do everything they can to gain sympathy, turn people against you, or at least, buy time so they can keep scamming as many people as possible.
This will go down well with the average gen z jerk-off on reddit.
Mention religion and they go mental.
Mention pornography or weed, and they'll give you upvotes.