Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

One of my fondest memories of living in London was how keen they were to hire Kiwis. My girlfriend and I rocked up to job interviews with minimal practical skills as university graduates, and not much ‘real world’ experience under our belts. They didn’t care.  New Zealanders ‘had a reputation’ they told us, for being hard workers, we got snapped up at every job we went for. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why, after a few weeks in.  The work culture there at the time was so laid back, so seemingly ‘pro-breaks’ and anti-too-much hard slog.  I’ll never forget arriving at work one morning worried about how late my train had been running, and racing in to find I was still the only person in the office by 9am. By 10.30am, coats were being donned and people were heading back out the door. “Where’s everyone going?” I naively asked.  “Morning tea,” they replied. I couldn’t believe it. Morning tea was a full half hour break, having only spent just under an hour and a half at work. Then they’d break again at lunch – a