RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32459, 20 November 1970, Page 19

RANDOM REMINDER

STAFFING PROBLEM

Science laughs today much too often at things it simply does not understand. The scientist will say that if something doesn’t fit his computer, it doesn’t happen. But we know better; and we are not the only ones. There is a young Christchurch businessman who recently returned from a trip to the East, made in the company of several other young executive type fellows, mostly from Australia. Naturally, he had with him some little New Zealand souvenirs, which are part and parcel of any sort of trade mission these days, and one day in a bus in Bali he handed out a considerable number of

them to his companions, so that they too might help spread the good word about New Zealand. The souvenirs were those little tikis, familiar to nearly everyone. The donor had a letter from one of the recipients recently, in a town in New South Wales. With it were two newspaper clippings. The first one read: “Manager of a commercial undertaking in Hamilton who arrived back from an overseas trip two months ago handed out some mementoes to the staff. Just for laughs he gave the girls small green tikis from New Zealand which, according to Maori legend, are symbols of fertility. Yesterday, he wasn’t laughing when two of his

most competent girls, both married of course, told him they were pregnant

. . . and he’d better start looking for replacements in the not too distant future.” Two days later /there was another item in the same paper: "In answer to numerous inquiries . '. . We are authorised to state that the Hamilton office chief who is in the process of losing two women staff members to motherhood after presenting them with green New Zealand fertility tikis has no more of that particular type of souvenir on hand. So you’ll just have to find some other way.” There you are, then. They can say what they like, but . . .