တောင်းဆိုရန် ကြောက်ရွံ့မှုကို ကျော်လွှားပါ — ညှိနှိုင်းဆွေးနွေးခြင်းသည် ရိုင်းစိုင်းမှုမဟုတ်ဘဲ လေးစားမှုဖြစ်ကြောင်း သိရှိနိုင်ပါသည်

Ko Zaw Htet is 28 years old and received a job offer from a food manufacturing company in South Dagon, Yangon. The offer was 400,000 kyats per month. Ko Zaw Htet knew from his research that the market rate for his quality control experience was 500,000 to 550,000 kyats. He wrote a counter-offer message. He stared at it on his phone for two hours. Then he deleted it and accepted 400,000. His reasoning: 'If I negotiate, they might think I am difficult and cancel the offer. In this economy, I cannot risk losing a sure thing.' Six months later, Ko Zaw Htet is struggling to cover rent in Thaketa after two rounds of landlord increases driven by inflation. He works overtime without extra pay because he feels he cannot ask — he already feels he should be grateful they hired him. The irony is devastating: the HR manager later told a mutual friend they had budget approved up to 520,000 for that role. They expected Ko Zaw Htet to negotiate. He never did.