Work Whinge

How do I tell this to my manager politely?  I worked my guts out over the summer, I’ve sacrificed some much needed vacation days, I’ve worked weekends.  Yet, I have not received any sort of recognition of acknowledgement of my hard work.  I’m really pissed off about this – I think I deserve a “value at work award”, and one with a decent monetary reward attached it.  I’ve earned it, and I deserve it.  I have implied as much – I asked whether the key contractor I’ve worked with on a lot of this could get one, and sold his efforts hard, knowing full well that he couldn’t get one because he isn’t a full time employee.  And for all the good work he did, I did the same and more.  So where’s my reward?  I bet if I was Chinese I would have got a reward by now.  I think I need to flat out confront my manager about this (maybe not the if I was Chinese bit).  Another interview today, another Chinese applicant.  They seem to churn these people out like a factory line – almost identical education and experience to the previous person I interviewed.  Another perfectly pleasant person, it would just be nice to have a wider variety of personalities and character in my department – and some people who I would actually see and hangout with outside work.  Fat chance of that.  I think I’ve got lunch with the next candidate, also Chinese, next week which is going to be fun for a whole hour with our cultural disconnect and with probably very little in common – at least it will be a free lunch.