The Heavy Clicks and Bureaucratic Madness
The mouse clicks feel heavy today. Not physically, of course-it’s the same cheap plastic it was yesterday. The weight is somewhere else. It’s in the sigh that escapes before you even open the browser tab. It’s the preemptive tensing in your shoulders as you type the first few letters of the portal’s URL. You’re trying to submit a single expense report for $47. That’s it. A coffee and a sandwich from that client meeting seven days ago. The system has, naturally, logged you out.
After re-entering your credentials and solving a CAPTCHA that makes you question your own humanity, you’re in. The receipt is on your desk, a flimsy, faded piece of thermal paper. You upload the photo. Now, the dropdown menu. ‘Expense Category.’ You click it, and a list unfurls, a cascading torrent of corporate nonsense. There are 237 options. ‘Inter-departmental synergy asset,’ ‘Client-facing goodwill-building resource,’ ‘Non-capitalized operational supply.’ Is a sandwich a goodwill-building resource? You spend the next seven minutes scrolling, a low-grade hum of frustration building behind your eyes. What used to be a two-minute chat with accounting is now a 17-click descent into bureaucratic madness.
The Multi-Million Dollar Lie
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