THU
Something happened today
The situation had become absurd enough to trigger the truth laugh. Money had been charged without authorization. The obvious human response is, Okay, somebody took money they were not supposed to take. Fix that. The system’s response was closer to, Here is a list of steps for you to follow. That is where the absurdity lives in so many systems. Something happens to you, and suddenly you inherit the administrative job created by the thing that happened to you.
The laugh wasn’t about the unauthorized charge itself. That was not funny. It was about the peculiar transfer of responsibility that followed. The person who had been inconvenienced was now expected to become the investigator, the correspondent, the keeper of deadlines and, on certain days, the interpreter of policies written as if no human being would ever have to follow them.
At some point the responses became so elaborate that I almost had to laugh. The basic question seemed ordinary enough. Was this payment authorized? If not, what would correct it? Yet the path toward an answer could require a surprisingly detailed understanding of the system that had produced the problem. It was as though asking for help with a broken door required a short course in manufacturing hinges.
The humour didn't mean I was indifferent to the charge. Money matters, especially when it belongs to someone you care about. I was laughing at the mismatch between the problem as a human being experiences it and the procedures through which an organization asks them to move. Sometimes the absurdity is not the event but the amount of machinery brought between the event and a reasonable response.
There is a special kind of absurdity in being told how to navigate a process when the process itself is what has gone wrong. I could see why I laughed. It wasn’t because the money didn’t matter. It was because a response could be simultaneously official-sounding and remarkably distant from the actual question.
The humour helped me stand outside my frustration for a moment and see the structure of the exchange. I could acknowledge the absurdity without needing to turn the employee on the other end into a villain. That left me clearer about what I wanted to ask next.
I could understand why a bank or company might need a procedure. Records have to be checked, mistaken claims distinguished from real ones, and decisions documented. But it was still fair to ask why the procedure seemed to arrive as an additional penalty for the person who was already dealing with the original problem. A system can satisfy its own rules and still be exhausting to use. My truth laugh often arrives at exactly that gap: when the official explanation is tidy and the lived experience is anything but.
You have been robbed? Excellent. Please gather your documents, contact the merchant, wait for a response, contact the bank, understand the time limit, obtain authorization from the cardholder, distinguish personal data from account data, and make sure you reply in the correct thread. I exaggerate slightly. Only slightly.
