She sits and watches at the ship she was supposed to be on launches into the air under a column of smoke and fire. She put her application in on time and it was all pre-approved thanks to all her years of hard work at the University. She grafted hard for this, and here it is, sailing into the stars without her.
Why? Because some faceless bureaucrat didn’t file her application before they took two weeks of annual leave and left no instructions for their unpaid interns to do anything about it. And will anything happen to them for this monumental cock-up? No.
Not that punishment would soothe the pain of this. A lifetime at work in the hands of a system so bloated it can no longer move to accommodate the purpose it was made for. Turns out it doesn’t matter if you’re the brightest or the strongest or if you’ve worked the hardest. What matters is the arbitrary decisions of passionless people you’ll never meet.
Paddy Dobson
24th August 2022