Working As Designed
Intro
New ticket. Title: the whole damn country.
Severity: critical. Assigned to: nobody.
Verse 1
Well, I filed me a bug report, I typed it plain and true
Steps to reproduce: get a job, get sick, try to make it through
Expected: you get better. Actual: you're paying still
For a gurney in a hallway and a fifteen-dollar pill
Can't quit, 'cause my insurance comes stapled to the job
Can't strike, 'cause the rent comes first, so I just smile and nod
Can't march, 'cause one missed paycheck and I'm sleeping in the car
And a leash don't need a padlock when you're broke the way we are
Pre-Chorus
Ninety days later
The ticket came back
Chorus
It's closed!
Won't fix!
Couldn't reproduce it from the fortieth floor
Runs just fine on their machine
So they marked it "user error"
It ain't broken, honey. That's what it's for.
Verse 2
So I opened up the source code and I traced it line by line
The debt rolls down the mountain, but the interest climbs just fine
Every dollar that I owe is a dollar someone's owed
Every payment that I make's a little paycheck up the road
Put three-point-four trillion on the tab, and the top got the biggest break
Then they cut ten million people off the doctor for the budget's sake
That ain't a crash, that ain't a glitch, that ain't a memory leak
That's a feature, honey, and they're shipping it this week
Pre-Chorus
Ninety days later
The ticket came back
Chorus
It's closed!
Won't fix!
Couldn't reproduce it from the fortieth floor
Runs just fine on their machine
So they marked it "user error"
It ain't broken, honey. That's what it's for.
Verse 3
I file it every November, and they stamp it "Duplicate"
"Postponed to next fiscal year." "Needs more info." "Please wait."
Then a fella from the help desk said, real slow, like I was dim
"Ma'am, have you tried turning the country off and on again?"
Now the interest costs more than the army, says so right there in the red
Go ask the Spanish Empire how that went. Oh, right. It's dead.
Bridge
I spent my whole life fixing things
I know a bug when I see one
And this ain't one
You can't patch a thing that's doing what it's built to do
So I went back and read the spec
It says "We the People"
It says "promote the general welfare"
Somewhere between the spec and the build
Somebody changed the requirements
And it sure as hell wasn't us
So I reopened the ticket.
Final Chorus
Reopened!
Reassigned!
If it ain't a bug, it's a feature
So we'll change the whole design
'Cause the spec says "We the People"
Top of page one, first line
Outro
Assigned to: all of us.
Status: in progress.