An employee who submitted a receipt for eleven dollars and forty cents has entered the second fiscal quarter of correspondence regarding that receipt.

The exchange now runs to thirty-one emails and has acquired a project name.

“I bought a sandwich for a client,” said claimant Rosalind Achebe. “The client ate the sandwich. I have said this four times.”

Finance requires the receipt, an itemised version of the receipt, the business purpose, and confirmation that the sandwich was not also claimed by the client. Achebe has supplied all four. Finance has requested the first one again, in a different format.

The Institute for Procedural Weight estimates the processing cost of the claim at four hundred and twelve dollars.

“This is well understood and universally ignored,” said Institute director Dr. Havel Osterlund. “A system that catches an eleven-dollar sandwich is considered rigorous. A system that spends four hundred dollars catching it is considered rigorous twice.”

Achebe has offered, twice, to withdraw the claim. Finance has declined, citing an open ticket.

The ticket cannot be closed without resolution. Resolution requires the receipt.