01 Aug The Transfer
The Click
The invoice had been paid.
Jonah opened his banking app to reimburse Lila — £42.50 for the shared Zoom license.
He typed in her account number.
Clicked “Confirm.”
A second later, he noticed: two digits reversed.
The Wall
He looked for a cancel button. None.
He searched:
“Mistaken payments are the responsibility of the sender.”
The line was clean. Absolute. No space for regret.
The Apology
The customer service voice was polite:
“We’ll try to retrieve the funds. But if the recipient doesn’t respond, there’s nothing we can do.”
Jonah nodded.
“It was just a small mistake. The kind you notice as soon as it happens.”
No system response to that.
The Reflection
Walking home, he passed a construction site.
Red tape. Yellow markers. Warnings everywhere.
The structure didn’t assume perfection — it accounted for error.
“If buildings bend and brace,” he thought,
“why must systems snap?”
A Line Too Straight
At his desk, he wrote:
“A mistake should slow you down, not lock you out.”
And below:
“A good system lets you turn around.
A better one helps you before you realise you’re lost.”