Abstract
Three weeks, four dead-end chatbot loops, and a desperate phone call later, I finally reached a human at my online bank — only to be told to “try again later.” All I wanted was to log into my account — something I had done countless times before over the past decade. But for reasons no one could explain, my two-step authentication app kept demanding a new code every time I entered one, trapping me in an endless loop. As a marketing professor managing financial relationships across multiple countries, I’ve learned the hard way: the hardest part of navigating modern life isn’t earning or moving — it’s dealing with the institutions that are supposed to support us.