Yang Ruoqian decided that if owners insisted on self-checking, he would poison the check.
This felt promising.
A clean file before spending was bad.
A dirty file before spending was good.
Therefore, the tool that cleaned files had to become dirty.
At nine, he opened a blank document and titled it:
Venue File Checklist.
Then he stared at the title.
It was too useful.
He changed it to:
Venue File Not Checklist.
Better.
Then he changed it again:
Optional Non-Guidance Notes.
Worse.
Optional sounded polite.
Non-guidance sounded legally careful.
Notes sounded harmless.
Harmless things had been killing him for weeks.
He deleted the title and called the assistant lead.
"Create a wrong checklist."
She asked, "Wrong how?"
"Wrong enough to make files worse."
"Then we should not send it."
"We will not send it officially."
"If it is not official, how will owners use it?"
Yang paused.
This was the problem with sabotage.
It often needed distribution.
