Welcome to the Company Intranet—Please Abandon All Hope at the Login Screen

Ah, the company intranet. A majestic beast. A digital relic. A fossilized monument to internal communication systems that were last updated when flip phones were still a flex and Blockbuster had a corner spot next to every grocery store.

You know the one.

It’s the homepage they told you to bookmark during onboarding, right before they handed you a 73-page handbook and said with straight faces, “Everything you’ll ever need is on the intranet.”

Lie #1.

You click the link.

You wait.

It loads like it’s traveling from space via fax machine.

You enter your username.

Then your email.

Then your employee ID, mother’s maiden name, and the square root of your onboarding date.

Finally, it loads… and what greets you?

A site designed in Internet Explorer 6 with a layout that screams “This page is optimized for Netscape Navigator.”

The header is a generic stock photo of four people in business casual high-fiving in front of a whiteboard that says “Synergy.” One of them is definitely no longer with the company.

Front and center is a blinking banner saying “Welcome to the NEW Intranet Portal!”

The word “NEW” is from 2008. It’s fine.

You look for simple things—like the holiday calendar or your PTO balance—and end up in a rabbit hole of folders nested inside folders titled things like:

• “HR_Policies_Archive_V3_Final”

• “Admin_Old_But_Use_This_One”

• “Joes_Folder_Do_Not_Delete”

And God help you if you use the search bar.

You type “maternity leave policy” and it pulls up:

1. A 1999 presentation on fax machine maintenance.

2. A Word doc titled “Janet_babyshower_ppt_finalFINAL.docx”

3. And a photo of last year’s office costume contest, where your current boss dressed like a confused minion.

You try to submit a PTO request, but the form is a downloadable Excel sheet with a macro warning and instructions that read like a medieval spell.

“Please print this form, sign in blue ink, scan it, upload to the SharePoint under ‘PTO_Request_Forms_Legacy’ folder, then email Karen from HR and CC your manager, your manager’s manager, and someone named Greg, who hasn’t worked here since 2015 but is somehow still on the distribution list.”

Cool cool cool.

Then there’s the “News” section—updated bi-monthly by someone who clearly quit last July. It features:

• A retirement announcement for someone named Ralph.

• A “Welcome!” message for a new intern who was not welcomed.

• And a link to a benefits survey that closed three fiscal quarters ago.

And yet… despite the chaos, despite the glitchy interface and haunted hyperlinks, we keep using it.

Why?

Because somewhere, buried beneath the layers of broken widgets and Comic Sans headers, there’s something we need.

That one HR form.

That one document.

That one policy on something nobody understands but everyone references like gospel.

And so, every day, brave employees across America log in, mutter a small prayer, and enter the sacred labyrinth known as The Intranet™.

If you see them staring at their screen in a mix of confusion and despair, offer them coffee. Or a map. Or just a hug.

Because they’re not just browsing.

They’re surviving.

And honestly?

They deserve a raise.