"The system"

[serenissima]

In the past year or more, these two words have begun to raise my hackles. "The system." Most often heard at work, this phrase may refer to the email server, or to the HR computer application for tracking employees, or the payroll computer application, or to the company intranet, or even to my own spreadsheet-based educational records, depending on the situation and the speaker. But it nearly always deflects responsibility from humans to the inscrutable "system."