Intuit QuickBooks Online Notification


︎︎︎ Jiv Johnson

︎ Jan 9, 2025

I’ll be signed out for security purposes if I don’t click the button.

The official color of said button is a branch of Quickbooks Green, Kiwi-80, #00892E.

The shade has limited usage, restricted as the

            color for buttons only.

I wish I could tell Zamenhof or Bakhtin of our failures to establish a proletarian lingua franca.

Corporate graphic designers and marketing departments beat us out in record time. Born to lose.

It’s Tuesday in a dead dry city. I stare at the notification. It has a countdown attached to it.

The countdown is set in Avenir Next for Intuit. Their official font.

            timeless, yet modern and contemporary, with a large x-height

            and accurate proportions.

I write everything, too, in a specific typeface. Georgia, size 10.

Viewable to anyone with access to Google Docs.

Intuit notes they limit size selection for their font to ensure consistency.

I am not allowed size 10 in Avenir Next. I’m not sure what that means for the global proletariat or myself.

The design handbook for Intuit says very clearly: Don’t create new colors.

I try to create a new color but cannot. I try, too, to think of a new letter or word, but cannot.

Where does one go in their mind to create new colors? I understand that the occipital lobe sees.

I know this because of a Death Cab For Cutie song from long ago.

I understand that the hippocampus and temporal lobe store our associations of colors. The grass is green.

And so on. I know this from a high school classroom, also long ago.

I cannot recall, though, where one goes inside themself to create a new color.

With my failure to know, I allow Intuit another win. I do not know how to create a new color.

I cannot harm nor betray you. I think this to myself, in a spinny home-office chair from Amazon.

Corporate entity, what secret do you hold? How may I create a new type of green, to compete?

I cannot compete. I have to click the button. The affirmative selection says: I need more time.

And I do click it. And now it knows what I lack. And now it is better than me.

And it creates more time for me to lose. Which I was born to do.



Jiv Johnson is an accountant from Kentucky. He currently resides in New York City. He has a father, a mother, and a brother.

Also by Jiv: Plea to Great-Grandmother