> The Parable of the Mislabeled Granary

In a prosperous village, there stood a granary with clearly marked bins: "Winter Wheat," "Spring Barley," "Rye for Bread," and "Oats for Horses." Each label told you exactly what was inside.

The village thrived because anyone—farmers, bakers, merchants—could walk in and immediately know where to find what they needed. No confusion. No waste. No delays.

The Compromise

One day, the village accountant approached the granary master. "I have a problem," he said. "My abacus system expects wheat to always be in the first bin. But you've put rye there. Rather than update my counting method, could you just... move the wheat to the first bin and put a note somewhere that says 'First Bin Now Contains Wheat'?"

The granary master, wanting to be helpful, agreed. He moved the wheat into the "Spring Barley" bin, created a ledger that said "Spring Barley" now meant "Winter Wheat," and updated another note that said the real barley was now in the "Oats for Horses" bin, and the oats were... somewhere else. He'd need to check the ledger.

The accountant was pleased. His abacus system required no changes.

The Cascade

Over time:

Week 1: A baker arrives needing barley. She reads "Spring Barley" on the bin and takes it. She gets wheat instead. Her bread fails. She must consult the ledger, return, find the real barley, and start over. Time lost: 3 hours.

Month 1: A new apprentice joins. Every single time he needs something, he must:

1. Read the bin label
2. Consult the master ledger
3. Find what the label "really" means today
4. Retrieve the grain
5. Double-check he got the right thing

What should take 30 seconds now takes 5 minutes. Multiply this by 50 transactions per day: 3.75 hours of wasted time daily, just looking things up.

Year 1: The granary master retires. The new master inherits:

• 14 bins with misleading labels
• 3 different ledgers (because the mapping changed over time)
• 2 contradictory notes about where things "actually" are
• Zero documentation about which ledger is current

A merchant orders "Winter Wheat" for export. Following the bin label, a worker loads what's actually rye. The merchant loses a major contract. Cost: 2,000 gold pieces and a damaged reputation.

The Mathematics of Decay

Without the mapping table:

• Time to find grain: O(1) — direct lookup
• Errors: Nearly zero (labels match contents)
• Onboarding time: 1 day
• Cognitive load: Minimal

With the mapping table:

• Time to find grain: O(n) — must search through mappings
• Errors: Compound with each indirection
• Onboarding time: 2 weeks (must memorize what labels "really" mean)
• Cognitive load: Crushing
• Maintenance cost: Every change must update both labels and mappings
• Single point of failure: If the mapping is lost or wrong, the entire system collapses

The Real Cost

The accountant saved himself one afternoon of updating his abacus system.

The village paid with:

• Thousands of hours of wasted time
• Multiple costly errors
• Degraded institutional knowledge
• A system that became unmaintainable
• New workers who simply couldn't trust anything they read

The Moral

Names are not just labels—they are contracts.

When you name something "Stripe Payment Intent Id," you create a promise: "This field contains the Stripe Payment Intent Id." Break that promise, and you break trust with every system, every integration, every developer, and every future maintainer who relies on that name meaning what it says.

The cost of updating an Excel macro once is measured in hours.

The cost of lying about what a field contains is measured in:

• Ongoing cognitive overhead for every person who touches the system
• Bugs that emerge when someone trusts the name
• Integration failures when external systems assume accuracy
• Onboarding friction that never ends
• Technical debt that metastasizes

In your case specifically:

Every time anyone:

• Writes a query
• Builds an integration
• Debugs an issue
• Reviews code
• Onboards to the system

...they now must ask: "Does this field name mean what it says, or do I need to check the mapping?" That question, multiplied by every developer, every day, forever, is the true cost of accommodating one unchanging Excel macro.

The field should contain what its name declares, or the name should be changed to match what it contains. Anything else is a loan against future productivity that compounds with interest.