An organisation can appear more efficient by transferring work to somebody outside its accounts. Consider a fictional service office that cuts staffing expenditure by 15% while increasing the average visitor's wait from 20 minutes to 50 minutes. Its budget improves, but that does not establish an economic gain. The missing calculation is the value of time imposed on the people using it.

The same logic applies to unpredictable shifts, confusing forms and automated systems that require repeated correction. In an illustrative office serving 600 visitors daily, the extra half-hour consumes 300 hours of public time. Not every minute should receive an identical monetary value, but excluding it altogether is a choice, not neutrality. Public institutions should publish user-time measures alongside operating costs before declaring an efficiency success.