Kafkaesque
Etymology
From the writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924), whose novels "The Trial" and "The Castle" follow ordinary people ensnared by vast authorities that offer no explanation, no exit, and no one who can help. He never saw those books published in full. The adjective, coined after his death, names the surreal powerlessness his fiction captured.
adjective · /kahf-kuh-ESK/
Characterized by nightmarish, impersonal complexity in which an individual is helpless against an incomprehensible system.
What it names
The specific dread of being trapped in a faceless bureaucracy whose logic you can never grasp or appeal to — use it when a situation is not merely frustrating but absurdly, oppressively opaque.
Example
Being billed for an account I never opened, then told I couldn’t dispute it without the account number I didn’t have, was pure Kafkaesque circularity.
Related idea
Orwellian describes deliberate, top-down control through surveillance and propaganda; Kafkaesque describes a bureaucracy so absurd it may not even intend the misery it causes.