Well that sounds fucking painful. If you can swing the change there's lots of small private companies you can work at where getting authorization for a few thousand at a time is as easy as asking the CEO in a 5 second conversation (if that). I think I would last about 5 days with that kind of fuckery before self-imploding in anger and rage quitting.

If you work somewhere where a thesis is required to fix a fucking broken fire alarm, I don't know what to say, that just isn't the right environment the thrive in.