The fantasy here is moral order as office discipline: call the Karma police, report the irritating man, the girl with the fascist-looking haircut, anyone who makes the speaker feel contaminated, and wait for cosmic HR to punish them. The joke curdles because the accuser is not outside the system. I’ve given all I can sounds exhausted rather than righteous, and we’re still on the payroll makes the vengeance feel like another job, another role inside the same machinery of resentment and office discipline the song is sick of.

That is why the softness matters. Thom Yorke sings these ugly complaints with a drained, almost fragile composure, while the piano-and-guitar motion gives the accusation a singable, orderly frame instead of a rant. The refrain, This is what you get, is childish, menacing, and bureaucratic all at once. When the words narrow to I lost myself, the song’s real subject comes into view: not justice, but the relief and terror of briefly slipping out of the judging self that wanted justice so badly.