26 days
I think usually it refers to someone who is given broad powers over a certain area of interest without necessarily sticking to a pre-defined title.
During event organization we would sometimes refer to the people who enforce parking rules as “parking czars”.
And there’s NYC’s “Rat Czar” who is responsible for tackling the city’s rat problem
I think a lot of it comes down to paperwork burden. It used to be if you were entitled to something there was an office you could sit down in and they had a responsibility to get you want you needed before you left. Now, they send you home with a link to a webpage that doesn’t work and a million online forms that time out that you have to fill in perfectly or they get auto-rejected.
I’m dealing with this with a work friend who’s trying to apply for medical leave with hostile management. If you can’t count on your immediate boss getting you the paperwork you need in a timely manner without throwing a fit because you’re “trying to get out of work”, it just becomes a million times harder to live a normal life. It used to be that there was a chair somewhere you sat in and could reasonably expect your problems to be solved by the time you stood up again.