I’ve googled it and I’ve read the definition but I still have no idea what it actually is and how it affects a person, particularly in their day to day lives
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The basic idea of a bureaucracy is that power should be divided up into neat little organizations, or “bureaus,” (like the drawers of a desk), with each bureau able to operate as independently as possible. Ideally, that makes it clear which organizations have what authority without overlap or ambiguity. For the US government, do you have a tax issue? Talk to the IRS. Question about who’s allowed to do what with a natural resource? Department of the Interior.
The potential upside is that you don’t have internal conflicts over who gets to make what decisions, because power is neatly divided into these separate bureaus. And even if one bureau has internal issues, the other bureaus can hopefully operate independently. Whatever might be happening with the IRS’s chain of command on a given day, the post office can keep delivering mail.
The potential downside is that for any issues that span multiple bureaus, those bureaus may end up bouncing the problem between each other, or have issues coordinating approval for something. Each bureau might try to foist you off onto the bureau whose issue they think it is, or require you to each go through their own very specific process for gain approval. This can create added complexity or deadlocks that otherwise might not exist.
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