If you haven’t read Joseph Heller’s masterpiece, Catch-22, I highly recommend you do. The Catch-22 in the novel is this: “A combat pilot was crazy by definition (he would have to be crazy to fly combat missions) and since army regulations stipulated that insanity was justification for grounding, a pilot could avoid flight duty by simply asking, but if he asked, he was demonstrating his sanity (anyone who wanted to get out of combat must be sane) and had to keep flying.”
In modern business, it goes like this: Companies or government agencies insist workers return to the office, but since they have no offices to return to, they must work from home. But since working from home is forbidden, they have to return to the office. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Stupid, right? Yes, but that doesn’t stop increasingly obtuse managers from being obsessed with forcing workers to work in an office even when there’s no power, internet access, or sometimes even space, for them to do so.
