Every employee has to deal with bosses’ random demands that contribute nothing but make the boss somewhat happy.
For example, as a writer here at Cheezburger, I sometimes get a message from my boss saying, “Hey, can you take out this sentence from your copy?” or “Please add this meme”, and I must comply. Even if I do not understand the nature of the request, I simply accept it. Most of the time, these requests are easy to complete–5 minutes out of your day, and your boss is off your back. Other times, like in the story below, the demand is more time-consuming, which can be quite annoying if you know they are also completely pointless.
When this boss told their employee that they had to participate in the team chat discourse, even if they had nothing to say, the employee was pretty annoyed. Why should they take valuable time out of their workday just to send random messages to their teammates?
But the boss asked, so the employee must comply. Luckily, no one said that they can comply maliciously…