Does the company need capacity planning in the form of making everyone do extra work instead of making one person glance around and report on the level of free desks or making a button one can click only when they tried to find a desk and couldn't?
Serious question - is it a hard process? Or do you just have to check a box that says "I will be in the office and not WFH tomorrow"? Because it definitely seems like it's a minor inconvenience at worst.
Although I wonder how that impacts flow. Presumably you can do it anytime during the day, so you can do it when you were taking a break anyway. Unless it opens at a specific time and you have to make sure your desk isn't sniped!
PS: Should be obvious by now that I don’t work for a “paternalistic megacorp”…
Further, being forced to be in the office so the boss can see you're busy (and thus having your location tracked) is clearly infantilizing. That's what we went through in school as children. A lot of us expect better treatment as adults.
In any case, I don't personally find the argument that there is a reason compelling. There's plenty of things that have a reason but are unreasonable.