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I knew the head of a trading desk at a Wall St. bank. The bank wanted to fire him but didn’t want to pay his deferred compensation. He was not interested in “negotiating” - the money was his and they had no cause for termination. (The ultimate reason was that a new divisional head had come in and the two of them hated each other.) He had no trading authority, had his direct reports taken away from him and he was forbidden to speak to customers. He was the most cheerful guy in the world. He’d read the newspaper and then play video golf on his computer. My boss asked him why he bothered still coming in. He said his lawyer advised him to continue to come in, do everything asked (within reasonable constraints of his job title) and not to be disruptive. After about six weeks, they caved and paid him out.

A remarkable number of jobs are about putting fires out.

Is someone responsible available for that revenue generating, or loss preventing, "thing", that has a high enough uptime to not attract anyone's wrath? OK then.

At least in the case of the scene from the show, it's likely just for the sake of having people to spend this "dead" time with rather than being alone. Possibly also the latter as well, though.

I expect it's a case of needing to be there in case the wrong person starts asking questions or snooping around. Like checking badge-swipe logs.