That IS weird, indeed. Haven't come across that, especially for a smaller size company. On the other hand, it never seizes to amaze me the reasons people have for some decisions. Completely irrational. Most likely your boss had to answer to someone at the top, and if they were to find out your department had too much slack time, they'd cut his budget.
I started working in 1998. Fresh out of school, I had this romantic idea about jobs being places where you go to perform a specific set of predefined tasks. 15 years down the road I learned about the waste, the fluff, the inefficiency, the incompetence of some managers, the politics and the corporate speak. They never teach you those things in school...
Avoidance of budget cutting was something I saw every year working for a city agency. The entire budget had to be used up or else it would get cut back. My boss would divvy it up and ask each subordinate what they wanted to do with it. I usually upgraded or added to my computer equipment. It was kinda like Christmas every spring.
We had people who weren't entirely useless, but were paid an awful lot for the kind of work they did.
I started working in 1998. Fresh out of school, I had this romantic idea about jobs being places where you go to perform a specific set of predefined tasks. 15 years down the road I learned about the waste, the fluff, the inefficiency, the incompetence of some managers, the politics and the corporate speak. They never teach you those things in school...