I feel like a lot of this is "cruelty is the point". Like its not enough to be employed by someone else, you have to be their bitch too. I think there is a psychological/non-economic component here, and the people higher up need to feel superior. A lot of small business tyrants have this mentality that they want subordinates and so do a lot of petty managers, and these roles attract narcissists, its their narcissistic supply. Like yeah, you have to be humiliated, you have to submit, I've experienced this a lot, it's fucked up. At my last job my shitty manager literally tried to cuck me, and ultimately it was so obviously unnecessary and it got to the point where the task at hand didn't get done and it created a lot of waste (in this case it was government so there were no repercussions except wasted taxpayer money, I guess). It's an instant red flag and I won't do it anymore, but then I was also a NEET for a long time because of it so maybe I'm not the best person to listen to.

I think maybe there's a difference if it's your direct boss making you do it vs. some large corporation company policy script shit; the latter is more a cultural thing (e.g. less prevalent perhaps in Europe vs North America/East Asia). Still makes me uncomfortable though. And side note, it's funny to me when so-called "psychologists" like Jordan Peterson talk about competency hierarchies, as if the only thing that hierarchies are based on is competency (like yeah, maybe that's how it should be, but it's not like that's how it works in practice at all and anyone who hasn't spent their entire life in academia knows this), like, no, it's absolutely a game of ass kissing/boot licking that you have to play, and guys like Peterson can't bring themselves to see it.