Boss at a new job walked in on us sitting around doing nothing because there was literally no work to be done. The next day our manager (we were contractors) came in to give us all a little speech about how the "art of contracting" is keeping busy by finding things to do that "the client doesn't even know they need." No, sorry. That sounds more like the art of scamming the government. We are either fulfilling our contract by providing a valuable agreed upon service or we aren't. Nobody wants to come up with fake work just to look good.