Lessons in how not to manage people

A new and wonderful policy from above… 

I see that there is a lot of absentees in the meetings in the venues.  Effective immediately, any one absent from the meeting will be deducted the day pay by HR and a warning memo should be sent to him/her. The only acceptable reason is medical leave with an official form from HMC. 

So basically what they’re saying is all you people who are in the middle of a task, drop everything and run to your venue meeting.  I seem to remember something similar when I was in elementary school, but isn’t this supposed to be the grownup world?  I could’ve sworn I just had my 10 year high school reunion so should that put me closer to 30 then kindergarten?  Again I would like to point out that this country has a chance to show the world how good they are on the world stage, but this kind of junk just makes it look like their a bunch of armatures here.  Every policy they make like the above mentioned one will leak out, in fact I’m sure I’m leaking it out now and I shouldn’t be, but I just can’t help myself, this is absurd.  I understand meetings can be important venues to share information between departments and such, but shouldn’t I be able to decide if I can make it based on workload?  Or better yet if I can make arrangements to meet with the appropriate departments on my own why can’t that work the same as gathering in a small room with a bunch of people I don’t need to talk to or get information from? 

Oh well I should go clean up my finger-painting, after all isn’t that what you do in kindergarten?