Nothing new. The protagonist of the 1961 novel Revolutionary Road[1] by Richard Yates works a job that's mostly just figuring out ways to send stuff from his INBOX to other people with the right kind of notes on it to either delay its coming back for another day or two, or, ideally, result in someone else (many, many note-added forwards later) having to deal with it, and to look busy the rest of (most of) the time. Most of the people in his company apparently work this way. Much of the work itself seems to be generated by people trying to find something to do so they seem busy, rather than for any useful purpose. This doesn't come off as parody, either, but as depicting a situation very close to common reality for office workers at that time, with little or no exaggeration.

(incidentally, the novel is great, still reads fresh, and is not primarily about work life in the 1950s/60s)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Road