It's a hypothetical fence, its purpose is unknown. That's part of the point of the story, though. Don't rush to tear down a thing just because you don't know it

It's a hypothetical fence, its purpose is unknown. That's part of the point of the story, though. Don't rush to tear down a thing just because you don't know its purpose. If abstract and hypothetical thinking doesn't do it for you, here's a real-world example: A colleague recently bypassed a step in out-processing employees (someone retiring in this case). The step, as written, was "Email such and such for the latest version of some form." Well, the latest version was clearly posted on SharePoint, why bother emailing when it's right there? So he obtained the form, and kept on trucking. A couple months later, though, he found out there was a problem. It turned out there was a missing detail in the process documentation: email such and such for the latest version of the form, also they'll start another process that no one ever told you about that marks the person as not-an-employee so they stop getting paid. Oops. Don't tear down fences too hastily, figure out why they are there first, then tear them down. Again, if that's too abstract, in this case update the out-processing documentation so it states the real reason why that person needed to be contacted, and also remove the nonsense about it being to get the most recent version of the form. Just point people to SharePoint for that.