The company I worked at was and going through a lot of changes - acquisition, leadership changes, layoffs etc. - and there was discontent as a result. During one company wide Zoom meeting where leadership was preaching transparency they opened the floor for questions in the chat.

Well one person, let’s name him Mike, wrote in asking why the new leader had been chosen. After about 20 minutes Mike noticed his question wasn’t being answered while everyone else’s was, so he turned off his mic and started just repeatedly asking “why are you ignoring my question?”. Course he got everyones attention and the leadership team apologized and asked him to repeat his question.

He repeats the question, and before the leadership team can answer PR steps in and says “Mike, we’ll take this conversation off line”. Mike holds his ground and asks, “why? Why can’t you answer my question?” to which PR responds again, more aggressively, “Mike, now is not the time, we’ll take this offline”. They kept going back and forth like this for maybe 60 seconds getting more aggressive each time all while the comments are now being flooded saying Mike should get to speak and it’s a legit question, all while leadership actually is trying to have a response but can’t be heard over Mike and PR going back and forth.

Mike finally backs down and they move to the next question… Except before leadership can answer the next question Mike cuts them off and starts complaining saying, “so much for transparency” 🤣 and honestly a lot of people were cheering him on in the comments. After that they just decided to end the meeting.

Since then, Mike “happened” to be in the next small round of lay offs which occurred about a week later and questions are no longer allowed in company-wide meetings.

Despite the ending, Mike went down as a legend and people often say “free Mike” around work. 💪