I recently started a new job and this past week my boss was on vacation, so I was in charge of The Thing.
I was sitting on a call with the team, waiting for my bosses boss to come on so we could tell her what we are doing with The Thing. The bosses boss is a VP of HR.
While we are waiting we are just chatting about current events. The team is me (Chicago), a comp person (Phoenix) and a performance manager (Buffalo).
Phoenix and I are on the Teams call, waiting for Buffalo and the VP. So we start talking about her water situation there in Phoenix, because that's kind of a big deal.
The VP joins, hears what we are talking about and says “Oh. That sounds like an unhappy topic. Let's just say you were talking about puppies.”
Buffalo joins and the VP says, all bright and sunny, “Hi, Buffalo! We were just talking about puppies!”
Phoenix is about to be uninhabitable, Buffalo just had a mass shooting. We have to only talk about puppies.
Meta just banned roe v wade talk among their employee base.
Our dear leaders know it's crumbling, but they'd prefer we not talk about it so we can stay on task and shore up shareholder value.