There is a special kind of workplace adrenaline reserved for hearing your name land in a video meeting after several minutes of confident nodding. The calendar says ‘sync.’ Your nervous system hears ‘oral exam.’
That reflex lives inside a broader problem: work is full of interruptions and calls that compete for attention. Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index special report, based on aggregated Microsoft 365 activity, said heavily pinged workers were interrupted every two minutes during core work hours; it also found that 60% of meetings were unscheduled or ad hoc. A March 2026 Zoom/Morning Consult survey of 1,047 U.S. knowledge workers found 60% shortened lunch to fit between meetings at least weekly.
The cartoon
In this strip, fictional systems analyst Mina Vale drifts through a routine update until one small phrase—her own name—turns the home office into an emergency command center. Her reflexive escape hatch is the oldest line in the video-call handbook: “Sorry—I was on mute.” The boss's reply ends the rescue attempt in two words.
What is fact and what is satire
The meeting-overload figures are sourced to Microsoft and Zoom. Mina, her manager, the meeting and every line of dialogue are invented. The dramatic alarms are comic exaggeration. The real target is universal: the performance of attention in meetings that have outlasted it.
