This happened to me. It actually started with, "I accidentally told this wifi router salesman guy at a trade show that I would listen to his sales pitch. Now he's coming to our office in an hour to give it. Can you sit in on the meeting with me so I'm not alone? You know a lot about wifi, right?"
I didn't even know what the meeting was about. I assumed he was trying to sell our office a wifi mesh system, which we already had. It wasn't until about halfway through that I realized that he was trying to sell us these routers+source code so we could integrate them into our product line and resell them. And then I realized how many of our problems that would solve, so I started asking questions. Next thing I knew, I was the lead engineer on a wifi mesh system.
It was a super fun project, though. And I got lots of raises and a title increase for taking it on.
I noted a software bug in a project close to release (I'm not software, and I was just helping another guys with that project) I noted it to my boss and he put me in charge to fix it before the release. All my work for the last couple of weeks has been triangulating with software guys to get patches and see if it works, meanwhile my actual work has been accumulating and nobody is helping me with that
I had a team lead that did this. Never answered his call. He got absolutely slaughtered for it (amongst other things) in the retro after a while after some people had reached breaking point.
Likewise when theres a company meeting which clearly and simply lays something out and people have questions.
Example: “We are switching payroll providers, This in no way impacts you as all direct deposits have been migrated. You might see a new note on the deposits from the new payroll company.” A bunch of hands go up… Its always the same people