Why not start the process of transforming it into a coop sooner? I know a business owner getting ready to retire, in the same boat as you. Except now he’s gonna have finance the sale for them and not all of them want to be an owner. To me, that is silly, but more power, more problems.

I agree with the OP’s response. It was well written and gave you several options. In particular, the point about cultural expectations sounds like the most pertinent. I don’t know what your working relationship is with your director, but the fact that they first apologized and second, when they understood your motives, lauded you.

It does suck having your good faith questions misinterpreted. However, it’s unclear what your director did or said that made you feel you were kissing his ring. Did he scold you? Or just explain how he felt about your question?

Others have given resources about coops and flat heirarchies, but this sounds like you want a very specific corporate culture. Even in the right fit, you are influencing people and will have to work with their personalities. Politics will always be part of the game as long as there are limited resources and risks in allocating those resources.

This is more of what I remember.

A wizard! Tis why they fled.

Your day will come and it will all be worth it. My day came when the mice arrived. My wife, the one who holds me back, let me loose. Glass jars to the moon! Mice had no chance! I am king again. Brrruhhshahhahaahaha! Cackle cackle evil victory laugh.

It is pretty funny.

Safety isn’t a thing that only happens when in motion. Checking your surroundings when stopped so you know when to go is important.

But he’ll, I think video billboards should be banned too.

There’s a number of points this comment misses. First, it wasn’t pharmaceutical companies, but moms group of autistic children that approached him.

[I]n 1995, while conducting research into Crohn’s disease, he was approached by Rosemary Kessick, the parent of a child with autism, who was seeking help with her son’s bowel problems and autism; Kessick ran a group called Allergy Induced Autism. In 1996, Wakefield turned his attention to researching possible connections between the MMR vaccine and autism.

And the time, he was still a well regarded scientist and doctor:

At the time of his MMR research study, Wakefield was senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine

This was also published in 1998 in The Lancet an important medical journal, but the controversy didn’t start with this publication, but his press conference after the publication where he did advocate for single vaccines and not a combined MMR. Pretty poor form and highly criticized at the time.

The media took this and ran with it. It caused wide spread misinformation about autism and the MMR vaccine. But it was also a media outlet that began to tear apart the claims in 2004.

It wasn’t retracted until 2010 and a full write up about what went wrong in the BMJ in 2011. There was a lot of criticism before then, but I was also highly cited as well.

There’s a lot of lessons to be learned here and that is best done with the full story.