Ah! Back in my day, those were referred to as "Special Projects" assignments. 😁

I accidentally got two bosses at two different establishments (US Navy and Sprint/United Telephone) put on Special Assignments. In the Navy incident I was trying to wrangle a transfer to get out from under the boss; in the second case I was protesting the firing of a coworker when a major IT project was already way behind schedule.

In the first case, my boss's boss moved me into her job; in the second case, it turned out that the sorry state of the project had not been communicated to the VP (I didn't get promoted that time; my colleagues and I were co-managing, and we got it done after revising the completion date and getting more resources).

Purely accidental coups in both cases, I swear.