Throughout my entire professional working career I’ve carried a pen and either a notebook or a blank page I can use to record things that I need to do, to buy or to check up on.
When I go to meetings that include my boss or other executives, the notebook is a bound book, open on the table in front of me, and my pen is in hand to record specific instructions, group, project or executive needs and specific suggestions and ideas that I want to record either for posterity (to cover my ass, if need be) or to check up on later.
I have never considered any boss or executive to whom I am subordinate to be psychotic, criminal or insane, and I’ve never been involved in criminal enterprise.
Which is not to say that in a totalitarian regime one should not be routinely scared shitless.