Using a new survey of French firms spanning the full 2020?2025 inflation cycle, we document that de-anchoring and passthrough decoupled during the inflation surge: the firms whose expectations drifted furthest from target were precisely those that did not act on them, while firms that embedded expectations into wages and prices remained relatively well anchored. A growing tail of firms expected persistently high inflation ― “inflation disasters” ― but these were disproportionately smaller, less attentive firms extrapolating local cost pressures. As a result, the surge in expectations did not generate wage-price dynamics, limiting the scope for a self-sustaining inflation spiral.