Microsoft Outlook went down and I only ate one neighbor | Opinion - USA Today

So there was a widespread Microsoft Outlook email outage on Nov. 12, and I’m proud to say that during that dark period of disconnectedness, I only ate one of my neighbors.

I feel like this is a win for everyone, with the exception of Frank, who was, frankly, delicious. (He would’ve enjoyed that pun!)

With the sudden collapse of email and other Microsoft 365 services – which my company and I rely on wholly for all communication, largely because we’ve forgotten how to speak out loud – life ground to a halt. Thousands of other workers across the nation and I were thrust into what naturalists and other assorted poets and weirdos call “the real world.”

I didn’t care for it. It was quiet; I remembered grass exists, and my eyes struggled to see things more than two feet in front of me. 

I later tripped twice trying to go to what luddites call “outdoors.” Zero stars. Would not recommend.

As the outage stretched on, I worried other workers would experience similar reality-induced reactions, potentially draining the nation’s strategic Xanax reserves.

Some might ask why that was necessary, but it seemed like the right idea at the time. When electronic communication is suddenly halted, we modern-day humans instinctively assume it’s due to an end-of-the-world-type crisis. How was I supposed to know how long it would be before food became scarce? I felt I had to take action, and I knew Frank was the slowest of the neighbors.

Anyhoo, I’ll email my apologies to his family as soon as Outlook recovers.

What really matters here is that we reflect on what went wrong. Is it possible relying on one massive corporation for a huge swath of our business communication creates a fragile ecosystem that could catastrophically crash in a heartbeat, bringing society down with it?

I think the problem is that we need a second layer of electronic distraction to protect us in case the first layer collapses. I desperately wanted to email coworker to complain about our Outlook email being down, but there was no backup avenue for griping, nothing to keep us from standing up and looking out a window at barfy old nature.

If I’m going to live in an electronic daze, I need a fallback daze to drop into in case of emergencies. Without that, neighbors like Frank get eaten.

I don’t make the rules, folks. I just live by them.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.