TO: All Microsoft Staff
FROM: Human Resources
RE: Monday's Successful Microsoft Outlook outage
Team, we want to address the massive Microsoft Outlook outage that occurred earlier today. Many of you noticed that your email clients stopped working entirely. You could not send calendar invites. You could not ping your managers. We want to assure you this was not a server failure.
The Silence Initiative
Our executive leadership team orchestrated this Microsoft Outlook outage on purpose. We call this new initiative 'The Forced Quiet Protocol.' We noticed that our staff spent too much time communicating. We wanted to encourage you to stare blankly at your office walls instead of typing.
"We tried to schedule a standard corporate wellness seminar," said Gordon Flense, Deputy Undersecretary for Things That Were Fine Before. "However, nobody attended because they were too busy replying to emails. By breaking the entire communication infrastructure, we achieved 100 percent participation in our silence initiative."
New Productivity Benchmarks
During the Microsoft Outlook outage, we monitored your physical movements through your office webcams. We observed several employees actually stepping outside. One engineer touched a real oak tree. This is the exact kind of synergy we wanted to foster.
"I actually had to speak to my desk neighbor," said Marcus Vance, Senior Developer of Blue Screen Optimization. "He has three children. I did not know that. I did not want to know that. Please turn the servers back on immediately."
If you feel energized by this break, we have great news. We plan to delete the entire database next Monday to help you practice mindfulness. Let us continue to build a workplace where nobody can ever contact anyone else.
