REDMOND, WA — Microsoft executives confirmed Friday that the massive global outage affecting Outlook, Teams, and Office 365 was the result of a summer intern accidentally tripping over a single, frayed extension cord that provides power to the company’s entire North American server infrastructure.
The outage, which left millions of office workers worldwide with no choice but to actually look at their families or acknowledge the existence of their coworkers, lasted approximately nine hours. According to internal reports, the incident occurred when a nineteen-year-old engineering intern, identified only as “Kyle,” attempted to plug in a specialized desk fan to combat the unseasonable warmth of the server room.
“We’ve identified that a service load elevation combined with a temporary capacity constraint—specifically, the cord being yanked out of the wall—resulted in the impact,” a Microsoft spokesperson stated, mirroring official technical jargon to describe a man falling over a wire.
The company initially blamed a “third-party networking issue,” which experts now clarify was a reference to the brand of sneakers Kyle was wearing when he lost his footing. While services have been resolved, Microsoft is reportedly looking into a permanent fix, which includes taped-down duct tape or perhaps a second extension cord for redundancy.
At publishing time, Microsoft had assured users that all lost emails were safe, though they are currently being stored in a single MS Word document using the Wingdings font to ensure maximum national security.
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