Slack was down for five hours on the first Monday of 2021, which meant professionals the world over struggled to get in touch with their teams.
The service cut had many returning to emails and phone calls to get the job done.
“Customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time,” the platform said when it announced the first service cut.
Five hours after the cut started, Slack said most users should be able to access the platform.
"We're truly sorry for the disruption today," it said at 8.10pm Gulf time.
Slack also reported continuing problems with extensions such as Google Calendar integration, and email notifications.
It said it would release an extended statement on Monday's cut soon.
At the time of the service disruption, messages on the desktop app simply read: "Server error. It seems like there’s a problem connecting to our servers, and we’re investigating the issue."
On the mobile app, the error message read: "Couldn't send. Tap to try again."
Slack's status page said: "Customers may have trouble loading messages or connecting to Slack," as of 7.14pm Gulf time.
The cut was on the first Monday morning that many professionals are heading back to work in the US, after Christmas and New Year breaks.
Twitter reacts to Slack going down
Naturally, it did not take long for Twitter users to react to Slack going down.
Many were quick to point out that the cut reflected how they felt about returning to work post-holidays:
Slack being down on the morning we all return to work feels like 2021 promising it will be a bit kinder to us all
— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) January 4, 2021
Welcome to 2021. Where Slack is down on the first Monday of the year. pic.twitter.com/bnJ5M86wbZ
— Eric Mark Do (@EricMarkDo) January 4, 2021
Slack is down. I’m liking 2021 better already
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 4, 2021
Others are using it as an excuse to not log in for the day:
Slack's down, which means it's basically like a snow day and we can all go home early right? Not like there's any news on...
— Jem Collins (@Jem_Collins) January 4, 2021
If Slack is down for 15 minutes the work day is canceled. I don’t make the rules. https://t.co/rZyyPP0AmE
— ChrisAlbon.com (@chrisalbon) January 4, 2021
Slack is down and my Christmas tree is still up.
— Daniel Rubino (@Daniel_Rubino) January 4, 2021
That technically means I'm off work again for a few more days.
Later. pic.twitter.com/UURyts6ruc
why does slack being down have the same energy as when teachers didn't show up for class in high school and someone said "we're legally allowed to leave if they don't show up in 15 minutes"
— Connor Perrett (@connorperrett) January 4, 2021
Another user assumed the worst, that she had been fired, when she first noticed her Slack was not working:
please god, if I'm ever fired, don't let it be by the company turning off my slack and me assuming it's just an outage
— Olga Khazan (@olgakhazan) January 4, 2021
