Reading the MS365 updates on their status page made my eye twitch. Whenever a SaaS app goes down at work, I field a few nervous “is there something you can do” queries from senior management before breaking down and saying something, which would read like this if I felt like candor was on the table:

“Hi, everybody. As you’ve all informed us multiple times in Slack, #{a_service} is down. We’re watching the status page, and if you feel like cosplaying an IT worker in the age of literally every single app your users depend on being a SaaS, here’s a URL you can reload every few minutes until you get bored and do that license audit you’ve been putting off. You can deepen the authenticity of the experience by having your boss ask you every 30 minutes ‘is it back yet? Should you post another comm?’

When service is restored we will briefly debate posting an all clear then decide that the people who care will have been compulsively reloading the page every 10 minutes, and the people who don’t will be at the Tuesday Godzilla matinee anyhow.”