#Outage knocks out service on 2021’s first workday

Slack is slacking.

The workplace chat service suffered a massive outage on Monday — prompting both frustration and celebration among workers who rely on it.

The outage stopped users from logging in, sending messages and loading group chats known as channels, according to Slack’s public outage dashboard.

The San Francisco-based company confirmed the service was down at 10:14 a.m., less than 15 minutes after thousands of users around the world reported the problems to the outage-tracking website Downdetector.

More than two hours later at 1 p.m., Slack said some users would be able to connect but might still “experience degraded performance” while its staff worked to resolve the issues.

“Our teams are aware and are investigating the issue,” a Slack spokesperson said in a statement. “We know how important it is for people to stay connected and we are working hard to get everyone running as normal.”

Slack has become an increasingly important tool for companies around the world as the coronavirus pandemic forced people to work remotely. Some users vented their frustration on Twitter about the outage blowing up their productivity on the first workday of the new year.

“Someone tell @SlackHQ it’s no longer 2020,” Siobhan Connellan tweeted. “These outage shenanigans must stop. There are no more excuses.”

“Insanely hard to get work done without it,” wrote Brad Stewart.

But others were happy to get a break from the incessant notifications — and the chance to ease back into work after the holidays, joking that the outage was a good reason to extend their weekend.

“If Slack is down for 15 minutes the work day is canceled. I don’t make the rules,” Chris Albon posted.

“What if we all just decided to go back to the weekend, and try working again tomorrow? @SlackHQ feels me on this,” tweeted Sarah Morris O’Keefe.