Connected/Disconnected

Disconnection: When I got to work this morning, the office e-mail was down. It's eerie and isolating. No press releases, no meeting announcements ... nothing.

When the e-mail's down, we all become extraordinarily solitary creatures. Not a single person has darkened my doorway with things to proof. Nobody's stopped by to ask for a bag of tea or read today's Get Fuzzy comic on my page-a-day calendar.

And, because my office is sandwiched between the break room and the women's restroom, I can also say with some certainty that nobody's peed or gotten coffee. (In retrospect, this sentence came out all wrong, but I'm leaving it for the comedic value.)

Could it be that when the office e-mail goes down, the office itself goes down, too?