U.S. — A desperate and weary nation offered to give Microsoft $100 billion in cash to stop anyone from trying to fix Outlook.
With the Outlook outage reaching into its second day, employees from all across the nation offered to chip in however they could to entice Microsoft to not fix it.
"Please. This has been the best 48 hours of our careers," said local man Grant Lee. "I'll give up my next paycheck, I don't care. Just don't fix whatever is wrong with Microsoft Outlook. I'm begging you."
The offer reportedly grew from $5 billion to $100 billion after Microsoft issued an update saying engineers had identified the problem and were preparing a fix.
"No! Stop!" Lee cried. "Go home. See your families. Take up woodworking. Whatever you're about to click, I'll personally give you another $200 not to click it."
Organizers said contributions had poured in from every sector of the economy, with some employees offering their entire retirement accounts. Several companies even pledged matching donations after discovering their employees could finish eight hours' worth of work in approximately 40 minutes.
Microsoft attempted to reassure users that no emails had been lost during the outage, prompting widespread panic.
"All of your messages are safe and will be delivered once service is restored," a company spokesperson said. "Every meeting invitation. Every request for a status update. Every reply-all. They're all still here, waiting for you. Mwahahaha!"
At publishing time, Microsoft had accepted the offer and announced that it would fax out the instructions for wiring the money.
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