Slack experienced difficulties this morning, disrupting the return to work for many and creating a less-than-ideal start to the day for its users.

The exact time the service interruption commenced remains unclear, but reports of issues began to surface among the TechCrunch team shortly after 10:00 a.m. Slack officially acknowledged a problem via a post at 10:14 a.m. Eastern Time:

Service outages are not uncommon for the workplace communication platform, which became a public company in mid-2019 and later announced plans to be acquired by Salesforce at the close of 2020. TechCrunch has previously reported on uptime concerns with the service in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and in years prior.

This disruption is particularly unfortunate, occurring as Slack is currently involved in negotiations for its sale. A service intended to facilitate work experiencing issues precisely when its users – its customers – are resuming their work routines is a significant setback.

Until the issue is resolved, communication through alternative means may be necessary.

Here's a look at the situation from the perspective of Redmond, home to the competing Teams product:

Update: TechCrunch received the following statement from Slack: