Two Days of Disconnect

This is a picture of the inbox for my email account as it appears via the Outlook Web App on my laptop. I took my personal laptop to work today with a plan to find a Wi-Fi connection for accessing email, because we had no email or Internet connectivity in the office yesterday, and as it turns out, all day today.
So much of our work is via email; we go through a huge volume of email correspondence in a week. I had made a bunch of assignments last week, and the people were responding to them this week. And I had more assignments to make and questions to ask.
I went to Panera for awhile this morning. Good coffee. Interesting interchange at the table nearby as I listened to some sort of manager or supervisor interview two applicants for either manager or assistant manager positions. (You can only overhear so much from a distance!)
I was impressed by the way she listened to the applicants, the questions she asked, and little snippets about how Panera does its business. (They grow all their own tomatoes. The chicken arrives in the store presliced. They keep complete records of their business--sales volume, by dollar and by item--so they can predict from one day to the next and one holiday to the next what kind of inventory to stock.)
The first guy seemed to be a winner. The second guy, not so much, for a variety of reasons. Probably the killer was that he'd been fired from managing another restaurant because one of its health/cleanliness standards hadn't been met. After that second interview, she stood up to leave, looked over at me, and smiled.
"You're not going to hire him, are you?" I said.
"Was it that obvious?" she said, laughing. "I could tell after the first five minutes he wasn't for us, and it's so hard to give a reasonable interview to someone you know you're not going to hire." I think she did a good job.
Believe it or not, I did get emails written during that time, as well as some information pulled off onto my stick so I could print a Word document back at the office to give some contract info, etc., to Diane Jones.
They told me there was Wi-Fi access in the small snack room in the main lobby of our building. So I trudged down there about 1:30 and stayed till after 4:30--with 3 or 4 other Customer Service gals on laptops, also accessing the Wi-Fi. We were accompanied by ABC's daytime programming on the big screen on the wall over us. And the little room was HOT. I really think I was more productive at Panera.
I'm a little surprised at myself at the flood of relief that washed over me later when I was back at my desk and my email account popped up open (this was about 5:15). I tried the Internet, and there was Evelyn's latest post on Facebook.
Connected again. Connected again! Thank God, we're connected again!
"Thanks for your patience and understanding," said the note telling everyone that the problem was solved. I'm not sure there was that much of either in my heart today.