Earlier this week, workflows everywhere were brought to a screeching halt when Microsoft suffered a massive, global outage impacting multiple services, including Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.
Corporate employees had a field day with the forced interruption, flooding social media with memes that will make anyone who sits behind a computer all day laugh out loud, but one astute fan of The Pitt took careful note of the date it all went down: Nov. 12, 2026—the same day the upcoming third season of the HBO Max hit takes place.
“…it’s a real bummer that they’re going to have computer problems YET AGAIN,” one viewer quipped on Threads.
The Pitt famously incorporates pertinent real-world happenings around the time it’s being written or taking place, such as the ICE storyline in Season 2 that resulted in one of the ER nurses being arrested by the government agency, or the complete digital blackout they faced for a few hours after a potential cyberattack forced them to manually track all of their patients.
Unlike The Simpsons, The Pitt isn’t known for its eerily timed predictions, and it seems unlikely that they would repeat, or at least closely mirror, an already aired storyline, but it’s certainly a coincidence worth considering, especially as we sit patiently waiting for the next season to drop, and other users were equally amused by the thread.
“That would be perfection if they have the outage as their storyline!” one replied, while another commended, “This is an A+ post.”
“According to the Outlook outage map, Hawaii was one of the areas affected by the outage! 😉,” another user joked, referencing a viral mistake wherein one viewer, for some reason, believed Dr. Robby, et al., were working in a Pittsburgh-themed hospital in Honolulu.
Another shared a photo of a Magic 8-Ball’s result, which read, “Outlook not so good.”
Someone else, who works in a hospital, pointed out that their own “workflow was impacted 0%.” However, they witnessed “more leadership rounding in the hospital than usual since they couldn’t do their normal things.”
Now that’s a storyline we can easily imagine, leaving Dr. Robby on edge as the hospital’s head honchos remain far too close for comfort throughout his shift.
Related: ‘The Pitt’ Season 3 Will Deviate From Its Previous Formula: Here’s How