BEIJING, Aug. 18 -- Bosses may have seen productivity wobble up and down the chart yesterday afternoon, when millions of office workers were denied access to the popular MSN Messenger service.

Connection in several cities went down on Monday afternoon at around 2:20pm, resulting in numerous complaints to MSN China from those who could not converse with their friends and colleagues.

Beijing suffered a large-scale login failure and similar blank msn screens were seen in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu.

Many businesses that use the service to send documents were also affected.

"The breakdown of the MSN service happened when I was sending a document to my boss in Sydney. It was a great inconvenience and I was upset for the whole afternoon," said Zhang Zuidie, from an Australian company based Shanghai.

For many, it meant they had to get on with their jobs without being a mere keyboard-tap away from their cyber friends.

Many had to rely on old fashioned techniques, such as moving from their workstation to speak to a colleague in person.

Some made straight for the telephone or emailed their correspondence, though conntections to sites like Yahoo and hotmail were slow in places.

                                                                                        　　　　　　　Source：Xinhua