HARLAN FORKS — Tri-County Power & Light unveiled a redesigned online outage map Tuesday, replacing its familiar grid of color-coded polygons and “estimated restoration” timestamps with a single shrug emoji spanning the company’s entire 4,200-square-mile service area.

The new map, which loads in under a second, does not zoom, pan, or refresh. Users who click on their neighborhood are shown the same shrug, slightly larger.

“This is our most accurate and transparent estimate of restoration time to date,” said Dale Pruitt-Okonkwo, the utility’s Vice President of Customer Expectations Management. “For years, we gave customers precise-looking times like ‘4:30 p.m.’ that had no relationship to reality. The shrug is just the truth, and it’s the same shrug for everyone.”

Pruitt-Okonkwo said the redesign followed an internal audit finding that the previous map’s restoration estimates were correct 11 percent of the time, a figure he described as “roughly in line with a coin that has three sides.”

The shrug is the product of a 14-month design process involving focus groups, two outside consultants, and a lengthy debate over skin tone. The company ultimately chose the default yellow, which a spokesperson said “offends the fewest outages.”

Customers have responded with the mixed feelings typical of a population sitting in the dark. “I clicked on my street and it just shrugged at me,” said Harlan Forks resident Wendell Tuttle, 58, holding a phone at 9 percent battery. “Honestly, it’s the first time that map has felt like it was being straight with me.”

Industry observers see the move as part of a broader trend toward radical candor in the utility sector. Dr. Marguerite Vandersloot, senior fellow at the Institute for Infrastructure Gestures and Public Resignation, said the shrug represents “a landmark in the evolution of outage communication, which has historically moved from false precision to vague optimism to this.”

“Is it a shrug of ignorance, or a shrug of indifference? We’d like customers to feel both are possible.”

That was how Pruitt-Okonkwo described the emoji’s emotional range, adding that the company had considered a thumbs-up and a crying face but rejected both as “making promises.”

The utility also confirmed that its automated phone line, which previously offered an estimated restoration time, now plays a recording of a long exhale. A text-alert option will deliver a single “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” to subscribers when power returns, or, the company noted, “when we find out, or when we stop thinking about it.”

Early metrics suggest the redesign has reduced calls to the customer service center by 62 percent, though the company acknowledged this may be because customers’ phones have died.

Tri-County Power & Light said it is already exploring further enhancements, including a premium tier in which the shrug is animated, and a “Beta Mode” in which the emoji occasionally raises an eyebrow. Asked when the new features might launch, Pruitt-Okonkwo paused, looked at the ceiling, and said nothing for eleven seconds.

“Soon-ish,” he added. “Or not.”