COLUMBUS, OH — What began as a "quick question" for the IT department entered its fourth day Thursday, prompting management to reclassify the ordeal as a team-building exercise and order a sheet cake.

Marketing coordinator Jenna Ruiz, 34, submitted the question Monday at 9:04 a.m.: "how do i rotate a pdf." By Thursday, the ticket had accumulated 212 comments, three screen-sharing sessions, one remote desktop takeover, and a brief period where her monitor displayed only a cursor blinking "in what witnesses called a judgmental rhythm."

"It started simple," said IT specialist Marcus Webb. "She wanted to rotate a PDF. Then we discovered she was opening it in a browser. Then we discovered the browser was Internet Explorer. Then we discovered her computer was, technically, a different computer than the one she thought she had. Every answer revealed a deeper question. It was like peeling an onion, if the onion also had malware."

Ruiz remained optimistic. "Marcus has been very patient," she said. "I feel like we're really bonding. Yesterday he sighed in a way that felt almost affectionate."

Coworkers say the saga has brought the office together. A Slack channel, #pdf-watch, now has 58 members posting updates and encouragement. Someone brought donuts Wednesday "for morale, and also because Marcus looked like he was going to cry."

"Honestly, this has done more for cross-departmental collaboration than last quarter's offsite," said Ruiz's manager, Dana Cole. "Jenna from marketing and Marcus from IT barely spoke before this. Now they have a shared trauma. That's culture."

Webb confirmed the PDF remains unrotated but said the team has grown. "We've tried seven programs, two converters, and printing it out and physically turning the paper, which worked but felt like giving up," he said. "At this point rotating the PDF would almost be sad. It's not about the PDF anymore."

At press time, the ticket had been escalated to "epic" status in the tracking system, and morale was at an all-time high. The PDF remained sideways.