Retiring Clerk Discovers She Has Been Approving the Same Document in an Infinite Loop Since 2016

Margaret Ledger, a 38-year veteran of the Department of Document Processing, discovered on her final day of employment that a single document has been circulating through her desk in an unbroken loop since August 2016. The document -- a Form 44-C requesting the installation of a pencil sharpener in Room 309 -- was approved by Ledger 847 times over nine years, each time returning to her inbox approximately four business days later due to a routing error that directed the approved form back to the originating department, which resubmitted it as a new request. 'I thought Room 309 really wanted a pencil sharpener,' Ledger said, reviewing the stack of 847 identical approval stamps she had applied to what turned out to be the same request cycling endlessly through the system. 'I admired their persistence.' The routing error was traced to a database entry that listed the Document Processing Office as both the approving authority and the forwarding destination for Form 44-C requests from the third floor. The error was introduced during a system update in 2016 and was never detected because the form was always processed on schedule. 'From a metrics standpoint, this was exemplary workflow,' said IT Director Paul Recursion. 'The form was never late, never lost, and never returned for corrections. It was, technically, our most efficiently processed document.' Room 309 has never received a pencil sharpener. Its current occupants were unaware one had been requested. 'We use mechanical pencils,' said Room 309 analyst Diane Keening. 'But it's nice to know someone was working on it.' Ledger's retirement ceremony included a commemorative plaque and what she described as 'an unsettling sense that some of my other files might also be going in circles.'