MINNEAPOLIS — Project manager Dennis Kowalczyk, 41, remained in steady orbit around a conference room table at Brightwell Regional Logistics on Tuesday, more than six hours after he told a meeting of eleven colleagues, “Let’s circle back on that.”

Coworkers said they were simply holding Kowalczyk to his word.

“He said circle back, so we’re circling him back,” said Priya Natarajan, a senior associate who stood and gently redirected Kowalczyk’s path when he attempted to drift toward the door. “Nobody’s being unreasonable. We just need a date, an owner, and a time. Then he can land.”

Kowalczyk, who has completed an estimated 340 laps, said he had never intended the phrase to be binding.

“I say it every day,” he said, passing the whiteboard for the nine-hundredth time. “It just means I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I didn’t know it had a flight plan.”

Witnesses said the trouble began when the Q3 vendor consolidation item came up and Kowalczyk, in what coworkers described as a “reflexive and frankly lazy” move, deflected with the phrase. A silence followed. Then Natarajan stood up.

Management has not intervened. Regional Vice President Gary Oyelaran-Finch said he was “aware of the situation” and would “take it offline,” a statement that prompted two additional employees to rise from their chairs and look at him.

Experts say the incident was inevitable. “Corporate language has been drifting away from meaning for decades, and eventually it was going to collide with something,” said Dr. Helene Vasterling-Moss, associate fellow in Euphemistic Kinetics at the Institute for Applied Meeting Physics. “‘Circle back,’ ‘loop in,’ ‘run it up the flagpole,’ ‘move the needle.’ Frankly, we’re lucky it started with the one that’s only mildly dizzying.”

Attempts to end the orbit have so far stalled. At 1:30 p.m., Kowalczyk proposed “taking a step back,” which was rejected after a coworker pointed out that he would have to leave the circle to do so. At 2:15, he offered to “touch base next week,” but staff noted he had not specified which week, or whether touching would occur.

“I just want a calendar invite with a title, a time, and a dial-in. Is that so much to ask?” — Priya Natarajan

Kowalczyk’s trajectory has since been complicated by a competing group in the hallway, who have reportedly begun “unpacking” a separate colleague.

Facilities has placed a wet-floor sign near the table, which Kowalczyk has been circumventing on each pass with what observers described as “remarkable situational awareness.”

At press time, Kowalczyk had agreed to a thirty-minute follow-up on Thursday at 2 p.m., pending everyone’s availability. Coworkers confirmed that the invite had been sent but said he would continue to orbit until at least four people accepted it.

“Two have tentatively accepted,” said Natarajan, checking her laptop. “One is out of office. One is Gary.”