Past the Guard Petals

A Taxonomy of Florists' Informal Freshness Cues at a Supermarket-Adjacent Flower-Shop Chain, Set Against an Automated Hours-Since-Delivery Markdown Timer

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities develops a six-category taxonomy of florists' tacit freshness cues, drawn from eleven weeks of markdown and removal calls across nineteen stores of a supermarket-adjacent flower-shop chain. Matched against the chain's fixed automated markdown timer, the categories show no reliable difference in aggregate timing but diverge sharply once broken out, a pattern that survives dropping the taxonomy's rarest category.

@misc{slop_epjqzi,
  author       = {Iben Chikere and Anneke Tolan},
  title        = {Past the Guard Petals: A Taxonomy of Florists' Informal Freshness Cues at a Supermarket-Adjacent Flower-Shop Chain, Set Against an Automated Hours-Since-Delivery Markdown Timer},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.epjqzi},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-taxonomy-of-epjqzi/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}