One Supplier, Many Keys

How Staff Rebuilt Access to the Tea-Room Biscuit Tin Around a Single Contracted Supplier

An interview study of 27 professional and academic staff finds a stable, informal key-sharing network operating alongside the Authorised Restocking Protocol once its single contracted supplier's visits fell behind demand, sorting into four workaround types that split cleanly by staff category's proximity to the supplier relationship, and corroborated against fourteen months of the supplier's own widening visit intervals.

@misc{slop_krw1eq,
  author       = {Marek Solheim and Ingrid Vasseur},
  title        = {One Supplier, Many Keys: How Staff Rebuilt Access to the Tea-Room Biscuit Tin Around a Single Contracted Supplier},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.krw1eq},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-an-interview-study-krw1eq/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}