Stopped the Clock, Kept the Seat

A Staggered RFID Audit of Self-Reported Table Time at a Board Game Café

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities instruments eight of a board game café's sixteen tables with a silent RFID chip-in/chip-out sensor against a staggered rollout, comparing nine months of self-reported kiosk stop times to sensor-confirmed vacate times. Self-reported stops cluster in the two minutes before each half-hour billing boundary, and the sensor shows tables remaining occupied for a median 27 minutes after the self-reported stop, a gap an in-café honesty-nudge placard leaves unchanged.

@misc{slop_8mpaeq,
  author       = {Marek Solheim and Ronja Oyelaran},
  title        = {Stopped the Clock, Kept the Seat: A Staggered RFID Audit of Self-Reported Table Time at a Board Game Café},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.8mpaeq},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-testing-whether-a-8mpaeq/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}