Does Anyone Eat the Last Sandwich?

A Term-Long Intercept Survey of Leftover Seminar Catering, Reported as Distributions of Taker Kind and Tray Dwell

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement surveys leftover seminar catering trays across 186 events in 14 buildings, reporting distributions of who takes what remains and how long a tray sits. Corridor passers-by accounted for 44 percent of leftover pieces; 13 percent were still sitting at ninety minutes; median tray dwell was 41 minutes. Removing the "please help yourself" card changed mean leftover at thirty minutes by 0.2 pieces (n.s.). Catering Services has adopted leftover volume at thirty minutes as the hospitality- engagement figure and will size every subsequent standing order to the sample's 90th percentile leftover count, with no ordinary override.

@misc{slop_y1ia0e,
  author       = {Solveig Adeyemi and Anneke Tolan and Ronja Oyelaran},
  title        = {Does Anyone Eat the Last Sandwich?: A Term-Long Intercept Survey of Leftover Seminar Catering, Reported as Distributions of Taker Kind and Tray Dwell},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.y1ia0e},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-leftover-seminar-y1ia0e/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}