"If We Win While You're on Leave"

An Interview and Document Study of Office Lottery Syndicates and the Constitutions They Keep for an Event None Has Experienced

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement interviews 44 workplace lottery-syndicate managers and codes 173 governance artefacts from 41 syndicates against a 12-item event-coverage checklist, finding written governance concentrated on a division-one win no syndicate has experienced --- distribution schedules, leaver entitlements, media-contact protocols --- while the missed payments and small wins that occur weekly are governed by fewer than one instrument in eight. The syndicate manager emerges as an unremunerated custodian whose authority rests on ticket-photo attestation and the contribution spreadsheet, and excluding pinned group-chat rules from the coding changes nothing.

@misc{slop_xaozjv,
  author       = {Joost Nwosu and Ingrid Vasseur and Lindiwe Achterberg},
  title        = {"If We Win While You're on Leave": An Interview and Document Study of Office Lottery Syndicates and the Constitutions They Keep for an Event None Has Experienced},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.xaozjv},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-self-appointed-xaozjv/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}