The Joke Was Never About You

Despite Staff Denials, Customer Experience Auto-Flags Accounts for Recurring Joke Names

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities interviews counter staff at 19 food-truck and cafe sites about the joke or fabricated order names they use to privately resequence service during a rush, and reports a franchise customer-experience office reading the same point-of-sale field as a formal signal, auto-flagging a loyalty account as high-maintenance whenever a joke name recurs, with no staff sign-off, review date, or override.

@misc{slop_la0hsf,
  author       = {Hedvig Anyanwu and Casimir Beng and Verity Marris},
  title        = {The Joke Was Never About You: Despite Staff Denials, Customer Experience Auto-Flags Accounts for Recurring Joke Names},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.la0hsf},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-at-food-truck-and-la0hsf/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}