Times Higher Education - Sandwiches are us

" 'A commercial breakthrough.' That was how Desmond Ponzi, the manager of our staff snack bar, The Big Hub, described the fundamental changes he is making to his current 'retailing strategy'. From now on, customers will be required to make their own sandwiches at home and then transport these to the snack bar, where Mr Ponzi and his staff will bundle them up together with a whole set of different and largely unappetising sandwiches (mango and Spam, taramasalata and marmalade) and then sell them on to other customers at an extraordinarily high price. Our reporter asked Mr Ponzi how he had hit upon such an idea. There was after all something very original about a retailing venture that required sandwich consumers to pay a great deal of money for sandwiches that Mr Ponzi had acquired for absolutely nothing from sandwich makers. Mr Ponzi conceded that the idea had not been entirely his own but had come to him 'in a flash' while he was browsing through the journals section of the university library...."