The hell of the sandwich lunch

The competition to be the worst two words in the English language is extremely hard-fought. The etiquette of the sandwich lunch requires everyone to take less than they want, in order to signal to the wider group that they are team players who know how to share, not gluttons bingeing on free food. Your own paper plate is fairly typical: two triangles of bread, four salt-and-vinegar crisps, a limp salad leaf and one plum tomato. Someone else takes a bite of a beef sandwich and realises too late that there is no way human incisors are going to be able to tear through it; they end up with a perplexed expression and a carcass hanging out of their mouth. And so it goes until the group concludes that the very worst thing you can do at a sandwich lunch is lunch on the sandwiches.