# Triangles or nothing — the cut is not up for negotiation

> A sandwich cut into triangles beside the same sandwich cut into rectangles, the rectangles struck through in red — the one thing about lunch a child controls completely.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-way-it-has-to-be-cut

One sandwich, cut two ways, seen from directly above. On the left, corner to corner into two
triangles. On the right, the same sandwich cut into two rectangles — struck through with one flat
red line.

A child controls almost nothing about how the day goes. The shape of lunch is one thing they
control completely, and the crossed-out square is the whole argument, in one image.

## Why show the wrong cut struck through instead of just printing the right one?

Because a single correct triangle sandwich on its own would read as decoration — the refusal is
what turns it into an actual position rather than a nice picture of lunch.

Put the rectangles next to the triangles and cross them out, and the print stops being about food
and starts being about a rule. Take the rectangles away and it's just two triangles, which could be
anybody's sandwich cut any way at all.

## Is there anything to sort out before printing a habit this specific?

No permission to chase — it's the household's own record of a preference, not a copy of anybody's
design or anybody else's story.

The only real question is whether the household is comfortable having this particular pickiness on
show, which is a smaller version of the question that runs through this whole material: some
families would print it in a heartbeat, some would rather keep it private, and either is a
reasonable call about a fairly harmless habit.

## Isn't getting this specific about a sandwich a bit much?

Not if the specificity is the actual subject rather than a joke about it — the rectangles aren't
refused because they taste different, they're refused because the shape is wrong, full stop.

That's [the same instinct running the five-step bedtime order](/stories/the-bedtime-order-of-operations),
scaled down to lunch: a child fixing on one small, controllable, arbitrary rule and holding it
absolutely. The arbitrariness isn't a flaw in the preference. It's most of what makes it a real
preference rather than a taste.

## Does this work for a different non-negotiable — a cake shape, a seat at the table?

Yes, and most households have more than one of these once you start listing them.

[Who sits where at a family table](/stories/who-sits-where-at-the-table) is often exactly as
fixed as the sandwich cut, down to which chair is simply wrong for a particular child to be in. A
birthday cake can carry the same design logic — [the way it's iced](/stories/birthday-cake-in-icing)
matters as much to some children as the way it's cut. The mechanism travels; only the object changes.

## Does the rule ever change, or is it fixed for good?

It changes, usually without warning and without the child announcing it — one day the triangles
stop being the issue and something else has quietly taken their place.

There's rarely a conversation about it. Someone notices weeks later that nobody's mentioned the cut
in a while, by which point the print has already become a record of a preference that's over rather
than a description of a current one — true of most of the household rules this specific, not just
this particular sandwich.

## What makes a good version of this if my own child's non-negotiable isn't sandwiches at all?

Pick the actual rule, not a tidied-up version of it — the crust off but only on one side, the plate
a specific colour, the drink poured before the food arrives.

The temptation is to generalise a household's rule into something more universally relatable. That's
the wrong direction. The oddly specific version is the one that's true, and truth is what makes a
print like this land rather than reading as a generic "fussy eater" joke aimed at nobody in
particular.

## Does it print well?

Yes — flat filled shapes with one clean colour break between the sandwich and the strike-through
line hold up well on fabric.

Two colours does the whole job: one for the bread and filling, one red line for the refusal. A
short, deliberate palette usually [prints better than a busy one anyway](/stories/limited-palette-prints-better),
and here it also happens to be exactly what the image needs — nothing about this design benefits
from a third colour.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the cut at [JustOG](/) — the shape that's right, and the shape that gets crossed out.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Cut it into rectangles once, by accident, and watch how fast the whole plate comes back.