Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox as it Applies to Pastries

Do we all know Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox? That you can never to get from Point A to Point B because first you have to get halfway there? And before you can get to the halfway point, you have to get to the point that's halfway to the halfway point. And before you get there... You see where I'm going with this? Or not going? The idea is that because you can chop up any length into an infinite number of halves, the distance is, in a sense, infinite and therefore unachievable. 

Oh, that paradox, you say. Yes, Shannon, I saw that Meg Ryan movie.

Good. Of course since Point A and Point B were making out by the end of that movie, we can assume that the paradox doesn't truly apply to real world environments.

Except for pastries.

Here it is. Every Thursday is Snack Day at my office and the Powers That Be buy us breakfast of some kind. I look forward to it all week. Sometimes it's muffins, sometimes it's bagels, sometimes it's donuts. It seems to follow a basic rotation of muffins-bagels-donuts-muffins-bagels-donuts. Though just lately the paradigm seems to have shifted to muffins-muffins-bagels-donuts-muffins-muffins-bagels-donuts. This is a cause of wistful sadness to the GIS department that falls squarely in the "We Love Bagels" fan club, but I digress.

The point is, you can never truly finish a plate of pastries.

Today was a donut day, so when I first went down to the break room to claim my donut with rainbow sprinkles, there were two pink boxes on the counter with approximately two dozens donuts in each.

n = 48

When I went down again about mid-morning (just for tea, mind you; any donut consumption at this point was merely accidental), there was one box on the counter remaining.

n = 24

I passed through on my lunch break, and noticed another discernable dent.

n = 12

And on my way back, the box had taken another hit.

n = 6 

It will carry on this way for sometime, but what really interests me is when n gets down to 1.

You would think that some passerby would simply yoink the last donut and we'd be done with the big pink box, right? Nope. The halfsies continue. One donut becomes half a donut, which becomes a quarter of donut, which becomes an eighth. There seems to be some sociological rule ingrained in our psyches that says, "To end the donut supply is a Very Bad Thing."

It doesn't really make sense from a behavioral ecology standpoint. One should see available calories and take them for his own true precious. When seen in the light of modern rules that govern human interaction, this might be seen as "greedy", a negative trait that one should avoid displaying. On the other hand, it's pushing 4:00 in the afternoon by now and those donuts have been sitting out all day; everyone's had a fair shot. And it's not like anyone's watching you and monitoring your donut consumption rate. Perhaps it boils down to a perceived obligation of work. If you eat the last 0.03125 of the last donut, then there will be an empty pink box sitting around and good amount of derelict sugar sprinkles rolling around on the counter which will now be lacking any guise of purpose. You might feel obligated to move the three meters to the recycle bin and another two meters to the sink to get the sponge. And then there is all this wiping of counters to do. Sure, it's not a lot of work, but the nutrition gain from the last 0.03125 of the last donut isn't going to cover it. Not by a long shot. That's a bad bargain.

Maybe that's it.

It gets sort of painful to watch though. Like we're all waiting around with bated breath for someone to finally end it all, like some massive passive-aggressive office-wide game of chicken. You wish someone would just finish it. Just so you don't have to watch it growing smaller and smaller in increasing microscopic measures, like a baked-goods metaphor for life, even the life expectancy of the sun, or the galaxy, or...

So I should eat it, right? ...Just to save everybody this painful introspection.

Mmm... Donuts...