Pens are often considered fair game in the workplace, at home or anywhere else for that matter. You go to pick up the Bic and there it is ….gone! Of course they only cost a few pence so it doesn’t really matter that much, and all you have to do is ‘borrow’ someone else’s. Nonetheless, not being able to hang on to something to write with can be a bit annoying.

An answer to this is to buy yourself an expensive looking ballpoint, one with gold casing perhaps. It works out cheaper in the long run because such a pen will always be returned to you by the borrower (or biro-er!). It becomes quite a novelty to keep a pen until the refill runs out. Even if your Company provides pens it is still worth doing because your writing implement will always be there when you need it.

Have you found anything else that works?

[ June 10, 2002, 11:12 PM: Message edited by: tellywellies ]

It would be cheaper to just bite the end of your Bic and chew it up real good...Not many touch it then. Not that I'd do this of course! I actually have "stickees" wrapped around my red and blue pen with my name on....so maybe someone would at least have to feel guilty if they unwrapped it! I'm at a front desk, and although all my supplies are free to ME....it still annoys me no end when my tape dispenser and stapler go missing! They both have poofy cat stickers and fluorescent stuff on them....and still...they go astray. I did start putting them in my desk drawer, where NO ONE SHOULD BE....and I did get a reaction! I loved it...people making the instinctive grab and nothing there! They rarely had the nerve to ask me where they were! Funny. My implements are not even mine, and I feel ownership!

Pens - we get through vast quantities of the wretched things. We are supplied with pens with our organisation logo plastered all over them so quite distinctive. Each day we have different staff on duty, they don't have their own desks and each day I think they all pocket their pen.

I have a nasty habit of picking up a pen to write something then I carry it back to my office - I often have three or four by the end of the day which I return to the general office.

We only have one sticky tape dispenser, on my desk. In fact all the things of which we only have one are kept on my desk, then everyone knows where to find it and where to replace it.

Simple answer - wish I'd known 20+ years ago - don't have children - pens left alongside keyboard vanish mysteriously. (had a set of pens/pencils for christmas because I moaned about mine disappearing - guess what - haven't got one to use!!!)