I feel really strongly on this issue as at my school, many people don't bother to even come to school with a single writing utensil and as a result they treat other people's pens/pencils/erasers as disposable. How do you keep people from stealing your precious pens? Do you confront them about it? I have actually caught a pen thief INTENTIONALLY stealing my pen before. :x She took the pen in class when she thought I wasn't looking, then quickly stuffed it in her bag and tried to look innocent. Luckily, she took it from my decoy pencil case full of old/not working pens which I place on the desk. Still makes me REALLY angry though... Even if the pen costs less than $3, it is still MINE! It has SENTIMENTAL value :( I HATE it them most when they don't even ask and just go rooting around in your pencil case. I once had band class and when I left my pencil case INSIDE my instrument case to go sign my friend's yearbook, I came back to find 3 idiots shamlessley using my pens to write with my violated pencil case on the floor next to them with its guts spilled all over the floor. That was NOT my decoy pencil case. I was FUMING mad :evil: but there was only one of me and 3 of them so I calmly requested for the pens back and cleaned up the mess. Anyway, sorry for the rant, but love to hear your opinions on this :oops:

I'm w. you on this -- I hate when people stal my pens. That's why I don't bring good pens w/ me to work or lend out my good pens. People never return pens, which is why i have some cheap ones in my bag.

I would never lend out my good pens, or fountain pens or japanese pens. But then again i wouldnt take them out of the house, even, I think. lol

Decoy pencil case - that's an awesome idea.

:lol:
So you do most of your writing at home then? I actually just came across this today, extreme, but funny nonetheless:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Exploding_20pens
The thing about pen stealing is that you never really get ANGRY enough to take action after a day to cool down unless it's a repeat offender :P

One thing you can do is to carry your pen/pencil case on your person at all times. Maybe on your belt or in an under arm wallet. You also may want to consider reducing the number of pens/pencils that you carry.

On the lighter side... you could rig a decoy pen/pencil box to "explode" with something like flour, or liquid ink. But then you'd have to leave the decoy out so as not to mess up your back pack. When the box exploded the thief would be covered in flour or ink. Or you could take some Bic style stick pens and remove the ink supply and nib. The rear end cap should fit tight enough that you should not have to remove it and glue it back in. Carefully pour a 50-50 mix of liquid ink and water into the now empty barrel. Once full press the cap back on tightly. Put a few of these in a decoy box. When the thief tries to use the pilfered pen they will pull hard on the cap to remove it. When they do the 50-50 mix will spill onto them, their cloths and desk. A ruined shirt might deter the thief from stealing from you again.

Seriously now, about the only way you are going to keep people from stealing from your pen/pencil box is to keep it with you at all times.
:roll:

Hahaha... I am going to build up a reputation of ruthlessly guarding my pencil case!! :D

I am soooo glad that I'm no longer in school! I'd flip out the first time a classmate borrowed one of my expensive drafting pencils and never gave it back! I guess I'd probably not loan out my stuff to others. I might just say something like, "I don't loan out my gear to anyone. If I never got it back it would be devastating as my dear, sickly, Daddy worked so hard to buy me all this nice stuff. He sacrificed his lunches so I'd have nice pens and pencils to write with! He even took a second job in order for me to have nice stuff for school. The last thing he told me before he died was, 'Johnny, please take good care of your school supplies as I ain't gonna be around no more to buy you such good stuff! So if some low life good for nothin' rich kid forgot his or her pencil and tries to borrow one of your's, well son, you just tell them to buzz off!' So, in memory of my late dear ole Daddy, BUZZ OFF!" I'm sure that I wouldn't make to many friends that way, but who needs friends when you've got pens and pencils? :lol: 8)

I absolutly have a zero tolerance for people at school that "borrow" my pens and never give them back. I start like flipping out and after that they leave me alone because I'm the crazy pen girl.
Most of my friends have gone so far as to carry around a bunch of crappy pens and pencils on them just to loan out and these friends don't care about their pens nearly as much as I do.
I hate it when I see tons of pens and pencils on the floor of all the classrooms because if I'm missing a pen 50% of the time it's on the floor and the other 50% someone has managed to jack it from my desk/pencil case.
Man those people make me mad, if I loan out a pencil even to one of my close-ish friends I watch them like a hawk and demand my pencil back as soon as they're done with whatever they're writing.

Usually I say no if the guy asking can't see my pencil case, but it's considered rude to say no when someone can clearly see all your pencils sitting on your desk. Sigh.

I've learned from bitter experience to carry around a couple of cheap, not very good, ballpoints so I always have something to lend people if they ask. The advantage of having a few rubbish pens to hand is you quickly get a reputation for not being worth borrowing pens from! :wink:

Cheers,
Sam

haha! Good thinking. Borrowing pens will soon become a thing of the past!

Carry pens with rubber grips. When asked to lend one, pull it out, look at it, say, "The grip is dirty. Let me clean it first" Then proceed to "clean" the rubber using your own spit! Do this a couple of times. The borrower will probably get so disgusted that he/she will change their mind! If not, then maybe you don't want that particular pen back! :wink:

not having a pen when coming to class is a pet peeve of mine. i have said no to people when they ask me to borrow my pens even though i may have 2 or 3 on my desk.

when you go to war, you dont forget your gun do you? i have a zero tolerance policy for people who forget pens and ask to borrow.

they're MY pens for a reason. it's because they're MINE! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Nice war analogy :).
The spit thing is hilarious cause I do that for my goggles in the pool. It actually cleans them though :P
when you have pens on your desk and still say no, don't people start hating you? When I do that people give me these weird looks.

What are you after? making friends or keeping your gear? They may not hate you, but they probably won't like you either. If they don't respect your decision then you don't need them as a "friend". Besides, sometime, somewhere you are going to do something that will displease someone and they will dislike you for it, so get used to it and get on with your life! You can't please everyone all of the time, so I've long ago quit trying. Be friendly, help others, be kind, but when things are in short supply or money is tight and you have to work with what you've got, then you have to conserve and preserve what resources that you have. People are self-centered and when you don't cater to them as the center of the universe, or the supreme being, or as more important than yourself then they ain't gonna like ya!

You could carry around those cheap 100 pens for a dollar ballpoints and give those out. Take note of those you "loan" a pen to and when it's not returned ban then from your list of "will loan pens too, or add them to your list of who not to lend pens too!

I rant! I'll stop now and go quietly into the night... :roll:

LOL. Maybe I'm mean but it's tough love. Or dicipline... If I have crappy pens on me, I'll loan those but otherwise, no one is touching any of the pens from my collection.

LOL @ gunman's rant. I always find myself in the position of being screwed - missing pens, people asking me for IDEAS on THEIR work while they have no idea what we are doing in the class, people asking me for notes when they have been out of class 5 days, etc, so I really try NOT to make friends. LOLOLOL. I have friends outside of school/class and they don't abuse me. Those are the friends I wana keep. I'll loan them any pens they ask for :lol:

Yep, I started carrying cheap ones to loan out, mostly to my friends though. If I didn't want to lose the pen I just said no. I still remember loaning out a good pen and watching the kid chew it in class in Jr. High ughhhhh, I never made that mistake again!

I have a very servicial spirit, so I have much difficulty refusing to lend pens. I just watch the borrowers like a hawk. I remember this one time I lent my choir director my Kuru Toga because she needed to pencil in some notes on music... I watched her intently but I felt rude asking her for it back. Now I make sure to carry an inexpensive Zebra 0,7mm as loaner. I should carry loaner pens too, but I have not enough pocket space.

I have a ton of pilot g-2's that I've rescued from the ground.
So i usually loan those out one of the 0.7's. They're definitely one of the cheapest pens I own, so I don't feel too bad when they disappear.
It's funny how many people in middle-class society aren't taught to respect other people's things.
I also carry a "loaner sharpie" a bic mark-it, because I got a pack of them for super-cheap one time, and every once in a while, someone will ask for a sharpie and I hand them that.
One time in particular, I had a teacher who told me to remind her to give it back, after using it in class for an illustration when regular pen/pencil was too thin-lined and couldn't be picked up by the projector she was using.
XD I totally saved the class that day.

but I usually avoid handing out any of my pens that aren't immediately replaceable. Also, I use fountain pens regularly, and I get asked to borrow pencils more than pens, because no one carries around pencils in college...

AHHHHHHHHHHH@)(#&@)$*&)($* i am sooo mad! i had my moleskine and pentel slicci .4mm blue pen on my desk and moved both onto my computer because someone was coming to my office for a meeting... the person (a boss) sits next to me, reaches up and grabs my slicci pen to take notes with!!!

after the 45 minute meeting, he says 'i'm tempted to steal this from you because it writes so well but here you go.'

I DONT WANT ANYONE TOUCHING MY STUFFFFFF!@#!@#!@#!@#@!#@!#!#@ THIS is the first time anyone but me has touched any of my jetpens stuff.

im going to wash it in acid now to remove all traces... LOLOLOLOL..

but yeah, im pissed. person makes 5x my salary yet can't come to a meeting prepared...

Wow. That's really rude. But you couldn't say anything because this person is in a higher position than you. That sucks.
I would be as mad as you are if I were in your position. I'm sorry :(

Chill, man, before you have a coronary! 8) (As Vinnie said in "My Science Project", I wear my sunglasses at night, "because when you are cool the sun shines on you 24 hours a day"!)

I just had people go through and steal my Peach Orange Pilot Latte, my green Pilot Precise V7 RT, my Purple Uni-ball 0.7 Gelstick, and my Pentel Flair Marker Pens in Orange and Raspberry
STOLEN.
I lent them to one guy for him to color with, and I sat there the entire time, I got up once to help someone with moving some books around, and when I got back, they were shoved all over the table, and my fountain pens were uncapped and just laid all over the place.
This is highly upsetting.

You think it was the guy you lent them to? you lent him everything including the fountain pens? or was it someone else going through your stuff? Picky thief, huh.

I have no idea. and I couldn't accuse anyone because well, I did leave the table.
And I don't think it was him, I told him to recap the fountain pens, and I'd seperated most of them from the rest of the pens.

Jonel - so sorry to hear this happened! That really really sucks!

I just hope that the pens you are missing are replacable.... it sucks having to re-buy your stuff but at least this gives you an excuse to do so :-DDDD

but take away a lesson from this experience... i personally never take my pen case out of my bag. i keep my most commonly/frequently used pens in one side of my pencil case for easy access and the rest in a larger pocket. this way i can always get to what i want/need w/o having to show off my precious collection.

i can imagine how upsetting it is. i was upset when a boss here wanted to steal my slicci and i flipped out (internally, of course) ......

for what its worth. and, again, im sorry to hear this. if that happend to me, i'd ask people to pay for the stuff otherwise i'd file a complaint with the dean of students.

there is no excuse for a$$holeism .

This reinforces my 'DONT LEND ANYTHING TO ANYONE' mentality... i cant imagine what i would do if someone stole a pen that i could not replace....

Yeah, I guess that's what I get for attempting to be nice to someone.
Why are people so stupid?

It's so funny you ask that. I've been learning that society, on the whole, is absolutely stupid. You really have to pick and choose those you associate with and - apparently - those you lend pens/pencils to... People are just not considerate or caring with things you lend them or even with their own things....

I've learned to put up with it by not making friends with anyone except those people who I KNOW are as considerate and caring as I am. Sorry if this seems like a rant but I am sharing my personal experience.

You're not mean if you don't lend your things out. If people say that you are, let them. It won't hinder you from running for public office so brush their BS off your shoulder. LOL.

No one cares - that's the ultimate conclusion that I am forming as the days go by. I have had people hit my car and damage it and not leave a note, people don't hold the door for me but when i hold it for people, they give me attitude or don't say thank you....... maybe i have a lot of bad experiences bc im living in the heart of manhattan, nyc, but i have been conditioned and have built up a resistance against this type of crapola.

Meh. It's just frustrating to think how mean people are, just because they can be.
And I don't think any of them are intelligent enough to realize that they're the type of people that are ruining this world.

It reminds me of a quote from the First Men in Black:
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

So true. If what you're hurting isn't seen as a sentient being, it's so much easier to hurt it.
I've actually been fascinated by this phenomenon in anthropology and general culture.

I agree with all you. People do seem to be outragously stupid in many instances. As if common sense doesn't exist for them.

Sadly it's not just Manhattan, that sort of attitude is alive and well here in the UK, :( along with a total lack of common sense, which our government feels the need to constantly legislate against - officially you need a hard hat to climb a ladder over here! :shock:

Cheers,
Sam