Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

>Most pens get thrown out or forgotten about long before they’re anywhere near their expiration date.

Has anyone ever actually run a pen out of ink before losing it? I came close (like ~3/4" of ink left) a few times in college but those pens are probably lost in a desk drawer somewhere.

View on HN

All the time. I 'lose' my pens all the time, but I only buy the same kind of pen and I buy them in large quantities. So when I "lose" them I'm really just moving them to another place where I spend time. Next time I'm there I 'find' that pen. Eventually some of them do run out of ink, although they've been moved from office to bedroom to car to work to bag and back many times. I have probably 100 or so of these pens saturating my environment.

I mercilessly throw away pens that show up in my workspace but aren't my type of pens. This seems wasteful but I hate random pens of varying quality. You seem to never unexpectedly find high-quality pens. I buy high-quality but ultimately disposable pens that end up costing about $2/ea so if one is ever accidentally stolen it's not a huge deal, plus I can recognize my pens from afar so I just casually grab them back from coworkers.

I buy Pilot Precise v5 pens, and hoard them jealously. If someone wants to borrow a pen, they can have the shitty one I picked up from a bank.

Those are about $1/ea, which is annoying if you're losing them to 'theft' them all the time, but if you end up losing only a few a month and occasionally get them back when you see them on coworkers' desk and ask "hey is that my pen" then it may not be worth the anxiety of hoarding or burden of stocking a pile of shitty loaner-pens.

For all of the numerous faults of my employer, the fact that our office manager only buys the nice Pilot G7 pens in massive bulk makes up for more than I would ever admit to them.

It amazing because no one tries to borrow your good pen because all pens are good pens in our office!

Word to this. It's amazing how much something small like spending an extra $1 on something you use all the time can do to improve the perception of quality and care. I felt so much better about my working-environment once I got rid of cheap tools I didn't like to use and upgraded to things that cost 10% more but are 100% more enjoyable to use.

The V5 and G7s are nice; I have also been pleasantly surprised by the Pentel BL77 rollerball pens we’ve had in the office lately; dirt cheap (otherwise, sigh, we wouldn’t have had them), writes well, long-lasting and even refillable. Comes in loads of different colours.

I mostly bring my own pens to the office, though - my grandfather gave me a Lamy fountain pen when I was a kid, figuring it would learn me to write properly. I’ve been a fountain pen addict ever since.

Yes, it happens often enough. I eventually switched to fountain pens which I could refill from a bottle. I buy a new bottle every couple years and buy a new pen about as often. I also got a few refillable markers.

I don't think I write a lot, especially. I guess I just don't lose pens very often.

All the time when I worked as an illustrator. :D

Today I carry a little Muji pen [0] that writes well but has a teeny cartridge I replace every few months. I can think of maybe two times I've used up a proper Bic. They usually dry out or get lost before they run out.

[0] https://www.muji.us/store/wooden-hexagonal-ball-point-pen-0-...

I've not lost a pen in five years. The closest I've come is leaving one in a restroom stall at work when I was in a hurry to catch a flight, and I called a coworker to retrieve it for me when I realized that I'd left it behind. It was a Pilot Vanishing Point.

Mitch Hedberg was right - buy an expensive pen, and you won't lose it and not care. That VP was $180 new, so it wasn't as odd of a reaction as it might sound at first.

Usually the point ends up failing before running out of ink. I've run a few down to the 15-20% mark but by then they're typically very old and the rollerball stops working.

Often! I journal daily and use a G2 0.38mm that's kept with it at all times. I'll go through two or three journals a year and three or four of the G2s. Once you get in the habit of keeping the pen clipped to the cover when it's not in use, losing one is quite rare.

Buying decent pens with your own money will in fact get you to keep them safe until they run out of ink. I probably end up running out of ink and trashing a pen more often than I lose it.

I lose and then find pens, and when I find them, they seem to be out of ink. Or just dried up, I dunno.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com