Compressed air cans. Hours of fun.
Paper. I have about 2 reams’ worth of recipes from the other popular abuse items, Internet and e-mail.
Chewing on pens isn’t abuse, because if you chew on your pens, and then leave a pen on someone else’s desk, he or she will bring it back (fastidiously, pinched between two fingers and held away from the body).
Also, if you walk around the office with a pen in your mouth, it gives your cow-orkers an opening for a witty quip (like, “hey, don’t walk around with a pen in your mouth”), thus increasing their self-esteem, so that morale (and thus productivity) just shoot through the roof.
I love highlighters. I need at least 4 colors to mark the group production schedule with the titles I need to be aware of.
Wow. I thought for sure this thread wouls sink like a rock. You people should all be put in jail for theivery and abuse.
I, too, am addicted to Post-It’s. I can go through a stack of those suckers in a day. I used to love the little, inch-sized ones, but prefer the larger ones now so I can write two numbers on it and then stick it on the desk. Much more wasteful that way. At least I can make do with the pastel yellow or pink Post-Its…my boss insists on the neon colored ones and they cost more!
I also love with a passion these cool Pilot razor-point markers I have. I’ve never used these anywhere else and they are just totally cool. I haven’t abused them yet, but I’m sure I will eventually. I also love roller ball pens, but we don’t have many where I work. I need to head to Staples to remedy that situation.
Well, we don’t have any depends around, but I find coflex enormously useful. I’ve occasionally borrowed a syringe or two as well-really handy for medicating the cats. I tend to unfold paperclips and bend into odd shapes too. I’ve also made some rather interesting sculptures with small, plastic sample cups although the barbarians around here didn’t show proper appreciation for my talents. 
Oh come on Stinky, do you really think I’m painting my house with white out?
When I was in the real world ( I like my fantasy world just fine)
I *hoarded * liquid paper and post it notes.
I really miss using the copy machine. And the first year I actually had to buy stamps for Xmas cards was painful. Abusing the Stamp Machine Privvies was something I never took lightly. ( I even did my wedding invites on it.) What I lacked in pay, I made up for in free postage.
And never ever think of touching my stapler. My Swingline took me years to steal from someone else and it was the only functioning one in the office. It left the office with me whenever I went on vacation. I trusted no one with my stapler. When I left, I gave myself my Swingline and my parting gift. It was the least I could do for myself.
Milton is my hero.
“Chewing on pens isn’t abuse…”
The first thing you have to do is recognize that you have a problem.
Until then, we won’t have any success in treating the condition and the underlying factors that caused this type of behaviour in the first place.
Well, I guess I DID print about 20 pages of recipes at work (a few times) … and all of the information for the cabin trip in January (directions, menus, etc.) … and I do type all of my personal correspondance at work …
I don’t abuse the stamp machine too much - except when mailing small packages. (I do my bill-paying and banking on-line.) And my Christmas cards have red or green envelopes a lot of the time. Besides, at the end of the year, we raid the postage pay-back box to buy lunch for the office!!
Meh.
I bend paperclips whenever I’m at the computer, but I rarely throw them away. I can work on the same paperclip for several days. Usually they eventually break.
**
I don’t have a problem, Feynn – if you read the rest of my post you’ll see that this behavior is all about subtle management techniques.
Besides, I can quit any time I want. I could quit right now, if I wanted to. Well, I could quit tomorrow if I wanted to – really!
In my defense, I wouldn’t have to keep taking binder clips if people would freaking return them. If somebody gives me a stack of papers held together with a binder clip, I am quite scrupulous about making sure it stays with that stack and is returned to the person. Sadly, others are not so thoughtful. I give away papers with binder clips, and get back stacks with miserable paper clips, bent all out of shape and gouging holes in the papers because the stack is so thick, or with no clips at all, because people are bastards.
twickster47 -
Your claim that your pen chewing is just a subtle management technique is just one method that people with A.P.C.D. (Acute Pen Chewing Disorder) try to justify their actions and explain away what is a very serious form of mental illness. This statement would indicate that you are still in a state of denial.
“Besides, I can quit any time I want. I could quit right now, if I wanted to. Well, I could quit tomorrow if I wanted to – really!”
I’ve heard every excuse in my practice of rehabilitating abused pens and some have even gone so far to say “the pen had it coming”.
Couldn’t you just as easily have your name placed on the pen so that people would recognize that the pen is your property? That would be less harmful and a small step towards getting your illness under control but you first have to admit that you have a problem.
Presently, I have an 80+ year old, oversized, hard rubber fountain pen in a lovely shade of orange (Pod… are you drooling?) that has suffered at the hands of a compulsive pen nibbler. It’s rehabilitation will be very difficult and it is very likely that it will never retain the beauty it had before although I will do everything I can.
I can replace the missing 14k nib and repair the minute cracks in the cap and should even be able to find a proper clip. But those bite marks will always leave a scar.
Perhaps you just need to find a pen that you can love with all your heart, once that’s done you may never consider marring it’s lovely finish and actually feel a need to protect it from others who would seek to deprive you of a cherished posession.
What you need are my stainless steel Parker pens. Impossible to chew!
Daftbugger - That was going to be my next suggestion for twickster if the initial treatment was met with failure. Mind you there are some people who have advanced forms of A.P.C.D. who can even mar the surface of a stainless pen.
Are you in the U.K. by any chance?
Feynn – are you trying to claim that the pen wasn’t asking for it? We’re talking Bic Round Stic (medium), and I say that any pen that lacks the self-respect to complete the spelling of its name is absolutely getting what’s coming to it.
Besides – if I don’t walk around with a pen in my mouth, what inane comments can my cow-orkers make in a pathetic effort to be witty? If they don’t engage in this “banter,” what will happen to morale? I’m not sure I want to answer to those above me in the foodchain if they figure out I’m responsible for the plummeting productivity that would inevitably result were I to remove the cheap plastic ballpoint pen from my mouth.
Staples. Not the store, the actual thing. Maybe it’s my inclination towards violent entertainment, be they movies or video games, but when I’m bored I loved to just take a box of staples, pull out one of those big rows of them, and jam it into the tray like it’s a clip full of ammo or something (it’s even cooler with those staplers with the pull tab loader). Then I just hold it in the air and repeatedly squeeze it, and used staples clink to the desk like spent shell casings.
(crickets, stares)
What?
Things I abuse at work…
-paperclips: I bend them out of shape and clean my nails sometimes…I can’t seems to stand even a hint of dirt in my nails.
-uniball black pens: I use them to draw crazy stuff in…
-discarded library books: I work in a library and I take the old books on the booksale shelf that no one buys from, sometimes I pay the 50 cents for them, sometimes I don’t, and draw masterpieces within.
-red paper: We have this super bright red paper, god only knows why we have it, that I love to take home in stacks and stacks because, well, it’s red!
-the paperclip/magnet thing game: We one of those magnetic things for sensitizing and de-sensitizing books (so people can’t steal them)…it’s loads of fun to set it up on the counter and toss paperclips towards it. They get sucked right onto it by the magnet. We have little contests to see who can get their paperclips to stick from the furthest. I have a very boring job…what more can I say!
Correction fluid…just say know