Until you need it for something important then no matter how much ink is in the pen it will 100% of the time stop working for no reason whatsoever
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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I know exactly what you mean. But as I started to read, for a moment I thought you were talking about dental floss, and I was thinking "When are you ever going to need that for something important‽"
Yep, the ones that look full often don't work at all while the ones that look like they have no ink at all can work for a surprising amount of time.
Clearly you’ve never had a novelty pen with a comically small biro inner due to limited space.
Clearly!
Many years ago I worked in a call centre selling insurance. I was there for about a year, and the only time I felt the slightest sense of achievement was that one time I fully killed off a Bic biro. There was a lot of mindless doodling involved.
I've never had them run out exactly but I've had them go weird. Like when the ink sort of separates out into zebra stripes.
My wife keeps a handy pot of biros that don't work. Which is so useful to have when you really need a pen and not frustrating. She says it's to keep them separate from the ones that work and we've had the 'put them in the bin' discussion and somehow she won so...
And the ones that do work are kept in a locked drawer, "so they're in a safe place".
Solution: put the pot in the bin.
I have a really shitty SCP idea based on this concept
You should totally write it.
Use a different pen though. /joke
This is the kind of quality jokes I need in my life!
They all look like they've got plenty of ink inside but they all seem to have dried up when I try to use them!
They last forever at home but at work they seem to run out at a fast rate and I have to search high and low for a new one because no one ordered any as usual.
Years ago (the early 70's), my auntie worked in an office whereby she could only get a new Biro from the cupboard if you brought back the empty one!
There's a scene in Mindhunter showing BTK enforced a similar policy at work, so maybe your auntie had a lucky escape.
Buying more won't help, whenever you really need a pen and your usual one isn't working, the only one you'll be able to find is a cheap minure one that probably came from a kid's birthday party 10 years ago. There's no way to avoid this, you just have to accept it.
When you steal as many pens as I do you inevitably end up with some that are about to run out. You probably haven't noticed because I stole them.
Reading this I do feel sort of bad as I've realised I'm pretty sure I didn't buy most of my current pens so I must have (accidentally!) stolen them.
Instantly reminded of this sketch from The Fast Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7iiOF10gz8
…which was nice. :)