Tossing the pen in the garbage

[Bright_Star]

Being a cashier, I always have a pen available for the customers to use to fill out checks or whatever. & most of the time it's a non-issue. BUT...the one time a lady asked me if she could borrow my pen & I hand it to her. What she did next shocked me. She started filling out her check & stopped & it looked like she was thinking of the amount & that's when she put MY pen in her mouth! I don't think she was aware of doing that & I'm like----> So she finished filling out her check & places the pen next to the debit reader & she went on her way after I got done with her transaction.
So I get a paper towel & use that to grab my pen & I toss it in the trash. There was no way I was gonna handle the pen after that lady had it in her mouth. FAR too many people come into Wal-Mart who are sick & end up making more than half of the store sick as well.

[customersruinmylife]

Yuck! Thats disgusting, but she may not have realised she was doing it. I put pens in my mouth all the time, its just a bad habit.

[Andreamic]

At my gas station I am constantly throwing out pens because the guy who works nights CHEWS them. I can't hand a pen to somebody that's been chewwed on! That's just gross, and disgusting. I made a joke to my manager (this night guy has a few other faults, including he threw out my Timmies travel mug) that we should all chip in and buy him a pacifier

[Kara]

Makes me glad that Kroger had their own pens made. We all carried like 20 pens, and they probably had 15 million in the back (because sometimes we went through that many in a day from people running off with them).

Stupid side note, the Video manager (who was an idiot) only kept like 5 pens back there. She got tired of the pens being taken, so she put fishing line through the hole in the cap and tied it in a not to keep it from being pulled out, then used something like 50 feet of tape to secure the cap to the back end of the pen, then taped the other end of the fishing line to the counter top. This endeavor only resulted in making people want to steal the pens, and we probably started going through twice as many. I tried in vain to explain to her that if the pens run away, we had an infinite supply of them, but I was merely reminded that though I was the assistant manager of the department, she was in charge and I would stand by her decision.

[JustaCashier]

Back when I worked in the parking business, I'd get people driving up to the Cashier Booth all the time with the ticket in their mouth as they dug out their payment. Fortunately, most of the locations I worked used tickets that were probably 5 or 6 inches long, so as long as there was usually plenty of other places for me to grab and hold the ticket, as long as they didn't flip it around and hold it in such a manner that made it hard to do that.

I used to put pens and pencils in my mouth, but have pretty much broken myself of it. As a kid, back in school, I used to chew on my pencils.

Mike

[powerboy]

I told my version of my missing pen. I was working at Office Max, and my ex girlfriends father, gave me, nice, somewhat expensive pen. And this one bitch, completely took it, because I was letting her use it, I would stay there, so I can make sure they didn't take it. Well, this one manager called me over, and the bitch took off with the pen. My fault, for actually using the pen, but I could not help it, it wrote, smooth.

[booger]

I go through a buttload of pens, but work doesn't provide them generally, so I just buy the cheapest ones I can find. It still annoys me when people thief them though, because I had to buy them. *sigh*

My coworker threw away a couple of her pens and scrubbed her counter down the other night because one of her customers was someone she knew for a fact was a methhead. I can't say that I blame her. Have you ever watched a tv special on the effects of meth? When they make the drug the fumes and chemicals get on EVERYTHING.