How to create a better office environment with furniture, supplies, and products

Do you use pencils or pens in the office?

I use my preferred black pens, sharpies for fun stuff (and lists; I know I’m weird), and an almost obscene amount of red pens for editing. Pencils turn me off because:

• The basic wooden pencils are not fun to hold.
• The new wave mechanicals are better to hold but in my experience consistently break.
• They just aren’t permanent. It’s almost like leaving no mark on the world at all.
• A pencil is never going to stand up on a contract, IRS form, or other like-minded document. It’s just handier to always carry an all purpose pen.

The benefits of pencils do include; eraseability, no major chemicals that'll kill you, adjustable note taking, and if you use them on items like file folders you can then re-use them easily.

One thing I have had success using pencils for are planners. I worked for one office where my schedule was constantly ripped out from under me and changed. I like pens but all the massive amounts of white out fumes needed to change my calendar around started to get to me so I had to switch to pencil.

Wait! Don't go; make the jump to see fun stuff about the boring pencil!

One way to get around the boredom of the common pencil is to gather some amazingly cool facts about them. The Discovery Channel Canada has this neat game you can play called Daily Planet MindBender. Once they did a smashing game on pencils.

Here are some facts from the cool MindBender about our childhood pal the yellow pencil:

• 75% of all pencils sold are still the good old basic yellow ones (so much for pencil technology taking over the world).
• Why were pencils first painted yellow?: To indicate that they contained Chinese graphite.
• What is the primary ingredient in pencil erasers?: Vegetable oil
• Approximately how long a line could a modern pencil make before it was all used up?: It could trace the route of a 56 km Ultra-marathon. Or, instead of drawing a really long line, you could write about 45,000 words.
• According to one pencil maker, you could actually eat a pencil a day without risking your health! The lead in pencils is made of graphite, a non-toxic mineral. (I’ll stick to my normal snack of apples thanks).
• An average pencil can be sharpened about 17 times.

Now if you’re one of the few, the brave, who carry a pencil; the next time someone says, “WHY!?” you can impress them with some useless but interesting pencil knowledge.

To see the entire MindBender on the yellow pencil (more fun facts) visit Discovery Channel Canada.