let’s talk about drama over office supplies

by Alison Green on September 30, 2021

One of my favorite types of office drama is drama over really small things — like the 18-month coffee debate or people who get really territorial about office supplies. Some of what we’ve heard about the latter over the years:

  • “I have to order three different kinds of paper towels because people prefer certain ones (and we have different dispensers for each in the bathrooms and kitchens). Once, ONCE, I tried to streamline it and only order one kind of paper towel. You’d have thought I slaughtered their loved ones in front of them. So now I’m back to ordering three varieties of paper towels.”
  • “On one hand, I can understand because people can be nutty when they get something for nothing but I’ve also worked places where the supplies-under-lock-and-key thing was taken waaaay too far. The worst place was where you had to trade in an old, used up supply to get a new one. It bordered on childish – you had to show that the pen was out of ink. I actually had a coworker refused a new pencil because the old one was ‘long enough’ according to the Guardian of The Supplies ™. It’s a pencil, people, really!”
  • “I used to work in an office that decided they wasted too much of their budget on office supplies, so they announced they were going to completely stop buying paperclips. After that, paperclips became like some sort of prison currency. People would hoard them, and give them out in exchange for favors.”

So let’s discuss office supply drama — people who are unreasonably upset when they can’t get the exact supply they want, supply hoarders, the time you lost your mind over a Post-It shortage, or any drama over supplies whatsoever. Share in the comments.

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  1. FisherCat*

    Trading supplies! For whatever reason, supplies at my workplace are kept in a closed that can only be unlocked by supervisors.

    Since none of us want to get a supervisor everytime we need something, we will strike comical bargains. Like, “Hey, FC, do you have any staples? I’m out”; “Sure, I’ll trade you for four pushpins”

    2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      Ours are locked in a closet as well. But the only reason the closet is locked is because it’s also where the extra tubs of sanitizing wipes are stored – and at the beginning of Covid we had some people taking baggies of wipes home because you couldn’t find them in stores……

      1. FisherCat*

        Ours are locked because its a government office, and the powers that be think bureaucrats love to steal office supplies, I guess.

        Ah well, we are entertained by our office supply trading.

        1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Lol – government office as well, but I guess they trusted us till the great “cleaning wipe thefts” of 2020.

        2. Echo*

          When I interned for a government-funded program, there was no more than the bare minimum of office supplies–the implication was that Americans didn’t want their hard-earned tax money going to frivolous luxuries like different-colored highlighters, I guess…

          1. Jane*

            When I worked for a government office many low level managers supplied their offices with pencils and batteries and such the way school teachers do; as the process of ordering them was so time consuming and challenging that the entire office would come to a stand-still over the need for a AA battery if they didn’t.

            These were people making less than a living wage in a major city.

            1. never mind where I work*

              Where I work, I find it easier to buy some esoteric supplies myself rather than going through the procurement process. And if a few ordinary supplies go missing, well, never mind, it all evens out in the end. I mentioned it to the person who is now the president of my organization, who said he was fine with it as long as he didn’t know about it. I love my job.

            2. Kristina*

              A friend of mine was told by a new manager that they could only have sharpies in one colour, all these many-coloured supplies were just wasteful. He obeyed, and then shut down his whole department for security reasons – the different colours were used to mark different types of explosives…
              It’s kind of a good plan to understand the work you’re managing.

          2. Catalin*

            There is a HUGE difference between a corporate office and government office. HUGE. I used to order supplies for a medical administration type office and I was told to just order anything anyone in our department asked for. ANYTHING. Flower-shaped posties in rainbow colors? Ordered. Four kinds of coffee? Do it. Purple pens? Sure.
            Then I spent almost a decade in a government office, where everything had to be super baseline, minimal and supplies were locked up. The supplies people were told that if someone wants a pen, they get A PEN. Not two. Not 3. NOPE. ONE PEN.

            1. Nona*

              So true! At the start of the pandemic I was working for a state university. A few months into the pandemic I asked them to buy me a web camera and some headphones *from my own project funds*. It took weeks to organise, with multiple levels of approval required, and I had to write detailed justifications for why I needed them, including both why I needed them now, but also why I’d need them once we’re back in the office since remote work would be temporary. They flat-out refused to buy me headphones, and insisted on buying the cheapest camera they could find despite it having awful reviews (at this point the salary cost of all the time spent emailing back and forward would have been multiple-times the cost of the <$50 camera). As predicted by the reviews, the camera broke after 2 months. Now I use one that my husband fished out of the trash at his corporate office.

              1. KatieP*

                I work for a state university, and our IT group was handing-out cameras and microphones like candy at Halloween! When we ran out, that was another story. Sourcing new ones turned into the most bizarre scavenger hunt I’ve ever participated in.

              2. katkat*

                Hahaa, Im not from the US, so many things are different. But I changed jobs during the summer and started to work for a major (in my country), private health-care provider which is rapidly expanding. I travel a lot for my work, and so I was given laptop, mobile, ipad etc. Then I noticed there is no headphones and asked for them. My manager looked at me as if I had personally insulted her and said: “no. we dont give them to just anyone.” She was not kidding. :D

                1. Dutchie*

                  Let me get this clear: they provided you with hundreds of dollars/euro’s/pounds of equipment but could not spare 50 bucks for a pair of good headphones?

                3. katkat*

                  Thats right! I was quite shocked myself :D And it does tell a wider picture on how they operate….

                5. lb*

                  as weird as it sounds, i kind of understand the logic*? headphones are more likely to need replacing & they don’t want to pay multiple times, so you have to be very responsible to be granted that privilege!

                  *understand, not agree, just so we’re clear!

              3. AG*

                I very well know the atmosphere of “no taxpayer’s dollar wasted, no matter what it costs”…

            3. Rachel in NYC*

              I laugh at the idea of only 4 kinds of coffee.

              We’re still in stock by up mode so we only have 2 kinds of coffee for our office keurig and half a dozen for our nespresso machine.

              I got a- “this is all we have?”

              No one is here more than 2 days a week…how much coffee do you need?

              1. TardyTardis*

                Whoever stocked the kitchen was tired of the arguments over the sweeteners (pink blue yellow), and so decided to stock only the yellow and actual sugar (I bought myself a box of the pink to save me serious hours of whining over not quite liking the taste. Yay Dollar Tree!).

                1. Miller_Admin*

                  I work in higher education. I was placing an order for 6 pairs scissors and scotch tape for our classrooms. My former department chair asked why they wanted them. My response, “the students break them and they are carried off.” I had not ordered scissors for awhile. Department Chair’s response, “They should keep better track of them.” Purchase Request was denied. This is an Art program. Was so happy when she stepped down.

            4. Amaranth*

              Until the end of FY when SPEND IT ALL becomes the mantra, because if you don’t spend the allocated budget, they will cut it next year. Fantastic incentives for thrift.

              I did have a pretty nice supply budget, actually, but had to make sure that I kept an emergency stash of a few items. Someone would inevitably take the entire supply of pens and paper instead of ordering ahead for a meeting or project right before the department head needed some.

              1. calonkat*

                Meeting materials are almost all digital now and available online, but oh, the binder wars in the old days. No matter how many times we told people that it took months to order supplies (state government) and get them in, we’d have people just assuming that rules didn’t apply to THEM. So we had entire storage cabinets full of binders and if more were needed at the last minute, there would be a scramble looking for matching binders that didn’t have marks or stickers. When someone left, we’d carefully save any binders that could reasonably be reused too! Fun times!

            5. BlueKazoo*

              This. At my biglaw job they’d get you pretty much anything. Only time they drew a line was when some people complained that other firms were gifting associates iPads for personal use at year end. Our chair said that the firm was using its money to match up to $1,000 in charitable contributions per associate. And that we made enough money to buy iPads if we wanted them that much. Which was totally true.

            6. Anon Supervisor*

              Not that I think it’s reasonable that you only get one pen at work, but there was a lady I worked with that must have used a different pen for every week she worked there (she was with us for over 10 years). I couldn’t believe the sheer volume of pens in her desk.

              Anyway, I started out working in a medical office, and Viagra pens were extremely prized.

          3. Dragon_Dreamer*

            They could always indulge in what I once saw at my college bookstore: Aromatherapy scented highlighters! And yes, I bought them, for shiggles. ;) I learned quickly to hide them, as people would always be reluctant to give them back!

              1. Dragon_dreamer*

                They were Highlighter brand, actually! I haven’t seen them again in years, I bought them in 2003.

              1. often trapped under a cat*

                +1

                I remember that trend and it was awful for anyone with sensitivity to scents.

          4. MsChanandlerBong*

            Reminds me of when Jack Donaghy went to Washington and found out Cooter and company had been working without pens.

            Jack Donaghy : Do you need a pen?
            Cooter Burger : Nope. I’ve kind of gotten used to it.
            Jack Donaghy : You don’t have pens?
            Cooter Burger : We’re not in a recession.

        3. too many too soon*

          Love this rationale. State worker here, and if y’alls trust me enough to give me keys to multiple buildings and the alarm code, pretty sure I’m good with office supplies too.

          1. no phone calls, please*

            Nah, all that access is THE reason you can’t have access to the office supplies! We all know you just wanted to raid the supply closet during off hours and sell it all on the black market!! We’re onto you @too many too soon!

          2. MissBaudelaire*

            My mother worked for a supply chain for a very large hospital. Doctors with access to all kinds of medical information and fancy medical equipment had to ask secretaries to request things like–pens… pencils… paperclips…

            I was baffled. Was there a black market for pens? Were they taking boxes and building forts in their offices? She did tell me there waaas a shortage of pens and pencils around back to school time, and cellophane tape always went up missing during Christmas time. Still though, it flipping pens and pencils.

            1. DrMM*

              I work at a hospital and pens are ALWAYS in short supply. A lot go home with patients and their families and a lot end up accidentally going home with employees too. I always have at least one pen in my scrubs pocket (frequently more) and they end up going home with me. About once a month I gather up all the pens that have gone home with me and take them back. I think I had over 25 one time. Oops.

              1. Zelda*

                There are Two Types of People in This World: pen losers and pen gainers. I’m a pen loser; I tend to just lay them down any old where while my thoughts are on other things, and forget all about it. Like a squirrel burying acorns in the fall. Sounds like you’re a pen gainer.

                1. TardyTardis*

                  I usually buy one of those five-six dollar boxes at Staples of the cheapie blue pens. It takes me about three years to lose them all.

              2. coldfingers*

                At one point I had a series of appointments with my doctor that were the first appointment of the day. It was a pretty laid back office, and he actually saw me before the rest of his staff came in. More than once he came in with a handfuls of pens and ran around distributing them to different cups around the office before he started my visit. Apparently his staff was accusing him of taking pens home in his pockets. He had vehemently denied it, and so was sneaking the pens back in to avoid getting caught.

                1. MissBaudelaire*

                  I’m dying. I do work in healthcare myself (although the pen situation was never so tight). I can picture one doctor doing this.

                  “Shhh, they can never know.”

        4. Red 5*

          Ours are technically locked for the same reason, but we have a guy who basically sits at the door of the room they’re in and doesn’t really question you when you’re like “I need ten boxes of envelopes.”

          He is usually amused by the fact that I’m one of the only people who will regularly show up with things to drop off instead of requests because I’ve been cleaning again and realized we had ten boxes of envelopes.

        5. GreenDoor*

          This is no joke. I, too, work in a government office where we keep our supplies in locked cabinets. Why? Becuase 17 years ago, a council member (a part-time position, mind you) came in and basically went shopping in our cabinets. They got voted out the next year, but we have never gone back to an unlocked cabinet since out of….fear?

          1. MelMc*

            This is the same as the university where I work. The supplies were in a locked room for decades because of one part time instructor who would empty the closet every time she got the chance. She was bold enough to back a truck up to the building to try to steal a desk and bookcase as well. Her stated reasoning was that the university owed her an entire home office since they wouldn’t give her an on-site office for the one class she taught a year.

        6. DustyJ*

          Worked in a library where the stationery cupboard was locked, and one would have to ask nicely for a pen … and even then the Librarian-In-Charge only issued red pens.

          Red pens are useless for government forms, nothing filled in with red ink or pencil is recognised as ‘official,’ so the red pens were useless. She did have black pens, but she refused to allow anyone but herself to use them! So we depended on donations of pens from the general public.

          We also occasionally had bring-your-own-toilet-paper-to-work weeks, when she forgot to order supplies. It was so frustrating to work with her!

      2. RedinSC*

        OMG! At the beginning of COVID someone stole all of our toilet paper. I work for a non profit that needed to remain open, and we lost all of our TP! Then TP then had to be locked in a closet and only a janitorial staff person could access it.

        1. Alli*

          I was furloughed at the beginning of covid, and my office was closed. I admit. I stole the TP. If they could cut me out without health insurance or an income during the beginning of a global pandemic living in a state that had the highest death rate during the early months, they could spare 6 rolls of one-ply. I truly have no regrets.

        2. Turtle*

          I didn’t steal any, or plan to, but I thought if it got really bad I could come in and USE it. Also thought about the fully stocked vending machines in case their was a run on the stores or something. LOL.

        3. Been There*

          My first job had the TP locked away as well because it got stolen, and this was before covid… They also charged 20 cents for coffee, when it was free for people working in the head office.

          1. 1idea*

            I worked at an engineering company that had merged with a local manufacturer. We had a soda fridge stocked by the company, unlimited coffee and tea, gum, free access to supplies, and never any problems. The office attached to the manufacturing had only basic coffee that the receptionist would make, and not all day, and all supplies locked up because they would otherwise be regularly cleared out by employees who felt they deserved a little extra. It was sometimes an awkward cultural dynamic and I think it causes some tension with the merged leadership, but our people felt it was necessary to keep up the perks to attract and retain the types of engineers they wanted – and we never had a problem holding on to stock like the other location.

        4. Momma Bear*

          With the current TikTok trend of stealing soap and whatnot from school bathrooms, multiple schools have had to lock down and limit use.

        5. Elizabeth West*

          I could definitely see this happening at Exjob. The cleaning supplies closet was always locked but on the rare occasions I walked by when it was open, I could see shelves of lovely paper towels and toilet paper and wipes. It was tempting to yoink it even when there wasn’t a pandemic!

        6. BlueKazoo*

          I know people who would take home a roll lr two once in awhile when work was so crazy they legit didn’t have time to go to the store. And delivery wasn’t easy to coordinate with unpredictable schedules. I felt that this was pretty fair considering the circumstances. I probably would have done the same with the pandemic shortages if I still worked there. No time to go check ten stores.

          2. often trapped under a cat*

            At one place I worked, they used rolls without the cardboard core (which was cool) and the cleaning staff would often remove used rolls from dispensers while there was still a fair amount of toilet tissue available…but not enough to get through a full day.

            These partial rolls were stored in an unlocked cupboard in one restroom. During my daughter’s early years, when my budget was really tight, I regularly pilfered a few rolls at a time, without making an apparent dent in the supply. Yeah, I was just saving a few bucks, but sometimes those few bucks meant I could pay the school lunch bill that month.

        7. CatMintCat*

          I work in a small school and, on a normal day, there are around 100 people using the facilities and, presumably, the toilet paper. When we all went home, whoever is in charge of supplying such things kept sending the normal amount. After two weeks, the boss was begging us to come and take some home, before the entire school was taken over by cartons of toilet paper.

        2. Toads, Beetles, Bats*

          I once had an office manager who would make you “sign out” Post-Its. As in, you’d have to return it at the end of day. This was the private sector. She was also in charge of email credentials and wouldn’t tell me my own password for weeks. Her stance was “I already signed you in on your laptop.”

          2. infosec*

            The idea that this meant your laptop was unlocked for weeks horrifies me to my core. Better hope you trust the cleaning folks, any random passers-by… Hell, if it were stolen the thief would have whatever they wanted.

            1. Rosalind Franklin*

              I worked at a biotech place where it was a game to try and find unlocked sources of IP – if your computer was unlocked, someone was going to use your email to send the corporate lawyer an email with their name in the subject line. That person got a small bonus, and you got to talk to the lawyer about why you didn’t think the company IP was valuable enough to protect. Leave your lab notebook out? Have fun retrieving it from the lawyer’s office.

              I am very into locking my computer to this day!

              1. Momma Bear*

                Old company did similar with chip access cards. If the boss found your card left at your desk, you would have to go to their office and explain why you left your computer vulnerable before you got your card back.

                1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

                  My company does that too.
                  Only time I’ve ever seen a person get a pass was because they went running to the restroom with their face hurried in a trash can while throwing up. They were actually praised for being able to lock the computer and grab the trash can before getting sick.

                2. Jessica Ganschen*

                  When I was in the Air Force, anyone in our shop who left their CAC (Common Access Card, ID with chip for accessing various systems) in a keyboard or lying on their desk when they went to lunch got a talking to. People who failed to learn a lesson from this the first time or two were liable to come back and find that it had been frozen in a block of ice.

              3. OyHiOh*

                A theater organization I once worked for would do this with costumes and props. Now, to be fair part of the organization’s explicit mission is training students for careers in theater. Also, the building is small and out of place items create hazards quickly. So the directors and staff would poke around after a show to see that costumes were hung and that props had made it back to the prop rack. Things left lying out tended to disappear. Students who had somehow not learned to put their things away (despite reminders in classes and reminders throughout tech week) could occasionally be heard running around asking if anyone knew were X was. If not found, they had to go metaphorically hat in hand to the director and account for their mistakes.

                Third graders in the junior productions basically got a pat on the head and an assistant would be told to keep an eye out to make sure the kids took care of their costumes/props. Young college something’s who’d done a few years of shows got a professional talking to, since it was expected they really did know better.

              4. Karo*

                My old company had a very strict locking policy because the company at large dealt with PII (though my department didn’t have access to it). Still, anytime someone left their computer unlocked and stepped away, everyone in the department would get a long email about how they’d pay for lunch or how much they love cats and how upsetting it is that you can’t hug every single one of them.

                1. Rufus Bumblesplat*

                  To be fair, I do love cats and wish I could hug them all so that email would be accurate for me…

            1. Rachel in NYC*

              I want to know if you had to return used post-it notes.

              …and did they keep a record of Elsa hasn’t return 7 yellow post-it notes. Kristoff hasn’t returned 4 yellow post-it notes, 6 blue post-it notes and 2 pink post-it notes. Sven hasn’t returned 15 flower shaped post-it notes.

              and once a month was there a meeting where they announced who hadn’t returned what post it notes?

          1. Koalafied*

            If I worked in such an environment I’d get a kick out of bringing in some kind of cheap but frivolous item and turning it into a status marker. Like colorful disposable straws, maybe. Of course, I’d have to keep them in a canister with a sign reading “THESE STRAWS ARE PRIVATE PROPERTY. DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION.” to make their value clear to others.

          2. Artemesia*

            I worked at a university where the President used blue carbons; it was like if you got a blue carbon in the mail the heavens would sing or something and his long time AA was very jealous of his status perks. The University merged with a small college which became one of the schools of the university and the new Dean of that college discovered a closet full of carbon supplies when he moved into his office. He was very frugal (the kind of guy who would take you for lunch and use a coupon) and so he told his AA to use up this excess of carbon sets —- THEY WERE BLUE. It was immediately assumed to be some sort of coup attempt or at least dis of the noble leader, the only one allowed to have blue carbons. One of the dumbest kerfuffles I have ever observed in the workplace. The new Dean of course was NEW and had no idea that anyone gave a rat’s azz about the color of carbon sets.

            3. Joie De Vivre*

              Can someone explain what blue carbons in an office are? I googled it & came up with carbon removed by ocean ecosystems.

              It is copy paper?

              1. EngineerGal*

                Carbon paper used when typing on a typewriter-you put in multiple sheets of paper with carbon sheets in between so you have copies of what was typed. Before photocopiers were around this was how you had copies of memos etc

                Usually carbon paper was black leaving dark gray print-blue was unusual.

              2. Mitford*

                I worked in a university office years ago where you had carbon sets where you could make three copies of things at a time. Each copies was on a different colored paper. Yellow carbons were sent to accounting, blue carbons were sent to the dean, green carbons were the office’s file copies. Individual carbon sets could just be blue, or yellow, or green. That’s what I thought of when I heard blue carbons.

          3. LittleMarshmallow*

            I’m not allowed to have the “super sticky” post it notes at work because I put them on paper things and then the paper rips and it brings shame on my me, my family, and my cow. :/

          4. Adultiest Adult*

            We just had the post-it note conversation at my office and I flat out told the junior staff that I buy my own. Same with pens. I started my career in an extremely underfunded clinic, and the only things issued to you were a giant metal desk, a chair for you and the client, and a phone straight out of 1983. Anything else you want, you buy yourself. This office is a little nicer, but I do chuckle about the fact that the VP’s austerity budget of a few years ago meant that we could no longer order plastic cutlery for the break room. Plastic forks were going to save the company! You guessed it… I started buying my own and have a box of forks and spoons in my bottom desk drawer to this day. (The cutlery made a quiet reappearance just before Covid, though I guess as a concession we started getting the flimsiest kind!) I don’t know what I would do if I worked in an office where basic supplies were just…supplied!

            1. Silence Will Fall*

              I moved from nonprofit to the private sector a few years ago. There is a supply room on each floor of the building. When I had the tour on my first day, I about died looking at 8 different kinds of pens(!), multiple sizes/colors of post-its(!), endless reams of copy paper(!!!). Then, my colleague mentioned that if there was anything missing or if I needed anything else, I could just message the supply room and they’d bring it up/order it. A few days later, I wandered down to the supply room in need of a shipping supplies. It was like a Staples down there! I’m still not convinced that I didn’t actually die and go to office supply heaven.

        4. Susie Q*

          Our owner hates Post-It notes and forbids us from purchasing them with company money. We got into a partnership with the 3M and one of the giveaways was Post-It notes. You would have thought we won the lottery with the way the staff reacted to having Post-It notes.

          2. Tazzy*

            I was briefly the receptionist for this scatterbrained doctor that tried to join our practice. She scolded me for putting “important information” “willy nilly” inside a chart where it could fall out…. it was the name, appointment time, and what they were there for. Not something that needed to be written down in my handwriting, and was truly just there to help her.

          3. Dutchie*

            What is there to hate about post-it notes?

            (I also find it hilarious that exactly your company ended up in a partnership with 3M.)

            1. Dorothy*

              I hate them, they go missing or end up stuck on the wrong document. Usually it makes more sense to write directly on the document. My biggest pet peeve is staff using them to write down a customer’s credit card number. Because I then find the stupid thing stuck to my shoe, or on a random piece of paper on the counter.

              I actually staple them to things when I use them, just to avoid them going astray. Maybe if we partnered with 3M I’d have better quality stickies and this wouldn’t be a problem, but ours always seem to wander all over the office.

              1. Ralkana*

                My office staff puts information on post-its on packing slips and then sends it out into the yard. It disappears before they reach me for billing and then I have to track people down and ask what happened and why they didn’t write the important info on the shipper.

                “Well, I put it on a sticky note!”

                Augh, just write it on the shipper!

                1. Kristina*

                  We used post-it notes for the interminable SWOT exercises aimed at a)proving my field is not an important one and b)teaching us to audition for approval from other, more important fields. After few years doing this, I think I have a genuine case of PTSD triggered by post-it notes up on a wall – I will leave the room at that point to have a quiet panic attack somewhere else.

              2. Anonomatopoeia*

                So, a reason TO write down the CC number on a sticky is that then you can easily separate the sticky from the other identifying information, making it harder for someone looking in the trash to have everything they need to head to Amazon and order seventeen adult llamas to be rush shipped to Botswana and dressed in cute purple sailor suits. *shrug*

            2. Susie Q*

              Dutchie- I don’t know why people hate Post-Its so much. And yes, it is hilarious that we have a partnership with 3M. When the Development Director told me, I just cackled with laughter and asked him if he knew that 3M made Post-Its. He did not.

              To be honest, they have other great items we receive- bandages that stick well, sunglasses that the landscape crew loves, good laminating sheets, great packaging tape, etc.

              1. KateM*

                I keep reading “bandanas that stick well” and thinking “them making sticky notes doesn’t mean everything has to stick!”.

      4. Krabby*

        My mom works in a lab that deals with toxic chemicals. They have N95s they need to wear while handling said chemicals. At the beginning of Covid my mom walked in on one of the volunteers from another lab in the building clearing out the cabinet where they kept all of their N95s.

        Apparently the volunteer’s lab manager had realized that they were out of them and asked her to go from lab to lab grabbing everyone else’s N95s. The volunteer had no idea she wasn’t allowed to do that. The lab manager got in a lot of trouble and everyone locked up their supplies after that.

      5. TootsNYC*

        At the beginning of COVID, when PPE was in short supply, there were quotes reported in the media saying that hospital staff (nurses, RTs, housekeeping–everyone) was taking them home. Cue outrage from nursing organizations, etc.

        But a relative of mine supplied my in-laws, her parents, and her other family members with boxes of surgical masks she brought home from the hospital.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          About six months before I moved to CurrentCity, I saw a clearance stand filled with small boxes of surgical masks near the pharmacy at Walmart. I bought two, thinking I’d keep them in my emergency kit in case of dust or smoke. So I had some masks when the whole thing began.

          I’ll never be without them again. Nev. Er.

          1. Crooked Bird*

            We had a box of masks because my very health-conscious mother-in-law had sent them to us in case we wanted to use them for traveling. Very much prepandemic, they’d sat unused for a year. I felt they were a very silly item to have on our shelf.

            Ha.

            1. Charlotte Lucas*

              We had some N95 masks because my SO enjoys woodworking, & they’re a common safety supply for people who don’t enjoy breathing sawdust particles.

      6. womanaroundtown*

        I also work for the government, in a health-adjacent agency. When Covid hit mid-March, I went to a meeting at one of the main health department offices, and my coworker pulled me into a back room to excitedly show me the GIANT, MILTARY-GRADE trunk that the state government sent over. It’s locked with a basic padlock, but only she has the key. So she’s asking me what I think is in it (she already knows), and I have no clue what could be so secretive and important. She ceremoniously opens the trunk, throws back the lid, and reveals… two boxes of masks, one tube of Clorox wipes, and a box of plastic gloves. Just sitting in the bottom of this (mostly empty) giant, military-grade trunk.

    3. OhNoYouDidn't*

      Oh my. I think I’d organize a rebellion to encourage everyone to constantly go to supervisors asking for supplies hoping the supervisors would become sick of it, they’d change the policy. Officer workers unite!

      1. FisherCat*

        I wish this would work!! But, no, government drones having more than the basics is obviously waste & abuse of funds [sarcasm] (I just buy a lot of my own supplies):

        1. Sara without an H*

          I used to buy my own pens when I worked for one of the State Universities of New York. The state issued pens were…pretty basic and didn’t work well. Rumor had it that they were made by prisoners who were mad at society.

          1. Artemesia*

            for a long time my workplace bought pens kind of like those in hotel rooms i.e. created to write a couple of hundred words max and then run out of ink. It had to cost them more to replace them than to buy decent pens in the first place.

            1. Pennyworth*

              My bank used to have heaps of branded pens like that. I couldn’t understand why they wanted people to take home pens advertising the bank if they were just going to end up in the trash days later. Such a waste to manufacture a pen and deliberately put a tiny amount of ink in it.

            2. FisherCat*

              No clue if its factual, but I’m told that prison labor/inmates enjoying a small laugh at the Suits’ expense is why the supposedly locking drawers of our office furniture rarely-to-never match with the keys sent with them.

              I don’t have cause to lock my desk anyway so I choose to believe and appreciate this petty revenge.

          2. Elitist Semicolon*

            A fair bit of the office furniture that my uni purchases is made by prison labor. When I took my current job and was offered me new furniture, I refused to go through that contract and instead asked my department to order via an actual retailer. Much better.

            We also have approved vendors that we have to use for office supplies, which means that the options for any individual item are limited. I brought in a multi-colored pack of Stabilo pens and one of my (now former) colleagues pitched a fit after seeing me use one in a meeting because she thought the manager had managed to order them special for me and not told anyone else. The manager had to explain, no, Semicolon paid for those herself and brought them in. This colleague did the same with my laptop stand, now that I think about it…

            1. MissBaudelaire*

              Dang people get upset about stuff. I always brought my own pen and notepad to the hospital I worked at. But it was kind of obvious my pen with the fuzzy llama topper and the notepad with the kitty cats were probably not supplied by my company.

          3. So long and thanks for all the fish*

            I’m at a state university as well, and I think the only pens we have are the ones we get from vendors. At least they usually have nice pens!

            1. Manders*

              I work at a state university and it’s against the rules to accept pens from vendors! Also when we order from whatever vendor we are using that fiscal year for office supplies, you need to log in to see what you can actually purchase – much is limited by our university.

    4. Librarian of SHIELD*

      I used to work in a place that locked up the office supplies in the most complicated system I’ve ever heard of. The key to the supply cupboard was in a locked key box. The key to the key box was locked in the safe. Only a handful of people in the office had the combination to the safe, so if you ran out of staples you had to find a person with safe access. Then that person had to open the safe, get the key to the key box, lock the safe, open the key box, get the key to the supply cupboard, lock the key box, open the supply cupboard, take out a box of staples, lock the supply cupboard, open the key box, return the supply cupboard key, lock the key box, open the safe, return the key box key, and lock the safe.

      I started bringing my own pens from home because it was exhausting.

        1. Librarian of SHIELD*

          The best part is that this system annoyed the crap out of my manager, but it never occurred to her that as the manager she was in charge of the building and could change the key system if she wanted to.

      2. Free Meerkats*

        You left out the logbook and request forms – in triplicate for audit purposes – that were, of course, locked up in a different location with a lock that a completely different set of people had access to.

      3. mrs__peel*

        I want to see an “Ocean’s Eleven”-style film where a crack team of professional thieves assembles to steal the office supply key.

    5. Anon9*

      I work on a federal government site but am a contractor. We have contractor supply closets and civil servant supply closets and both are locked and you have to get your admin to let you in so you don’t take from the wrong supply closet. God forbid I use a pen bought by the federal government instead of one bought by my company using contract funds from… the federal government.

  2. Anastasia Beaverhousen*

    If an office refused to give me paper clips, staples, etc. they would get stacks of uneven, unorganized paper. If you don’t give me the resources I need to do my job you get what you get!

    2. Rachel in NYC*

      If anyone needs paperclips, I’m pretty sure my office would be happy to fedex overnight to you. I’m pretty sure we’re confused about why we have so many. We use binder clips by the boatload…or rather we used to…before there was a pandemic…which forced us to go paperless and we aren’t going back.

      But yeah. we’re swimming in a rainbow of folders, paperclips and binder clips that we will probably never use now.

      1. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

        In our office it was rubber bands. We have tons of bags of rubber bands, most of which are so aged they break if you ever attempt to use them.

        1. FD*

          I secretly threw away every rubber band in our office because they were all perished. No one has asked for more to be purchased in the time since.

            1. kicking-k*

              The archivists of the world thank you. Removing fossilised rubber bands is our second least favourite thing. I think rusty staples are JUST worse.

                1. kicking-k*

                  I’ve seen them in situ from time to time. Usually I still have to remove them, though they don’t rust, as any staples make scanning tricky. And they’re usually thicker than the steel type.

        2. Ama*

          I worked at a relatively new grad school for a while (it was three years old when I was hired). Whoever had done the initial supply order had for some reason ordered about 4 dozen of those boxes of 1000 rubber bands. Academics aren’t really big rubber band users — we could have easily managed solely with the rubberbands I collected off of the mail delivery which I used to make a rubber band ball at my desk (that thing was bigger than a softball by the time I left). We also had reams of ledger size paper which only got used during budget season (and even then we probably used no more than two dozen pages or so).

          However the bulk supply orderer also ordered four dozen 1 liter bottles of hand sanitizer which I have to imagine probably finally got used up this past year.

          1. Ace in the Hole*

            We had a manager who did something similar. Guy ordered 50,000 pairs of nitrile gloves at the start of covid.

            We have a total of 30 employees, and half of us already wear a different kind of glove for non-covid safety reasons. The rest don’t have a need to wear gloves at all for 90% of what they do. Two years down the road, we still have more than half the gloves left.

          2. NotYourCanteenLady*

            I worked at a company that gave out milk to drink at the workplace. It worked fine for years. Suddenly, late and night shifts started to complain there was never enough supply. Procurement did a survey who wanted how much, and ordered according to order. Same thing again. An email was send out to explain it was for workplace consumption only, and bringing it home was stealing. Suddenly, we had huge amounts of leftover milk, seems like we have been supplying whole families before. And don’t even get me started on how much ugly cheap canteen cutlery disappeared over time….

            2. University tales*

              Re the cheap canteen cutlery.

              At most Australian universities in the 1980s, the cafeterias were run by the student unions.

              At one university, the union saved thousands of dollars a year by switching to plastic cutlery.

              Because the metal cutlery had a habit of disappearing at the start of each semester, when students were setting up share houses.

          3. DesertRose*

            I worked a temp job for a public utility, and part of my job was ordering the office supplies. The only even slightly pain-in-the-neck part of it was asking the manager to come input the company credit card for payment.

            But here is my mistake.

            I had gone to my coworkers asking if they needed anything, and I’m merrily placing the order. One of the items I ordered was note pads (the little 5″ x 8″ kind, because we all used them to make notes at our desks). I thought I was ordering 12 of them, which is a reasonable supply of notepads for the department of four or five people.

            No, ya girl ordered 12 packages of notepads; each package had 12 notepads, so we got 144 notepads.

            The manager just laughed and told me to put them in the supply closet (actually a vacant cubicle) and they’d get used eventually (which is true).

            1. Mid*

              My office of 9 people orders 144 of those small notepads at a time, because people go through them like those mini pages are the only thing between them and salvation. It’s truly impressive.

          4. Asenath*

            For some reason, one (or more) of my co-workers used to take the rubber bands from the mail deliveries, and put them around a pencil holder until there were so many there it looked like a rather odd Michelin tire man. Some of them must have been ancient – the few times I tried to use one, it snapped immediately, so I did what everyone else did and got some from the supply closet right across the hall. Our supply closet was unlocked, well-stocked, and with a “leave a note” system if you noticed anything was running low or wanted something ordered. It must have been unique.

            1. Lady_Lessa*

              Our supply room is unlocked. The only difference, rather than leaving a note, we should go across the hall and tell purchasing. (We are a small company, so we have 1 in purchasing,)

          5. After 33 years ...*

            We once had a visit from an academic speaker whose passion was collecting rubber bands. Our supply of hundreds of bands of different styles and colours found a good home!

          6. All the words*

            Sometimes *cases* of an item get ordered or delivered instead of *units*. Oh, you want 10 pads of paper? Here’s 100. You’re welcome.

        3. Been There Done That*

          Just last week I opened a box of staples and they were all rusted. How long had those been around? Of course, this is at a nonprofit and quite often we operate on the “oh my gosh, we might need that some day, so don’t through it away” philosophy.

        4. Rachel in NYC*

          So many (and in every size) but I don’t trust if I made all the rubber bands disappear someone wouldn’t decide that “we’re out of rubberbands and need more.”

          however, my office’s tendency to never get rid of things until I’m “why the heck do we have this” is why nieces have an adding machine to play with.

        5. Elizabeth West*

          We used long rubber bands around file folders with wood finish samples in them at my old job. They often ended up as missiles during rubber band fights.

      2. Johnny Karate*

        If you really don’t need them anymore, a local school/teacher might be happy to take them. Most districts don’t provide those for teachers, and I know I never have enough folders.

        1. IndustriousLabRat*

          Yup. My best friend is a public school art teacher in a chronically under-funded district. She has to do multiple fundraisers annually to keep even basic supplies stocked up. I often end up with expired certified test tapes for coating adhesion evaluation; once they are past their use-by date, they can’t even be on the shop floor, so off they go! And with certs, these tapes are as much as $75/roll (3M#250… this stuff looks like regular masking tape, but is comparable to Gorilla tape in terms of its awesome adhesion power!). Support your local teachers!

          1. Ppmarigolds*

            Wait. Is the tape part related to your teacher friend? Is she giving you the tape? Are you donating the tape? Or was this just two badass stories sort of superimposed? I’m with you here, I’m just curious about the narrative I’m trying to follow, and the tape part. :D

      3. FricketyFrack*

        I worked for a government department of, I don’t know, maybe 300 people? The divisions were spread across a couple of different buildings, and smaller groups had their own supplies. When we moved to one building, there were two supply rooms, one on each floor, and we combined everything before the move to figure out what the department actually had on hand. Turns out, we had enough paperclips that we estimated we wouldn’t need to buy more for roughly 10 years. The rest of our supplies weren’t quite so out of control, but I’m guessing no one needed to order any of the basic stuff for at least a year.

        1. PhyllisB*

          When I was a teenager, my grandparents had a friend who worked at a paper mill. He brought them one of the spools of toilet paper that individual rolls were spun into. (I know this is not proper lingo, but you know what I mean,) That roll was HUGE!! They set it by the toilet and everyone who came to the house was like ???!!! They didn’t have to buy TP for years.

          1. PhyllisB*

            Not about office supplies but: my dad was a packrat/hoarder. An organized one, but…when he died and I was cleaning out his house I found TONS of packets of sugar, salt, pepper, ketchup, ect. (He was hospitalized a lot and saved things from his tray.) Well, the hoarder doesn’t fall far from the tree, so I took at the salt, pepper, and sugar (threw out the other condiments.) I opened those little packs and put them in canisters and shakers and such. I didn’t have to buy sugar for over a year and had enough salt and pepper for almost 6 months.

          2. KateM*

            So, they enough room next to the toilet for years’ worth of toilet paper? I guess they didn’t use it much.

        2. calonkat*

          I tend to be the one who cleans out the desks of the people who leave. The longer people have worked in state government, the more office supplies are hoarded in their drawers. I’ve found multiple packs of staples, bags of paper clips, uncounted pens/pencils/markers, up to 5 staple removers (sometimes with an equal number of staplers), so many broken items saved “just in case” I guess, and my favorite, someone had stowed away a paper cutter (one of those big guillotine things) for their own personal use!

      4. Red 5*

        Seriously, I’ve been in charge of us digitizing old files so that we can access things remotely and I have so many paperclips I’ve taken off of these things. I keep the binder clips for myself, but I’ve had to just start throwing the paper clips away because I got tired of sorting the rusted ones from the usable ones.

        I’m also personally on a crusade to abolish staples because of how many I’ve had to remove from stacks of old paper so they can be scanned and then thrown away. I know it’s irrational but I just can’t take it anymore. Also, staples also rust. Everything rusts. Except rubber bands, which disintegrate in the grossest way and leave marks all over whatever they were banding together.

        1. Dramatic Romantic*

          I am HERE with you on no staples! Every time I get a stack of work from one specific employee, it is full of staples. And I need to go through the documents and pull out every stapled together piece of paper so it can be digitized. Staples are the bane of my existence.

          1. Red 5*

            I eventually got to the point where I just started chopping the corner of the papers off with the industrial paper chopper. It works until somebody has stapled something super far down for no dang good reason and you’d be cutting off text.

            I don’t know why people don’t just use binder clips (which also rust but much less). They make super tiny ones! Or maybe your papers don’t need to be stapled constantly!

            1. Amaranth*

              They stack horribly. More than a few and the one corner of the pile is much higher and bent and fits into folders funny. Not that paper clips are much better – and they get caught on everything.

              1. Empress Matilda*

                Alternate them! Put one in the usual place, top edge near the left corner. Then put the next one on the left edge near the top corner. Third one goes on the top edge again, but one clip’s width towards the centre. And so on. It works perfectly, and your stack of binder clipped papers ends up nice and even!

                I *may* have spent a lot of time working out this system. In my defense, it was out of necessity…

          3. allathian*

            I’m so grateful that we’re fully electronic, after all, those documents that were stapled together were no doubt created on a computer. Most of the applications we process are also created on our online systems, so that helps a lot.

            1. FrustratedFran*

              I’m so jealous. I manage the Testing Center at a local community college, and I’ve been trying for ages to get our office to go paperless, but it’s not going well. After YEARS of faculty complaining that they needed to print exams off to bring to us (“why can’t we just email this to you”) we finally started moving some of our forms online due to Covid. Great right? Nope, now faculty are complaining about the online system (it’s so freaking easy, there’s like 5 questions, and I even sent you the link!) and refusing to use it.

      5. Siege*

        We moved offices right before the pandemic and I’m still surprised I never caught the financial manager burning boxes of novelty paper clips and flower-shaped post-its in the back parking lot. We had, at my estimate, a metric ton of each, left from the previous staff, who liked and used them.

        1. Princesss Sparklepony*

          I had a long term temp job doing admin and part of that was making sure the supply cabinet was stocked. This was a long time ago so I’ve forgotten what the item was but my predecessor truly believed in this item and there were so many of them. So so many of them. No one ever used them. No one knew why she had bought so many. It was a mystery…. I hesitated to toss them out as that was my initial reaction, but she was slated to come back after the surgery or whatever she was out for was over (it was a six month posting that ended up being closer to 8 months.) Plus she was somewhat of a tartar and I didn’t want her coming after me.

      6. Artemesia*

        When I was teaching we had interns create notebooks of their projects as well as analysis assignments where they related what they were doing on the job to coursework (e.g. analyze their organization using models they had learned in org theory etc etc)

        Over the years a fair number of students didn’t pick up their notebooks and so when I retired I had lots of those big plastic 3 ring binders. I discovered that inner city schools in our city really treasured them because they had lots of kids who couldn’t afford to buy supplies and have their own notebooks — I was able to give them over 100 of the things.

      7. Elitist Semicolon*

        The manager of my former office somehow managed to order 10,000 paperclips. We had not even made a dent in the supply by the time I left about 6 years later.

      8. mrs__peel*

        I used to work in a federal office, and one year they practically *begged* everyone to take a whole bunch of (totally unnecessary) three-ring binders from a huge batch in the supply closet. The reason being that, if they weren’t used, we wouldn’t get that line item in our budget next year.

      9. Olivia Mansfield*

        We have a lifetime supply of staples from a previous admin who thought she was ordering a number of individual boxes of staples, but she actually ordered cartons (not cases — actual *cartons*) of them, instead. We will never, ever run out of staples.

      10. Empress Matilda*

        My org is in the process of moving out of an office building we have inhabited since the 1950’s. We’re going paperless in the new office – this was the plan even before Covid, and of course it’s pretty easy now that we’ve been paperless for the past 18 months anyway.

        We have boardrooms full of office supplies. Boxes of pens and post-it notes and binder clips, stacked waist-high against every wall as far as the eye can see. It’s pretty awe-inspiring, actually…

        1. OfficePro*

          I hope that y’all find a good place for those supplies that isn’t the trash! Teachers will usually take a lot of this stuff.

          1. Empress Matilda*

            I hope so too! I don’t actually know what’s happening to them all (other than 3 ring binders, which are straight up landfill. Nobody wants them, even pre-pandemic.)

            1. Princesss Sparklepony*

              I think some schools can use the 3 ring binders. You might want to check on it. You never know.

      11. Amtelope*

        We have SO many three-ring binders, which we used to ship in huge boxes around the country in preparation for meetings. Now even if we ever go anywhere again in person, the materials to review are still going to be provided online. We’re never going to use these binders, but we will probably never get rid of them, because what if we need them?

      12. Ralkana*

        Our office admin ordered what she thought was 12 boxes of small paperclips and it turned out to be 12 dozen boxes. This was at least six years ago and I think we’ve used eight boxes, since we rarely use the small ones. Our company has been around 70 years, and I think if we make it another 70, we’ll still have small paperclips.

      13. often trapped under a cat*

        preparing to re-open (though who knows when), everyone was asked to come in and clear out their workstations, which had been untouched since March 2020. this was all done safely, with limited numbers of people allowed in the office at a time, vaccination and masking required; I helped organize.

        as a result of the pandemic, we have gone almost completely paperless. an area of the floor I work on became a dumping ground for unwanted office supplies. pyramids of boxes of paper clips. mugs filled with pens, pencils, Sharpies, and highlighters. rows of tape dispensers, pencil sharpeners, and staplers. more mugs filled with scissors. it was impressive, seeing the sheer amount of basic office supplies people had had.

        our office culture is interesting. people have no qualms about using the mailroom to ship packages to friends and family. but taking office supplies seems to be a different thing.

        one staffer, who has school-age children who use a lot of pencils very quietly asked me if I thought it would be okay if they took home a pencil sharpener. I looked at them, looked at the half-dozen pencil sharpeners, and said, “I don’t think there’s a master list anywhere of who had a pencil sharpener before the pandemic, and none of these have anyone’s name on them, so please, take whichever one you want.”

        (I myself took a pair of scissors.)

    3. KHB*

      If I worked in an office where paper clips were so valued that they could be traded for favors, I’d go to Staples and buy my own damn paper clips, and be the most popular person in the office.

      Obviously, you shouldn’t have to spend your own money on office supplies – but when offices get this weird about things, it seems like a very easy problem to solve for a very small amount of money.

      1. Lucious*

        Indeed. I completely understand why people might object to that practice- but if the choice is meeting with the CFO to justify why the company’s equity plan can handle paperclip expenses or buying some at Staples for $5.99, I know which way I’m going.

      2. needs more highlighters*

        >> Obviously, you shouldn’t have to spend your own money on office supplies
        Where’s the line though? Calendars, daily planners, business bags, business card holders, 5 different colors of highlighters…they are things I use to do my job and my company doesn’t pay for them.

        2. Victoria J*

          If you need it for your job and it’s isn’t a luxury they should pay for it.

          I’d get all of those things through my work (and we are a broke penny pinching charity). My manager even offered to pay for the ones I bought.

          But I am obsessed with stationery. And I spend way too much on it. So some of my stuff is a luxury and not something I would expect to pay for. (A notebook costing 20 times the ones they buy for the office, a set of 15 highlighters that look great in a stand on my desk).

          They DO pay for the expensive highly specific tags I am the only who uses – because those are something that makes a difference to my actual work. I pay for the things that just make me happy.

          2. foolofgrace*

            I work for government. A while back we ran out of the smallest Post-It Notes. They haven’t been replenished, and probably won’t be until we use up the next-size square ones.

            1. mrs__peel*

              I definitely spent a fair bit of time at my previous federal job cutting large Post-It Notes into smaller ones with scissors…

          3. Tupac Coachella*

            This is my measure of “the line,” too. If I need it to do my job or if it makes me more efficient/effective at some level of significance, at least a basic version should be provided. But if I want it to be pretty or if I’m fussy about it, I buy my own. I pretty much always supply my own writing utensils (all types, except pencils-not picky about those for some reason), small notebooks, and various sized and colored Post-Its. A colleague actually just gifted me a Post-It pad in my favorite color because she knows I won’t ask them to order them for me. Luckily my office is reasonable about supplies and would probably buy me just about anything I asked for, but I do see that it’s inconsiderate to ask that we keep an assortment of non-standard dry erase marker colors available just in case I want to put a word cloud on my whiteboard.

        3. SheLooksFamiliar*

          Good question, and I think it depends on what employers consider ‘basic office supplies’ to be.

          Some of my employers were pretty generous about this. My day planners and leather portfolios were reimbursed, as were my beloved Pilot G-2 gel pens. If I wanted a new desk lamp, I had to be cost-sensitive but no one complained. Pens, folders, highlighters, glue, Wite Out pens and bottles, and desktop accessories…pretty much standard supplies.

          But yeah, some employers were stingy. Basic Bic pens in bulk? Eh, I’ll buy my own gel pens. No desk calculators unless you’re in accounting? That’s why Microsoft has a calculator function. But no Post It Notes or staple pullers? We have a problem.

          1. Red 5*

            Yeah, I’ve been known to just buy my own pens to get something better because the standard cheap ball points are painful for me to write with. But then I get possessive of the pens, and people continually walk away with them because they also want slightly nicer pens. Some places just will not accept that cheap pens are awful and not worth the money.

            1. SheLooksFamiliar*

              I’m laughing because you’re right. My Pilot pens seemed to disappear when I was away from my desk. You can be sure I reclaimed them when the pen rustlers were away from their desk…and I left a Bic pen in its place.

              1. Princesss Sparklepony*

                At one job, I labeled all my pens and the other walkable items. Sure, they could peel it off (just paper and tape) but it gave them pause…

                For a crafts class I was taking, all my items had a highly visible swipe of bright blue nail polish on them. Helped me identify my items on sight.

                1. Manders*

                  I label them with a sticker that says “stolen from the desk of …” I don’t really care but nobody wants those pens!

            2. Mr. Shark*

              Yes, I buy my own pens, because I like a certain brand.
              I’ve had someone come to my desk, stand there talking to me, and pick up my pen. He was going to walk away from me with it, but I said, “hey, can I have my pen back?” What is up with people?
              So now I always have a pen holder on my desk with miscellaneous pens that someone can use, and make sure my nice pens are stored in my drawers and the one I’m using is right next to my keyboard or on my paper holder.

            3. MissBaudelaire*

              Yup. I buy my own stuff because I like my own stuff. I buy nice pens because I like nice pens. But the amount of times I have set down a pen and come back to it having disappeared…

              1. Kat in VA*

                I started buying disposable fountain pens because apparently few people can write with those. If one walked off, it would discreetly end up back on my desk before EOD.

          2. Rachel in NYC*

            Pens always make me laugh because everyone has a favorite so my office has a million different kind so everyone has the kind or kinds that work for them.

            New people have to think we’re so strange.

            1. Olivia Mansfield*

              We’re the same way. Every person has their favorite pen that they’ll light the building on fire if it isn’t stocked.

            2. Freya*

              My office has a small tub in the supply closet of random pens that people have picked up various places. My favourite office pens are almost always the ones with hotel branding that got picked up at various conferences!

        4. Not Tom, Just Petty*

          This is a great question. I think I found the line while we were working from home. I found that even when I was not in the office and all of my communication was electronic, I used pens, highlighters, sharpies, paper tablets, post it notes, folders, binder clips, paper clips, staplers/staples, tape and a calendar.
          These are all things that my company provides, the most basic colors and limited sizes.
          I supplement different color versions of all the writing stuff because I want to, but I really think those things are the cost of doing business.
          Like they gave us laptops and said we have to take them to and from everyday, so they gave us bags as well.

      3. Exhausted Trope*

        We have plenty of office supplies at my office and my supervisor adores buying them, as well. She stocks up every back to school season and shares the funnest stuff–rainbow sticky notes, highlighters, journals, etc. out of her personal supplies. I suspect she’s using her own money for this and I so appreciate her generosity.

      4. Anonymous Hippo*

        I’ve always worked in offices where the supplies are plentiful and free to grab, but I still buy all my own because I’m a office supply snob LOL.

          1. Zan Shin*

            Yep both here too! I have definite pen preferences and buy by the box, and my office tea corner (before retiring) had an electric kettle, cast iron pot, three canisters of loose tea, my mug plus a guest mug!)

      5. Butterfly Counter*

        I worked in a similar office and it has skewed my perception of paperclips ever since. They’ve taken on the property of a talisman, almost. Wherever I work, there are always at least 2 or 3 paperclips I keep just to have around at my desk even though I rarely use them anymore. Just because I feel like I need them there.

        1. KaciHall*

          Meanwhile I needed a box at a previous office, and I could spend two bucks at one store for a box, or $4 at Sam’s club for a bulk package. I managed to give a couple away, but I still have 14 boxes of paperclips in the bag I store school supplies in. (I’ve been buying all supplies on clearance since I had my kid. I will never need to buy folders, notebooks, binders, or pencils again. )

    4. DivineMissL*

      A couple of years ago we had a new office clerk, and part of his job duties was to order office supplies. Well, he ordered paper clips but didn’t realize that they came packaged in 12-packs, not single boxes; so he accidentally ordered thousands and thousands of paper clips in various sizes and colors. He was so mortified! I made him a chain-mail helmet out of paper clips as a gag (never got around to making the rest of the armor). 4 years later and we still have thousands of paper clips left…

      1. Former Mailroom Clerk*

        I had a manager once that accidentally ordered 20 cases (of 20 boxes, each with 40 paperclips), instead of 20 boxes. So, instead of getting 800 paperclips, we ended up with 16,000 paperclips. (even 800 probably would’ve been enough to last a year or more)

      2. Been There*

        this made me laugh WAY more than it should have…. pretty sure my office neighbor thinks I’m going loony now XD

      3. Tmarie*

        When I was but a young lass working for a major corporation in my area, they asked me to order new file folders. I too was mortified when instead of 100 boxes of files we received 1000 boxes of files. I was never brave enough to ask what became of the extra 9 years of folders that were ordered.

      4. Vanellope*

        Haha, this happened in our office too! Close to a decade ago and we still have hundreds and hundreds. Those of us who were here when it happened still refer to them by her name – as in when we finish a box, we’ll cheer “getting through another box of [admin’s] paper clips!”

        1. Ralkana*

          Yes! We’ve been through four different admins since this happened in my office, but I still call them her paper clips.

      5. Free Meerkats*

        So you’ve heard the Legend of the Binder Clips? We still have roughly 2000 of them, in various sizes.

  3. Dust Bunny*

    OMG Y’all can have our paperclips! Archivists spend their lives removing paperclips, binder clips, and paper pins (we work with a lot of old papers, pre-paperclip and pre-staple) and we literally have a bin of paper fasteners on our storage shelves, because we never need them again. The rest of the office knows if they need any we can send them over by the bucketful.

    Mercifully, everyone seems to be chill about supplies around here. The only nonstandard requests we get have very specific needs–softer pencils for writing on the backs of photos, for instance.

    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      I loathe paperclips and rubber bands. Rubber bands rot and get nasty and sticky on older paper. Paperclips get stuck on everything and never seem to have the right things clipped together. Team Binder Clip.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        At least clips *are* removable. We actually had an intern scream when she opened a box and discovered a packet of papers bound in far too many now-crusty rubber bands. It was vile. It was really hard to believe it wasn’t some kind of horrible animal waste even if you knew what it was.

        I also now loathe tape. Good idea now, terrible idea in 40 years.

        1. Grace Poole*

          Finding folders of clippings that used to be held up by ancient scotch tape comes a close second to disintegrating rubber bands. :)

      2. Magenta Sky*

        My boss refuses to accept anything with paperclips (or anything that’s not 8 1/2 x 11) because they get caught on everything. He considers them evil.

        1. JustaTech*

          I just discovered that one of our important vendors sends us documentation (that we must keep) in some weird size paper – slightly longer than 8/12 by 11, so it only fits in the storage binders if you fold it up (which is then delightful to scan) or trim it off.

          Why, why would a company choose to use a paper size that is not standard to the country they work in, when they’re not even using the extra space on the page?

          1. Magenta Sky*

            Sounds like A4, which is 8.3 x 11.7 inches. And is standard in places that use the metric system.

            Maybe the got a deal-deal on some supplies their vendor couldn’t sell to anyone else?

            1. Duc Anonymous*

              I worked for a company where the main admin would order A4 paper and then trim the excess off to 8.5×11. This was for a few years, always ordering the A4 size. Finally, she got a new boss who asked why she did this, as it was horribly inefficient and she said it’s just how they order and that’s how she was trained. Turned out, the previous admin had been told by the exec she worked for to do this because he’d gotten some insane deal for this size. The intention was to take advantage of the price this one time and then go back to buying the standard size, but the original admin didn’t know that and trained the second admin to do the same. The new executive put and end to the practice, but now all supply orders have to go through him.

              2. Becca Rosselin-Metadi*

                This is crazy. I admit that when I first started working in an office, I had no idea what A4 was and had to figure it out-but we dealt with a lot of non-US companies and I soon figured out what it was and to always have some on hand.
                Trimming it to fit 8 1/2 x 11? No way.

              3. Mr. Shark*

                Haha, that’s an awesome story on how a little misunderstanding can change the way people work for years!

              4. Magenta Sky*

                “We’ve always done it this way because we’ve always done it this way.”

                Tradition is one of the most powerful forces known to man.

              5. DrRat*

                I’m reminded of the famous story of the woman who was teaching her daughter to cook a roast and told her to cut off the small end and kind of wedge it into the pan before cooking. Daughter asks why, Mom says that it’s the right way because that’s how her mother did it. Daughter calls Grandma, who explains she did it that way because her pan was too small and she couldn’t fit the whole roast in it.

              1. Drago Cucina*

                I was doing a research paper for a the University of South Africa and had to buy a ream of A4 to mail it to them.
                I had half a ream sitting on my shelf and then a friend told me he needed to submit something to a European company on A4. I was his special friend.
                When my husband did a couple of graduate degrees in Belgium he was, “We have to buy this special paper.” Nope. Got it covered.
                It took me years to go through that ream, but that’s why I hesitate to throw anything away.

                1. La Triviata*

                  Years ago, at a previous job, a co-worker I was friendly with was opening her mail while I was by her desk. One she opened was, yes, A4 paper … onionskin. She looked at it and it wasn’t in English. Turned out it was a change of address from a group in South Africa and one side was in English, but she first saw the side with the text in … Afrikaans maybe? not English and she was very confused by both the non-English text and the size of the paper.

                2. Magenta Sky*

                  My father had an international driver’s license that was Arabic on one side and English on the other (he was working in Saudi at the time). Had a lot of fun with it at a DUI checkpoint on a trip home.

      3. Memily*

        I had a boss who hated paper clips with a passion. He called them “chaos bombs” for this exact reason. I can’t say I disagree!

    2. Art3mis*

      Yep, my last job I sometimes had to help out with the scanning of incoming documents. Staples, paper clips, and clips all had to be removed first. I came to hate staples.

      1. JustaTech*

        One of my big early pandemic projects involved scanning a dozen or so semi-bound notebooks (like a cross between a binder and a folder) and someone had used the special hole punch on all of these pages, but left in the staples and paperclips. Which I didn’t notice until I heard a terrible ripping noise inside the scanner.

        It was a good thing no one else was in the office to hear my swearing.

    3. kicking-k*

      Yup. I’m also an archivist and I agree. That said, the job before the one I have now was strangely stingy about any “proper” archival supplies – rustless brass paperclips, acid-free folders, cotton tape – and yeah, I get that they’re expensive compared to regular office supplies, but we were a huge organisation! £15 for a couple of rolls of cotton tape wouldn’t break us, surely?

      So we used to refer to the “paperclip budget”.

    4. TootsNYC*

      I feel like we really don’t need to manufacture binder clips ever again. We just need to redistribute the ones that already exist.

      1. Liz W.*

        Yep! I did a major purge and because it all had to go into the regular recycling I pulled I don’t know how many binder clips. 3 or 4 Gallon bags full of them and those large triangle shaped paper clips.

          1. La Triviata*

            Years ago, when computer use in offices was still fairly new, I was concerned that people were taking paper clips out of their magnetized holders and using them to clip papers to their floppy disks (yes, it was MANY years ago). I went out and bought myself some plastic triangular paper clips that I could use around disks without that particular concern. I also explained the issue to people (with the expected results). We had one woman who not only used her magnetized paper clips to clip papers to her disks, but would leave disks out of envelopes scattered on her desk along with multiple paper clips … and kept wondering why her disks were degaussed.

    5. The Rural Juror*

      I worked in a courthouse for a short while and had to go through some 100+ year-old documents. The paperclips I found on those were really neat! They were all made out of brass.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        There is an online museum of office supplies. It’s fascinating.

        And, yes, I have a jar of old-school paperclips.

        1. IndustriousLabRat*

          I’m picky about my office tools and have a soft spot for vintage ones. My personal stapler, 3-hole punch, and tape dispenser all remember where they were when news of Watergate broke… and the staples and tape rolls are still standard to this day!

          Only thing missing is a classic Steel Case swivel desk chair… squeak squeak… *sigh…

          1. A CAD Monkey*

            There’s just something about old office equipment that you cant get out of today’s products. I have a Good Form aluminum rolling swivel office chair. best chair i’ve ever had.

          2. Drago Cucina*

            Oh, the Steelcase chair–I would love have had one.

            At old job my desk was the original 1969 Steelcase desk purchased for the director. There was a credenza that I always wanted to fill with liquor bottles filled with colored water.

            1. IndustriousLabRat*

              The desk was probably still there because no one could move it! I’ve encountered a few of those illogically dense and massive relics in my time at a state university and WOW yes I will happily cower under one in case of an earthquake/meteor/alien invasion.

              You’re right, the office furniture from that era looks a bit nekkid without a few decanters and a light dusting of cigar ash.

          3. Ralkana*

            I have a battered metal stapler that I’ve had since I started working at this job in 2004. Works great. Meanwhile, my coworkers have been through 4 or 5 plastic staplers in half the time.

          4. pancakes*

            You should check out the website for the London stationery shop Present & Correct. Lovely vintage goodies.

        2. Empress Matilda*

          online museum of office supplies

          Well, there goes my afternoon! Good thing I didn’t have anything important to do today…

    6. Teapot Librarian*

      My archive not only had the huge bins of removed paperclips, but…we also had boxes upon boxes of NEW paperclips. Like, who thought that was a good use of supply money?

    7. Richard Hershberger*

      I few years ago I was in the Maryland State Archives looking at a court case from the 1870s. (Was it baseball related, you ask? Yes, yes it was. Thank you for asking.) All the fasteners were still there. I was fascinated by them. They all had modern counterparts, but they were just a bit different.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          We have an actual, literal, paper roll of pins. The pins were sandwiched between two long strips of paper, which were rolled into a roll and given a label. Apparently that’s how they sold them in 190-whatever.

          1. Siege*

            I bought a roll of those at a garage sale a few years back! The pins are tiny by modern standards so they’re handy to have on hand when you need to pin silk. I’d had no idea they were sold that way.

        2. kicking-k*

          Ooh, I do not like straight pins used for paper fastening, but I feel bad about removing them (if not rusty) in a way I don’t with even quite old paperclips. They seem more historical. Especially the little short ones that were obviously never sewing pins.

            1. Richard Hershberger*

              Thanks. “All” is, at this point, just the one. The second is in the pipeline, but early in the process. You can find online articles I have written for SABR. I’m not sure, but I think you don’t need to be a member to access them. If you punch my name into Google Scholar, keep in mind that I am not the biochemist or the vascular surgeon of the same name. Adding “baseball” to the search string helps clarify matters.

              1. Sam Yao*

                Yes, I misstated – but we definitely do both have Strike Four. Dad is a SABR guy since… well, definitely preceding my birth.

            2. Richard Hershberger*

              Also, and this is a serious suggestion, if you do Facebook look me up. Most days I post a “150 years ago today in baseball” piece.

          4. Mid*

            Actually, due to one of your other comments, I ended up getting Strike Four for my grandfather—he was the youngest American League umpire back in the day, though I’m not sure if the record still stands. He absolutely adored your book.

    8. LCH*

      yes, softer pencils!

      also rubber bands are the worst. worst. but certain professions love them, like legal. all legals people I’ve known love their rubber bands. find another solution.

    9. Recruited Recruiter*

      My former department was where paperclips went to die. Everything came into our department paperclipped, and left scanned and stapled. Occasionally the source of our paperclips ran out when our department was especially busy. When this happened, whoever took the time to return paperclips got bribed with candy.

    10. Red 5*

      As somebody who is currently digitizing decades of old paper files, I feel this so hard right now. I mentioned in another comment but I’m on a crusade against staples right now because of how many I’ve had to remove. There’s just so much rust everywhere…

    11. Distracted Librarian*

      Former archival worker here (as in over 30 years ago). I still have a stash of plastic paperclips from my last archival job. They’d bought them b/c they’re better than metal clips, but this batch fits too tightly and will damage papers, so they gave me some. I use about 5 per year–just used one this morning when I printed a draft of my short story in progress.

    12. Hannah Lee*

      You can have our paper clips too!

      Years ago, our purchasing person placed our first (and only) office supply order with Staples. Instead of the 12 boxes of 100 paper clips he ordered, they shipped us 25 boxes of 12 boxes of 100 paper clips. But because their system only showed our original order qty, they refused to admit the error or take them back. So a good chunk of our supply cabinet is taken up with paper clips.

      Bonus: because the many many boxes are all prominently labeled STAPLES we’re constantly running out of actual staples … because whoever’s doing a quick check to see if we’re low on anything mistakenly thinks we’ve got plenty.

    13. SnappinTerrapin*

      In the absence of staples or clips, I have folded top left corners down and used my pocketknife to make two parallel cuts, creating a tab to fold in the opposite direction to hold the papers together.

      It’s an old fashioned technique, but functional. Never tried taking it apart to make copies and reassemble, though, so I can’t advise on that.

      Those new-fangled staplers and gem clips sure come in handy, don’t they?

  4. IDK*

    We don’t keep extras on hand. If you need a binder for a project or dividers or anything of the sort, you better know well in advance because they will have to be ordered!

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      The one thing I liked in my stint working in BigLaw was the multiple cupboards of stuff like that, with no locks. You just got up and got one. I suspect some partner at one point had to waste time mucking about, and did the math on how much that time would have billed for.

      1. Guacamole Bob*

        That’s the think about all of the pettiness around office supplies – it’s so so minor in the overall scheme of things most of the time, even at much lower salary levels than BigLaw.

        You’re going to pay someone $60,000 a year to do a job, another $20,000 in health insurance and other benefits, thousands annually for the physical office space for that person to work in, hundreds or thousands in IT equipment, and then make a big deal out of the fact that they want to order a $6 pen instead of a $2 one or they want three colors of highlighters that will cost an extra $10 over just stocking yellow?

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          This ties in with my observation about line items. Anything that shows up as a line item matters, whichever direction the money is flowing. Anything that does not show up as a line item does not matter. Office supplies gets a line item. Time wasted in stupid office supply drama does not.

          1. Guacamole Bob*

            Ha! No, but I’ve worked for other government agencies, and I think they’re all pretty similar in this regard. Can’t have taxpayer money going to blue *and* green highlighters, you know.

            1. Hannah Lee*

              And they never realized that having multiple highlighter colors wouldn’t actually impact the total highlighter usage, cost, anymore than having multiple pen colors would?

              I mean, it’s not like it’s going to make employees start highlighting or writing *twice* as much. They are going to use the same amount of ink overall, so they just won’t go through a given highlighter, or pen, as fast.

          2. SnappinTerrapin*

            I worked for a State agency in Alabama. We recycled obsolete forms to make scratch pads for taking notes at the desk during phone calls, etc.

            Cut the forms in quarters, apply the adhesive to one of the short sides of a stack of those smaller sheets, and flip it over to create a handy scratch pad.

            Getting rid of the obsolete forms was a secondary benefit of that process. Hard to use the wrong form after cutting them up.

            That agency had a lot of similar cost-cutting techniques, but my memory is fuzzy after all these years.

      2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        I have a relevant anecdote.

        I am a paralegal. I was a baby paralegal in the days before we went paperless, so a huge part of my job was to send documents to clients for their signature, then docket the signed documents and submit them to $OfficialBody or send them on to other attorneys. We very rarely had any discretion about the layout of the documents, as they were typically official government forms from overseas, so they were rarely intuitive.

        I quickly worked out that I needed to make the forms absolutely idiot-proof* in order to get them on file correct and in time. So I requested some super snazzy “sign here” post its with arrows on them, and plastered the forms in them. The rate of return immediately increased. When there were multiple signatories, I used different colours of post its and put a key in the cover letter. A seven-figure client wrote to our senior partner to say how much he appreciated it.

        Those $5 post its saved us and each client hours and hours per year, and as my hours were both billable and often written off, that meant everybody won.

        * yes, I know.

        1. Anonymato*

          That’s a great example. I think that time-saving and morale-savings that happens when any drudgery tasks are eliminated or reduced are often underestimated. And, off topic: Now you have me imagining “baby paralegal” like Baby Yoda ;-)

    2. MusicWithRocksIn*

      Once I was working a fairly new job, where there where they didn’t buy notepads, just had a stack of swag notepads various vendors had given them with their logos and stuff on them. One day Boss tells me to come into a meeting for a new computer system we are considering, I grab whatever notepad I had been using, go in and take some notes. The guy who is presenting is super nervous and fidgety throughout the meeting, and finally he stopped me and asked me if I worked for some other company. I say no, I work here, and he told me my notepad was from their biggest competitor and he had been freaking out thinking they had someone from their rival company there to watch his presentation. It’s lucky he told me that, because I had no idea what rival company was at all. Which was a good lesson about using random branded products in the office.

      1. MissDisplaced*

        Ha! Well, I do applaud the attempt to recycle and use all that swag people pick up at trade shows though.

      2. Recruited Recruiter*

        I do this – there’s no reason to waste a good notebook. I try to know who my vendors competitors are though, so I don’t use their competitors swag in front of them.
        I’m kinda friends with my payroll software rep, and her competitor’s rep, so I definitely don’t hide that one. I just make it a running joke.

      3. Seeking Second Childhood*

        Had a temp job in the mid-90s when I first moved to Connecticut. I will never forget the hilarious mortification of the stuffy admin nearing retirement who was asked about her pen. She had apparently pocketed a pen at the doctor’s office, and had been using the pen for quite some time before anyone told her what Viagra was advertising!

        1. Mary*

          My dad’s a doctor and got a bunch of branded pens when Viagra first hit the market. I snagged a few to use…as a high school student. Got lots of snickers.

        2. OOW*

          I used a Depo-Provera swag pem throughout High School. I thought it was hilarious. It was a gift from my nurse aunt.

          1. Kal*

            My partner works in a pharmacy, and they get a lot of drug manufacturer swag. But they can’t actually use any of it in the pharmacy, so employees get to take whatever they want. So I have random water bottles and pens and stuff with all sorts of drug names and such on them that I’m happy using even when people give weird looks. But given I went through most of my uni career with a Budweiser backpack even though I don’t drink beer (it was rather good quality!) I was already used to it. I also spent high school using the branded stuff from my dad’s business, and its weirder when the branded stuff has your dad’s name and phone number on it – but also made it easy to get my pen back when someone stole it.

      4. Whomever*

        Heh. Back in the 90s I was responsible for a fairly large amount of tech buying (think SUN, SGI, IBM, etc). I’d always make a point of wearing their competitors t-shirt. It was self perpetuating because usually they would give me one of their t-shirts as a response…

      5. Fae Kamen*

        I do this too and if I don’t like the logo or the company or whatever, I put a sticker over it! The swag notebooks usually have paper or cardboard covers that make this possible (as opposed to leather or something.)

    3. Former HR*

      I don’t like to stock extras of too much just because we don’t have the space to store it. A former co-worker was responsible for 90% of the requests for supplies. All were filled, but it was out of control sometimes. She wouldn’t order just a box of paperclips but 12 boxes of paperclips. My job wasn’t to ask why, my job was to order. She retired, and after some job changes, I’m now doing the majority of what she used to do and have her office. I have such a huge supply of paper clips, paper (in different colors that we don’t use), folders, staples, pens, mechanical pencils (which no one uses), push pins, highlighters, and envelopes, it doesn’t make any sense. I spent my first few weeks just cleaning out the supply cabinets and organizing them so we could find everything easily, and throwing away the items that were so old they couldn’t be used anymore (pens that had dried up, folder that were so old they were faded and falling apart, etc). I used to place office supply orders 1 to 2 times a week; now, it is rare if I place an order more than once a month. So, I do understand why some companies are so strict with supplies. Unfortunately, they should be focusing on the person causing the problem and not on punishing everyone to solve the problem.

  5. ThatGirl*

    Several jobs ago I worked for a workplace supply wholesaler, so along with the typical office supplies we’d get boxes of samples galore that would get stashed in random places. Any time there were really nice pens I hoarded a few, because the generic private label ones just weren’t as good. I also hoarded the good, branded Kleenex boxes, because again, the generic ones were more akin to prison toilet paper.

    1. Art3mis*

      My first full time job was at Quill, which is now owned by Staples and at the time was mostly a catalog only office supply company. I LOVED vendor day. Free office supplies? Yes please!

      1. ThatGirl*

        We worked with Quill a lot! And actually you probably know the company I worked for then, because it’s just down the road from Quill and is also owned by the hedge fund that owns Staples now…

      2. Richard Hershberger*

        Quill is owned by Staples? I didn’t know that. We get sales reps from both, competing against each other. It is particularly amusing given that we are a tiny office, undoubtedly one of the smallest accounts either has.

      3. MusicWithRocksIn*

        I used to order supplies for my office and I LOVED Quill. Mostly because they sent that little tin of cookies if you ordered enough supplies. I probably could have gotten the supplies a lot cheaper from somewhere else, but the money wasn’t coming out of my pocket and I loved those little tins of cookies. The owners were super stingy with most things, so I valued those cookies probably unreasonably highly.

        1. Sabina*

          I worked in local government for many years and probably ordered thousands of dollars of supplies from Quill. I fondly remember the free cookies and other swag that Quill sent us. My last year on the job a new county auditor decided we could no longer accept the freebies, they could be construed as gratuities or bribes, lol! It was a sad development…

        2. AnonThisTime*

          Heh, my company orders things from ThorLabs all. the. time. Every order comes with a small box of lab snacks. One co-worker made a throne of the empty lab snacks boxes which could bear his weight. Another had some sort of pyramid going on that was taller than me. There were even rumors of someone who would order supplies because they were hungry (this I doubt because even the fastest orders arrive next day). I absolutely believe that those snacks influence the choice of vendor from time to time.

      4. Elizabeth West*

        Oh man, I would have loved that. I adore office supplies. If someone gave me a $1000 gift certificate to Staples, I’d probably marry them.

        I once found a flea market booth full of letter trays at $1.00 each and thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

    2. CleanUpOnAislePaperclip*

      I worked for a wholesale place back in the 80s; the perfect job for someone with a bit of a pen fetish. I was working there when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit and did you know that there are 100 paper clips in a box of 100 paper clips?

      1. LavaLamp*

        My dad knew the 3M rep at my first job. I may have been given first selection of prototype or not available yet stationery products.

        It’s well known that I love stationery, pens and most of my hobbies use them. So I usually supply my own products. No one cares, they find it amusing. I did learn a valuable lesson on leaving disposable fountain pens in my pen cup. Someone used it, and didn’t’ realize what it was and broke the nib. Okay fine, but THEY PUT IT BACK IN MY PEN CUP. BLACK INK EVERYWHERE. I wouldn’t have been as upset had they not left me a mess.

        Folks used to leave me stationery presents to, like I still to this day don’t know who gifted me with Grumpy Cat sticky notes, but it was nice of them.

        We also used these odd little pins that I called T pins, I guess they worked better in cube walls. I may have liberated a few, and glued butterflies to them and used them as art. My boss and my team lead loved them and I gave them to my team lead when I left.

  6. Massive Dynamic*

    Way back when, I worked in an office where we had a supply of tissues, but we had to keep them hidden in drawers from one of the owners. She was a kid during the Great Depression, kept the frugality her whole life and at her (extremely profitable) business and was insistent that TP from the bathroom would suffice for everyone’s tissue needs. Open office, lots of cold-sharing, real tissues were needed.

    1. A snotty comment*

      I worked at a Canadian university in student services. Our director announced at one staff meeting that the Kleenex in the office was for students only. After this the staff would blow our noses on the leftover paper napkins that came with pizza orders for student events. It was in this exact moment I committed to leaving the job.

      1. higher ed cog*

        Yes, I work at a university and employ about a dozen student workers. Because they are “technically” employees, I cannot purchase tissues, hand sanitizer, or anything like that with my budget even though we serve several thousand students a year (student support service). I have to purchase those things myself, and it always grates.

        1. Cathie from Canada*

          The university office I worked in was responsible for organizing lots of faculty meetings over the course of a year, so the excuse that was used for ordering everything from coffee to kleenex was “its for meetings!”
          Of course, it was us staff who actually used the lion’s share of the stuff.

          1. Mr. Cajun2core*

            Our excuse pre-pandemic was that they were for students. We could buy almost anything if we said it was for students.

        2. JanetM*

          One of my first tasks in a previous position at my university was to order a coffee-maker.

          My first draft of the justification statement (that I didn’t really expect would fly, but I wanted to amuse my manager) read, “This is an office full of programmers, graphic designers, and other nerds. Coffee is not ‘entertainment,’ it is life support.”

          After my manager laughed, I rewrote it as, “This office hosts faculty and students for workshops and meetings. Staff will pay for all supplies.”

          That passed, and we got the coffee maker (which is still there 20+ years later).

          Staff did, and do, buy all the supplies, and I (as both a coffee drinker and the department admin assistant) always kept emergency backup coffee in my desk. People get *cranky* without their caffeine!

    2. Popcorn Burner*

      I used to work for a kid/teen-centric nonprofit where we weren’t provided tissues. (But we were provided free pads/tampons, so I guess that’s a win?)

      I got at least 2 severe colds per year at thT employer.

    3. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      At least you could order Kleenex. My office for reasons no one has shared will not order even the generic almost useless Kleenex. So yes – if you want them you are bringing them from home and you’d better bet I lock up my box – last time I didn’t it was gone the next day (brand new box just opened the night before). It seems petty – but when I need to blow my nose I want an actual tissue so I lock them up.

      1. Magenta Sky*

        That’s the thing. For every bizarre, overbearing policy on the distribution of office supplies, there’s a bizarre, petty story that made it seem necessary at the time.

        1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Honestly the fix for my thing is simple – just buy tissues then those of us that have them wouldn’t hide/lock up our stash from home.

          1. Magenta Sky*

            But then somebody would steal the just opened box for home, or overuse it and leave used tissues all over the place, or some other heinous crime against modern civilization.

            That’s who policies like that come to pass.

          2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

            Oh you all will love this mini-update (and now I wish I could be a fly on the wall tomorrow morning – I work nights).

            So one of the shift leads is having bad fall allergies right now and got annoyed at the lack of tissues. So today the went to the bathroom and “liberated” one of those industrial-sized rolls of toilet paper. They put it on the communal masking station next to the jumbo bottle of hand sanitizer, with a sign saying “need a tissue – help yourself to what you need.” Really wondering if it’s going to be there when I get in tomorrow….and how they got it out of the industrial roll holder in the ladies room without breaking anything.

            2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

              And the boring update:

              Like I said I work nights, so I missed what happened when the big boss discovered the “liberated” roll of TP, but it (and the sign somebody made introducing it as “the Kleenex roll”) were both gone when I got to work. And no emails, or comments in any of the shift passdown about it either.
              At least it was there for a night and we got a laugh here from it.

      2. just a random teacher*

        I keep my box of good tissues in my top desk drawer, out of sight. This is partly so they don’t immediately disappear, but mostly because I don’t want everyone with a cold to come over to my desk and blow their nose right next to me and/or all over my stuff.

        I keep (or did, prepandemic) a separate, cheaper box of tissues and a big pump thing of hand sanitizer in a completely separate location near the door for students to use.

        I still had to buy both the personal and the student tissues (and hand sanitizer) with My Own Money, but I’m pretty sure it did cut down on the number of colds I got as well as letting me have the good tissues if I did need one. I can make a small box of tissues last a year or more if it’s just for me!

      3. HigherEdAdminista*

        In my institution we are not allowed to order tissues. Any item that could be seen as being used for employees comfort, like tissues or a fan, cannot be ordered; we are meant to bring those items from home.

        1. Loubelou*

          Do you have to sit on the floor?? Or perhaps your chairs are deliberately hard so you don’t get comfortable?

        3. Distracted Librarian*

          I think it may be a government thing. At a former job (private institution), we’d get lectures about how federal grant money couldn’t be used for tissues. I’m at a state institution now, and as far as I know, we aren’t allowed to buy tissues.

        4. Urban Prof*

          That’s awful! I’m a professor, and if I had no Kleenex on my desk, what would those crying students use? Their sleeves?

      4. Siege*

        I was SHOOK when I started working at my current office where they will in fact buy tissues. At my previous job I didn’t have an office (thanks, academia) and the one before that felt they were an unnecessary expense.

        1. Rachel in NYC*

          I’m officially holding to my position that I’m never working at another university after reading everyone’s kleenex comments.

          We’re basically always ordered them by the case.

          Though I knew this job was odd since it’s the first place I’ve ever worked that provided hand lotion to anyone who wanted it at their desk. (the answer was yes, please.)

    4. Dark Macadamia*

      In high school I had a teacher who made us pay her a penny per Kleenex. She was the worst, for many reasons lol

      As a teacher I’d so much rather just buy Kleenex for my students than have a bunch of pennies all over my desk, or deal with the disruption of them trying to find a penny, bargain with me, ask to go to the bathroom instead, and so on!

      1. IndustriousLabRat*

        …”rather just buy Kleenex for my students than have a bunch of NASTY, GERM-COVERED pennies all over my desk”,…
        FTFY ;)

        Seriously, if someone needs a Kleenex, I wouldn’t want to gamble on something that’s been riding around in their pocket.

    5. Silly Janet*

      I can sympathize. My last job, way pre-pandemic, was at a large preschool that was part of a large community center. Any preschool in the best of times goes through lots of tissues, and it’s even worse during cold season. The lady who was in charge of supplies for the whole center would bitch us out every time we asked for more tissues, saying we had passed the “quota.” Lady, we are a freaking preschool! There is constant effluvium coming out of orifices all day!!

  7. Don't Touch My Snacks*

    I used to order supplies for my department and I made most people live with standard supplies but I would order myself and my director our preferred pen types and then hide them. No one ever seemed to notice/care.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!*

      Ha! I’ve started doing the ordering. There was this really nice pen that I found that I kept and I ordered a box of 5 and kept them at my desk.
      We’re pretty ok on supplies there are some people who like certain colored paper or something but no wars.

    2. Purple Cat*

      We have standard lousy stick ballpoint pens in the supply closet.
      I have no shame in having our Admin order me a box of nice flexgrip pens and charge my department specifically.
      I work enough hours, at the very least give me a decent pen!

    3. Buggalugs*

      I do this too. Mostly because I’ll keep my pens until they run out of ink and the staff leave them laying around everywhere and take them home often. They get the cheap stuff. My AM laughed one day complaining about the pens and she said she’d love pens like mine but that she wouldn’t ever ask for them since she losses hers constantly and it would be a waste.

  8. R2-beep-boo*

    Batteries!! Part of my work is in a lab, but the “keeper of the batteries” is in the front office and you’d think she pays for them herself.
    I get the 3rd degree every time. I mean…what does she think I’m doing with them? (I am not locking myself in the accessible stall in the bathroom for 2 hours every afternoon.)

    1. James*

      No, I totally get where she’s coming from. If I buy a box of batteries, doesn’t matter how big, I have none left by the end of the shift. I actually need to buy batteries for my field camera because someone took the ones out of my desk (not the area we store the “general use” batteries). If I thought I could get away with it I’d make them sign a requisition form for the things, in blood, with their first-born as collateral! I simply cannot understand how we go through so many–a HACH turbidity meter only takes 4 AA batteries, and they take weeks to run out of power.

      1. Yvette*

        Aren’t AA batteries the battery of choice for tv remotes, cordless mice and tons of children’s toys? Just sayin…

        1. IndustriousLabRat*

          Not just childrens’ toys, which made for one of the funnier scenes in the first or second ever episode of Weeds.

      2. Generic Name*

        I would guess people steal them for personal use. I worked for a municipal department that in part had responsibility for the mechanical systems of large buildings. We had cans of freon to charge a/c systems, and we were constantly running out. A new manager started and discovered that the cans of freon mysteriously disappeared and when he started an inventory system and kept the freon locked up, the amount the department spent on purchasing more went down precipitously. People had been stealing them to work on their cars and homes.

      3. identifying remarks removed*

        In one company I worked at all the batteries would mysteriously disappear from our stationery cupboard the days before Christmas. I think everyone started wrapping presents for the kids and realised batteries were not included with the toys.

        1. Annika Hansen*

          They actually removed batteries and tape from our supply cabinets around November and put them back in January for that reason. You could still get them directly from the supply person.

      4. Liz*

        We have a totally open supply room but the batteries, and only the batteries, are in a drawer at my reception desk. They’re just so expensive and so useful and sooo tempting to take home! We don’t care if people do this occasionally with pens or notebooks, but a box of non-standard batteries can be like $30 so someone before me made a judgement call. I always hand them over when asked though, there’s no third degree involved.

    2. Corporate Drone*

      Haha — excellent subtle reference to the recent cringe-inducing letter about the inappropriate bathroom stall behavior. Well done.

    3. Rachel in NYC*

      We went thru a problem like that but with phone chargers. People (both visitors and workers) would always be wondering around the office asking “does anyone have an available ?”

      So we ordered a couple, stuck them with some plugs in our supply cabinet. Even with big stickers on them at said BELONGS TO OFFICE- they would wander off.

      1. Doctor of Useless Facts*

        I used to work in hotel housekeeping. Check any lost and found in a hotel—there are loads of them.

        2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Used to work at the front desk (which was where our lost and found was kept) and can confirm. We actually had three different tubs for chargers/cords: 1) phones/iPods, 2) computers/tablets, and 3) the other miscellaneous chargers.

          Yes, more than once I was asked about charger cords for “adult massage devices.”

          Also, yes – we would gladly give you a charger and let you keep it if we’d had it in our possession for more than six weeks.

    4. TravelswithSnacks*

      Hilarious! I just read the post about the 2 hour bathroom session so your comment was extra funny because of that

    5. IndustriousLabRat*

      AHHHHH KEYBOARD COFFEE!!!! That, my friend, was EPIC.

      We had a Battery Keeper, once. The moment she got canned, I designated the Lab the Battery Vault, bought rechargeable batteries in common sizes (I’m Technical Purchasing as one of my many hats and the purchase was immediately approved… by myself…), and left them on accessible chargers where everyone can grab them. No one has asked me for a battery in months; they just appear and disappear and I also don’t have to answer “hey where do we recycle batteries?” constantly.

      1. KoiFeeder*

        Ironically, I’m pretty sure that also puts the kibosh on the christmas rush. Most kids’ toys that don’t come with batteries also won’t take rechargeable ones.

        1. hamburke*

          We used rechargeable batteries for nearly all our kids toys and digital cameras. They are almost indistinguishable from regular AAA or AA batteries. The only issue I have now is that my teenage kids put all used batteries – rechargeable or not – back in the drawer enough so I have to have a container that says “used batteries” that I sort thru periodically.

    6. Regular Reader*

      AA Batteries were the only thing I kept at reception rather than in the open cupboards. Happy to hand them out when asked for them. Also hated charging departments for basic supplies, more trouble than it was worth. Basic supplies, help yourself. Large quantities of a specific item solely for your teams use, be it pink scented highlighters or a specific more expensive folder, then expect to be charged for them. Seemed to work and reduced hoarding.

      1. JustaTech*

        I had a coworker who once special ordered pink pens (it was October, so breast cancer awareness month). I asked her why and she said “no one steals pink pens”. And she was right! I still find her pens around.

        So when I had to order gloves to use in the super-cold freezers I picked the pink ones, and lo! They’ve never wandered off!

        1. BlackberryC*

          Didn’t stop whoever took my favorite pink knife. It had a matching sheath so nobody would accidentally cut themselves on it, but now it’s gone and I’m not risking my lavender knife so now we all have to deal with loose knives hanging around.

        2. Ralkana*

          The only way to keep the contractors that buy from us from stealing our pens is to hot glue big silk flowers to the top of them. Every other pen walks away, but the ones with giant flowers stay until they run out of ink.

    7. JustaTech*

      I once managed to save my company a pretty penny by realizing that the $50 battery in the sero pipettemen was really just a 9-volt with a sticker on it.

      What I don’t understand is why I keep finding C batteries in the lab. Nothing we use takes C batteries. I’ve been here 10 years. I keep throwing them away (in the battery bin) when they crusty and gross. And yet, 3 months later, they’re back.

      1. Lab Boss*

        You’re a lab tech after my own heart. I still try to claim at least one “cost saving initiative” a year that’s just something like “started buying normal batteries” or “fixed broken $100 sample rack with $5 bottle of glue”

    8. Sharkie*

      I could have sent you some! Lol I dated a guy who was a news photog and he would leave batteries everywhere. I have a plastic bin full of them

    9. SnappinTerrapin*

      Before rechargeable flashlights became common, I worked for a police department that kept boxes of C and D cells on the desk, so anybody could replenish their flashlight at any time.

      I’m sure there were a few used for other purposes, but they didn’t scrimp on that necessity out of fear of misappropriation.

    10. I take tea*

      “(I am not locking myself in the accessible stall in the bathroom for 2 hours every afternoon.)”

      Actually LOLing here. Thank you for turning a gross story into something that made me laugh.

  9. Burnt eggs*

    Our department was being shut down, so the gal who ordered supplies went on a binge and ordered notebook paper, staples, rulers, everything she could think of. Then would put in a box that reams of paper come in and write ‘toss or free’ in the box and take the stuff home. Ten years later and her kids are probably still using those supplies. Admire the level of brazen, cheapness, theft. BTW, manager knew and didn’t care.

    3. Recruited Recruiter*

      My first job ended when the company closed my location. I was the final employee of said location. The custodian and I were tasked with cleaning up the office for the new owners of the office during my last week there. We boxed up all the remaining usable office supplies, and sent a picture to my supervisor, asking what he wanted done with them. He told me that it would be cheaper to re-purchase than ship to the nearest facility. He told me to toss or keep them because of that. The custodian said she had no use for them, and that if I didn’t want them, she’d toss them. I obviously kept the box of stuff. Going through it later, I found an unopened roll of Forever Stamps. Those stamps lasted me almost 4 years of personal use. I still have several pens from that box.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        I had a similar situation when my temp job was helping a company get ready to move and then get settled in. They said to discard, so I set up a giveaway stash up front and called local schools. Three Jeep loads of binders and office supplies kept out of the landfill. I did however snag all the mechanical pencil leads for myself. I don’t think I bought pencil leads for 10 years, and I had boxes of the red ones for almost 20.

        1. JustaTech*

          When we cleaned out our labs before a renovation we had so much stuff that we didn’t use any more, or we just didn’t have enough people to use.

          So first we all went through an upgraded our personal supplies. (“I only want orange tube racks!”) Then we called a couple of local high schools and community colleges to take what they could use (I’ve never shoved so much stuff in a Kia in my life), then offered stuff to the institution up the street (“Oh hey, this is Ken’s pipette, I used to work with him!”).

          And then we filled two dumpsters.

          No one hoards stuff like scientists.

          1. Dragon_Dreamer*

            How do you think my University ended up with 40,000+ microscope slides!? Not a exaggeration. 90+ years of, “I can’t find this, I’ll buy more!” For the past 3 years I’ve been cataloguing the entire collection, so we can turn it into a system teachers can actually USE. At least my work is appreciated!

          2. Harper the Other One*

            Can confirm. My dad worked in a chemistry department of a major Canadian university his entire career. About 25 years in, they completely renovated/expanded the chemistry building. In the process they found hand-made glassware dated 100+ years ago (several pieces of which now live at my parents’ house as decor – they’re very cool!)

            His school also had an official chemistry glassblower on staff until shortly after 2000! I remember going down and helping make pipettes one summer

          3. OtherBecky*

            A friend of mine found, roughly 15-20 years ago, a stash of frozen radioisotopes manufactured in West Germany.

    4. Elizabeth West*

      The lab I worked at closed and I ended up rescuing several boxes of file folders and hanging files that were going to be thrown away. I didn’t have to buy any more for 18 years. I finally donated them to the thrift store when I moved, where they could make someone else very happy, lol.

    5. Be kind, rewind*

      Omg my husband used to manage a store for a formerly huge company that’s almost completely wiped out (see username), and when his location closed, he took ALL the office supplies home.

      We have 3 lifetime’s worth of printer paper and envelopes. Plus a Patriots snuggie.

    6. Not the dog*

      I knew someone who ordered supplies for the “lab” when the site announced a shut down. They ordered x-small gloves and someone asked if I ordered them since I would be the only one in the lab to fit them. They were ordering them to take home for their other half. They also asked if laboratory grade cleaners would be good to use in their home kitchen.

  10. ecnaseener*

    My office used to be fully paper-based, with enormous paper files. Luckily we implemented an electronic system just in time for The Plague — but in the months leading up to that transition, I guess someone decided there was no point in fixing or replacing broken staplers. One by one, our heavy-duty staplers failed and were just…left there. We were eventually left with standard staplers that can only do like 20 sheets max — heaven help you if you have to look through an old file and then re-staple hundreds of pages in 20-sheet sections!

    2. JustaTech*

      My lab is still very paper based (because I can’t bring my laptop in the lab where it could get spilled on), so we have a lot of binders of paper that we use and reference.
      But when our building was renovated it was decided by the people doing the renovation that 1) paper is dumb and 2) storage space interferes with the “open and clean line” look they were going for. So they just didn’t put in any storage space for all our binders and lab notebooks (which we are required by law to keep for ~10 years).
      When this was pointed out all of the renovation money had been spent, so we had to scrounge up two old bookcases (that super don’t match the rest of the furniture).

  11. Provolone Piranha*

    Several years ago, my school had a copy paper shortage. Teachers were told to limit the number of copies we made. This was before every student was issued a Chromebook, so we had to figure out how to distribute readings and assignments without guaranteed paper or technology. The office supplies we do have are locked in a storage closet. We have to fill out supply request forms 2 weeks in advance to get more pencils.
    *cries in underfunded public school teacher*

      1. Susie*

        Lol my comment below was about copy paper too.

        The first thing I used to tell teachers I mentored was 1) learn the copier and 2) get to know the school receptionist.

        Now that I’m in a one to one (one computer to each student) district, #1 is a source of so much less stress.

    2. Prof Ma'am*

      Before final exams (I’m at a university) we all hoard reams of paper. We get yelled at, and there are threats to withhold paper, but it doesn’t matter. No one is willing to risk not having the paper they need to print their exams…

      1. AnotherSarah*

        Oh yes, same here–we also see at the end of the year who used the most paper, as we have to log in to print and copy….There’s a lot of secret paper stashes….

    3. Farragut*

      This was my school a few years ago! A handful of teachers were printing EVERYTHING so we went through half the year’s paper budget in a month. They weren’t even using it – giant stacks sat in the copy rooms for days or weeks. Some people just could not conceive of a classroom without poorly photocopied handouts and paper quizzes.

      1. IndustriousLabRat*

        Sounds like you needed to get them a good ol’ Mimeograph, and make them WORK for their poorly copied handouts. The smell of that purple ink still haunts me.

        1. Sara without an H*

          Yes! Yes! I, too, remember Mimeograph. I have no idea what was in that purple ink. I’m kind of afraid to ask.

          1. MelonHelen*

            Kids today don’t know what they’re missing, getting a contact high from the smell of freshly mimeographed papers!

      2. Knapplepi*

        My school implemented a log in code for photocopying so they could track our use. A veteran English teacher posted his code on the wall by the photocopier and every teacher in the building exclusively used his code. After two months, we no longer needed a log in code!

        1. KateM*

          We have code each for printing, only the Word/Excel/etc remembers the last code unless you make sure to click a checkbox not to do it. The code is hidden (censored), so nobody knows whose code is used…

    4. Generic Name*

      My son’s school district solves the issue of funding by asking parents to supply basic school supplies such as paper and pencils. I can afford it, but it’s such a shame that our school district can’t afford the basics because of the way they are funded.

      1. Jaid*

        There was an Am I The A$$hole post, where a parent bought fancy stuff for her child, only to find out that the teacher was redistributing supplies among the children. A little boy got some folder with a unicorn on it and the girl got an ugly black one. The teacher claimed that it was a teaching experience of sharing and the mom was calling her out on it.
        Lots of posters were saying that it was a thing in their school district, citing income inequalities, etc, etc and saying the mom was an AH, especially since they were a grad student.
        A bunch of folks were like, OK, fine, but the note sent home didn’t say anything about sharing supplies and being a grad student is a good ten to fifteen years from elementary school.

        1. Dragon_Dreamer*

          I remember that one! I would have complained higher up the line, and in the future kept fancy supplies at home. The teacher was the real AH, she wouldn’t even let the students trade!

    5. Ms Frizzle*

      My first year the principal announced out of the blue in November that we were done copying for the year. No warnings or requests to be careful, just no more copies. Santa left a kinkos gift card in my stocking that year because it was so tough to teach kinder and do parent communication without copies!

      1. Jules the 3rd*

        Now we get texts. One or two every day from various teachers, the principal, and the overall district. By middle school, assignments are on Canvas or similar system. Still a lot of paper assignments (which I like – writing keeps it in memory better than typing), but parent communication is mostly paper-free, except for the aid stuff, like school lunch supplement applications.

    6. Jen*

      My school is the same way! I’ve resorted to buying my own paper and asking the kids to bring in a pack on the supply list. Our biggest issue is ink, though. God forbid they get that order in on time.

    7. It's Growing!*

      I did my student teaching in a school district that had both high and low wealth elementary schools – meaning the parents of the students had high/low personal incomes. At the low wealth school where I was assigned to a 6th grade class, the school issued donated used (from local businesses) paper to students for their work vs lined notebook paper. Other supplies were also scarce. Yes, many of the students there were POC. Then I was sent to a 1st/2nd classroom at a high wealth school with few POC kiddos. They had lots of lined paper and anything else that could possibly come in handy. I lived in the district next door which also had high and low wealth schools, the difference being that all the schools there got the same amount of money for supplies per student, unlike the one where I did my student teaching. On behalf of the kids at School #1, I really resented that school district.

    8. KateM*

      We had in a previous school a limit on how many ages we could copy in a year. So much fun…

      We have to log into printer/copier each time in this school as well, but I don’t think there’s a limit or I haven’t managed to hit it – they just want to catch those who print hundreds of pages of non-work material.

    9. LilyP*

      I remember when I was in high school, near the end of some semesters the school would run low on white copy paper, but for some reason had a surplus of colorful paper (probably left over from some bulk order?), so all our handouts would be on various colors for a few weeks. It always seemed strange since surely the colorful paper was more expensive than plain white…

    10. Aimee*

      I remember my 6th-7th grade teacher having to figure out the copy paper, especially if it was a science topic we were required to learn but didn’t have a textbook or anything else for. We once got photocopies of a college textbook, front and back, two pages per side, and had to share the copies between 2-3 students. (This is my “walked to school 6 miles uphill both ways in the snow.”) It was awful for them.

      1. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

        The teacher was doing the best they could, but: copyright violation. That means the authors and publishing companies don’t get paid.

  12. Construction Safety*

    Not really drama, but. . .
    We tend to recognize words in the form of mental pictures. You see “Paperclips” & immediately visualize paperclips.

    Now picture a cabinet chock full of office supplies. Everything the well stocked office could want. You need staples. You go to the cabinet full of supplies and discover tht virtually ALL of the supplies have been purchased from, you guessed it, Staples. You are trying to find staples in a cabinet full of Staples.

    I needed a drink.

    4. Liz*

      We get our supplies from Staples and let me tell you, trying to search for staples on Staples’ website is IMPOSSIBLE

    5. Buggalugs*

      HAHAHA! I have actually bought paperclips from staples thinking they were staples because of this. I learned to look more closely.

  13. James*

    I’ve found that field geologists get weird about pens. We all have our favorite ones, typically multiple. The Pilot G2 series is a joy to write with–but can’t write in Write-In-Rain field books, so you have to get a second pen for those. Some people insist on getting Write-In-Rain pens ($15 a pop), and I’ve seen them go so far as to take the pen out of someone else’s hand if it wasn’t one. Then you have Sharpies–do you use fat or skinny, the kind that clip onto your hard hat or not, what color do you use, the list goes on…. For what it’s worth, a thin Sharpie is gold to a field geologist. They aren’t the best pens for anything, but they’re useful for everything, so we hoard them. I know two people with several boxes, but if you ask for one they have mysteriously run out that day.

    The paper towel thing also struck close to home. We all have our favorite brands of paper towels. And trash bags. And zip-top bags (not everyone likes Ziplock). And we will get into hour-long discussions about the pros and cons of these things. On a regular basis. I was amazed at just how much there was to talk about when this first happened to me–I thought a paper towel was a paper towel!

    1. Generic Name*

      I’m a field biologist, and I love the write-in-the-rain logbooks. I have a specific type of Sharpie that I prefer, but nobody ever seems to order it. :( Luckily I’m a project manager now, and we’ve largely moved to digital note taking.

      1. James*

        Oh, don’t get me started on digital notes….We got sold an online database for collecting sample data, and we haven’t gotten it to work yet. It’s been a year and a half now. For some reason, no one realized that geologists tend to work in areas without internet connections, so having a database that needs to be online isn’t going to work. It basically doubled the level of effort–now we need to take the hard copy notes and then put everything into the database…..

        1. L'étrangere*

          A local software company aimed at field biologists had exactly the same problem at first. I foolishly thought that was exceptionally stupid, but apparently not… Standard Notes is better than that, which is why I use it

      2. NotMy(Fancy)RealName*

        Livestock entomologist here. I have office pens and field pens. Field pens are ones that I will not be sad about if they fall in a pile of manure and get tossed. I’m fussy about office pens though, right now my favorite is the Pentel Energel needle tip.

        1. James*

          I always carry two pocket knives, in different pockets. One is my “clean” knife, used for such things as cutting food or food packaging, removing splinters, whittling sticks, that sort of thing. The other is my “field” knife, used for things like cutting tubing carrying contaminated groundwater, or opening packages of potentially dangerous materials, or taking apart roadkill. I am reasonably certain at least one former field knife is actually poisonous at this point, thanks to the crap that’s migrated into the blade. The field knife is usually pretty cheap, because between corrosion, being lost, and the “ew” factor none last more than a few years.

      3. After 33 years ...*

        Fond memory of our field school students crowding under a drainspout, trying to get their “write-in-the-rains” wet enough for a good test …

    2. Shark Whisperer*

      Pilot G2s are the best!

      I used to work frequently with fish and I loved my write-in-the-rain notebooks, but I just used a pencil. I never sprang for the fancy pen.

      1. Shark Whisperer*

        I will also say that the things that you had to protect with your life from other naturalists were your pocket knife and multitool. Someone asks to borrow it for just a minute and you never see it again.

        1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Lol – spouse has a Gerber multi tool from a prior job – painted pink and blaze orange stripes on it. None of the other guys working with him wanted to even touch it.

          1. Monday Monday*

            LOL I volunteer with the Boy Scouts and made all my important things pink for this reason! Even my duct tape is pink so I know it will only get used when it needs to be used.

        2. La Triviata*

          I once worked at a conference and brought scissors from home. I made sure they had bright purple handles and I attached a tassel. At our first meeting, I held them up, said they were MINE … and people laughed. A couple of days in, I was the only person who could lay their hands on their scissors.

    3. Lynca*

      Also we can be really particular about field notebooks. I know different people having preference for the spiral bound on the side, top, sewn pages, etc. I know people that have the ones they like horded in case (for some reason) they ever change. I will say I have also considered that.

      1. James*

        For my company it’s a legal thing. The notebook has to be bound, with sequentially numbered pages. That way the bloodsucking lawyers can’t accuse us of illegitimate note taking. (No offense to lawyers, I just like Jurassic Park.) We have an SOP that’s several pages long on how to properly record field notes.

    4. AK_Blue*

      Former field geologist, can confirm! Even office geos are mighty particular. :)

      As I understand it from a RN friend though, nurses are even more possessive about their pens.

      2. T. Boone Pickens*

        I was legitimately bummed when two of my friends moved out of being pharma sales reps, they always had the best pens!

      3. Recruited Recruiter*

        I worked at the front desk of a hospital department for several years. We always had to put away our pens at night/on weekends in a locked drawer. The one time someone forgot, we came in Monday to a complete lack of pens, and the people with the supply closet keys didn’t come in until later. That was a rough Monday and completely the fault of the pen-snatching weekend nurses.

    5. Nesprin*

      Same problem in labs. When VWR stopped making the really good marking pens that don’t wipe off when you spray alcohol I nearly cried. Their new ones last for … 1 week.

      Though I will say that VWR makes very very nice fine tip pens (better than sharpies even) … which I can’t use because they’re not ethanol proof.

      1. JustaTech*

        Seriously! About once a year I have to go through the lab and throw out (OK, move to the office) all the Sharpies because they’re not alcohol proof. And I totally have a private hoard (that I’m willing to share if you’re nice and I like you) of good VWR pens.

        The other thing I’m always having to relocate (or just chuck) are felt-tip pens in the lab. They’re not even slightly water or alcohol resistant, we should never buy them, and yet, they keep sneaking into my lab.

    6. Calacademic*

      Maybe this is a science thing? Because us lab rats are weird about pens too. I like to quip that you could leave $20 on a lab bench and no one would touch it. Leave a pen out? Gone in 10 seconds.

      1. IndustriousLabRat*

        Yup. PaperMate InkJoy 100RT, blue, medium, lives tucked up under my hat at all times and I’m the only one at work who buys them so if I see one in someone elses’ hoard… heyyyyyy, give that back!!! They’re not fancy, but I LOVE the triangular profile for lots and lots of manual data recording with no writer’s cramp.

        Also, Pentel paint pens (the white fine tipped ones) and industrial sharpies. The metallic sharpies are surprisingly chemical resistant, but irresistable to pen thieves. I literally take them home in my purse at night so they don’t grow feet!

    7. kicking-k*

      I’m from the UK and Sharpies are fairly new here. I use them for labelling medium-term document storage boxes. But the thin pens are no good for that, and the fat pens aren’t any good for writing anything normal-sized… I recently discovered there are double-ended Sharpies. They’re a game changer!

    8. Liz*

      I buy those write in the rain notebooks… to keep in the shower. I’m a writer and get a lot of good ideas in there, and I used to have to dry my hands and type them on my phone. No longer!

    9. Dragon_Dreamer*

      At Field Camp, certain other students kept trying to take my Dr. Grip pencils because they were much comfier to write with!

    10. kitryan*

      Oo0h – costume design pen drama- we’re always writing labels for costume pieces and it’s Rub a Dubs for washfastness but the nibs are so fat, then there’s the ball points with wash fast ink that some people like, but I hate… my fav is the thin sharpies – they usually last thru a month long run but it’s easier to freshen a label with them than to struggle thru getting those ball points to write on fabric or to clearly write with that fat pointed Rub a Dub. And you can use the sharpie on masking tape / gaff tape labels as well, so you don’t have to carry as many pens.
      When I was in grad school, I bought my own basics in most cases, so I could be sure I had what I wanted to use on hand. To keep my supplies from vanishing, particularly the pens, I’d wrap the sharpie barrel in masking tape and then use a second sharpie to write my name on the first sharpie. 20 years later, and I’m just now throwing out the last of my labeled pens (it took a while but they’ve pretty much dried up at this point).
      Later, when working in the costume shop for a regional theater, I had to make sure the drapers and 1st hands had the fav pencils and scotch tape – for patterns, you have to have the scotch brand magic tape, as other brands/types can’t necessarily be written over, which is frequently done when altering a drafted brown paper patterns. The shop could be quite cliquish and I was definitely not above maintaining good relationships through the judicious application of premium supplies.

      1. JustaTech*

        In one lab where I worked there was months of drama from one scientist that we weren’t ordering the right scotch tape. He didn’t like the tape the rest of us used to tape things in our lab notebooks. No, he wanted shiny tape, not matte tape.
        So the lab manager bought shiny tape.
        But it was too skinny.
        So the lab manager hunted around and found wide, shiny scotch tape (not easy to find).
        Then it turns out that you can’t write on shiny scotch tape (duh!) so the scientist wanted the lab manager to find wide, shiny tape that you could write on with an ink pen.

        The lab manager told the scientist to get over himself and use the regular tape and regular ballpoint pens like the rest of us.

      2. bardicartist*

        I love the Scotch brand Magic Tape! I use it soo much for my sewing hobby!

        What paper do you use for patterns? I use medical table paper since it’s basically tissue and I could get 12 rolls for $25.

        1. kitryan*

          For theater, we save and often reuse or adapt the patterns that are drafted so most places use brown Kraft paper, like on a huge 4 or 5 foot wide roll. It’s economical as it can all be used up in a season or two, so buying such a large quantity is worth the initial cost. A few specific patterns might get put onto oak tag, like the material manila folders are made of.
          The tissue of most commercial patterns doesn’t stand up to the alterations from fittings or the storage/reuse.

        2. HBJ*

          I bought Bienfang tracing paper from Amazon. It’s a little stiffer than standard pattern tissue paper but sheer enough to be able to easily see and trace through.

        3. L'étrangere*

          I get lightweight tracing paper from my local art store in 30″ width. More durable than tissue, made for tracing. I also use Pellon 830 for patterns in heavy use, like my personal block (in bulk at 50% off sale from Joanne). I’d use oak tag but it’s not practical to get the small quantities I need

          1. kitryan*

            Yes, costume shops have a different scale than home sewers, or even singleton professionals do. I did splurge on a small (length) brown paper roll, (which is tucked in the corner of the coat/sewing and other crafts closet), for myself, which I use for wrapping presents, patterning, and other crafting stuff. At least it’s not got much of a shelf life issue, which is good, as I’ll be using it up for probably over 10 years.

    11. PolarVortex*

      I am not a field geologist. But maybe I have found my people because I have opinions! about pens. And notebooks. And different preferred pens for different things because different writing surfaces need different type pens. (And also a deep abiding love for fountain pens, for all that they are not my go to pen. They’re there for just days I need to feel fancy when I’m writing. Nothing makes you feel better than using a fancy pen for no reason at all. Also nothing makes you feel more irritated than a crappy pen.)

      I don’t think a year has gone by that I haven’t gotten some kind of pen for a gift because people have learned I have opinions. One year I got box of fancy pencils and a sharpener that puts on the absolute sharpest point. Weapons grade points on my pencils. Truly a great gift.

    13. Code Monkey, the SQL*

      All this talk of Pilot G2s makes me feel so at home amongst my people.

      Order us all 15 packs and we will never share and always be happy.

    14. cncx*

      this reminds me of some childhood trauma, my mom is a nurse and i feel like nursing is another one of those fields where people are weirdly territorial about their pens. All the nurses I know have a favorite pen. My mom would never let anyone use her pen; when i was a child she was like “you can’t use it because it has hospital germs”

  14. Sharpieees*

    Honeslty, I’d go to the dollar store and pick up cheap office supplies myself just to avoid the drama. And do these businesses think that saving some pennies on pencils and paperclips is worth the waste of staff time it takes to monitor their use?

    1. Dreama*

      This is precisely what I did long ago, when the school where I taught started locking the supplies in a cabinet. There was no history of office supply theft; one day, we were told to go to the secretary to get the key to unlock the cabinet when we needed supplies. So I thought, screw this, (the secretary was supposed to get up, go several doors down the hall, unlock the cabinet, watch while you took your one pack of yellow post-it notes, and lock up. I wasn’t going to be part of that.) I went out to Target and bought the cutest office supplies ever: pens, posties, pencils, even my own ream of paper. One day I hear, “Where did you get those blue posties?” in an enraged tone from my boss. I said, “Target”. The cabinet was forever unlocked after that. WTF is wrong with people?

    2. CreepyPaper*

      I do this with supplies from Poundland because honestly the notepads and pens etc there are far superior to the ones we get from the office supply people, which also cost waaaay too much.

      Got a ten pack of fineline biros for £1 at the start of the pandemic and am only just running out the fifth one! Same with my £1 calculator, that’s still going strong.

      I draw the line at Poundland printer paper though. I just take the good stuff from the office to use at home…

    3. PT*

      Yup. I was nonprofit. We had some office supplies but they were weird. We had pens but they were the ones that don’t write, and we had to use them up (ha!) before we got new ones. I had to buy my own for our department. I needed pencils and a pink eraser…I had to buy my own. We needed binder dividers…my boss grabbed them when she saw a Job Lot near her vacation rental.

      The supply closet was a grab bag and if it wasn’t available you weren’t getting it. Or if you could order it, it’d come in a giant quantity due to vendor restrictions (you couldn’t get a 3 pack of Sharpies, you’d have to get a 12 pack; you couldn’t get a 10 pack of pencils, you’d have to order 144) and it just wasn’t worth the trouble when you needed one Sharpie or one pencil.

    4. Marzipan Shepherdess*

      I’ve done that and found it well worth the money to have EXACTLY what I wanted to use in the way of my favorite pens and mechanical pencils! (I also found it amusing that, while there are so many jokes about people taking office supplies home, I did the opposite!)

    5. kittymommy*

      The pencil thing is killing me!! I’m a grown ass adult, I can decide for myself if I need a new pencil!

    6. MissDisplaced*

      It depends on the supplies. But usually if you’re burning through pens, pads, and staples at an alarming rate, you’ve got some kind of large scale thieving going on. I have worked someplace where whole boxes of things would disappear and so they did have to lock them up in a cabinet. We never did find out who was doing it.

    7. anonymous73*

      I agree. I prefer certain types of supplies and I’d rather just buy my own than deal with the headache of begging for them.

    8. urban teacher*

      Welcome to education. I’ve always had to buy my own supplies because if I was lucky, I might be handed a coupleb of pens.

  15. Denise*

    Every office I’ve worked in has eventually stopped bothering to stock ibuprofen, aspirin, etc, because without fail somebody will empty out the entire supply and take it home with them within a day or two of it being restocked. I once witnessed a woman taking handfuls and putting them in her purse while I stood there and watched. When I said she shouldn’t be taking them all, she said “well they’re free”.

    When I brought it up to my boss, the boss said “well they’re free”.

    1. F.M.*

      …goodness. My first job out of college had a giant bottle of ibuprofen just sitting around for whenever anyone needed it, but that was mostly pointed to as wry evidence of how stressful the job was, that people kept needing it for headaches.

    2. James*

      There’s a half-dozen people in our office that get migraines, including the office manager. This would result in, if not immediate termination, a PIP and everyone in the office refusing to put you on projects (which basically means you have no work, can’t bill, and get fired anyway).

      1. LizB*

        Oh my gosh, I originally read your comment as saying that getting migraines would lead to being fired/blacklisted, not that stealing the entire painkiller supply would lead to that because everyone who gets migraines would hate your guts. I was so alarmed until I parsed it correctly!

    3. NotAnotherManager!*

      Medical supplies stay in HR because those folks have no problem enforcing the “please take no more than 3 individual dose packets at a time” rule.

      But we have had classy people who took the food and paper products from the kitchen home in bulk on the same rationale. My favorite was the one who kept cleaning the kitchen out of paper towels and, when their supervisor asked them not to do that because the supplies were for use in-office by the whole team, they demanded to know where in the staff handbook it said they couldn’t take all of them home.

      1. wittyrepartee*

        We had dish soap stealers. I started supplying the office out of my own money and writing my name on a dispenser I bought on amazon. Apparently a few people got upset that I wrote “do not move” on my dispenser. Maybe if people DIDN’T STEAL ALL THE DISH SOAP.

        1. Cold Fish*

          That made me think of a gal who insisted on writing her name on all her desk supplies (stapler, tape dispenser, scissors, etc.). When she left the company all her things migrated around the office for a while. Somehow I got her scissors and have had them 15 years now. I still think of them as Charlotte’s scissors ;)

          1. wittyrepartee*

            Yeah. Although maybe the scissors are NAMED Charlotte.
            I usually don’t label everything, but I thought that maybe if I put my name on the dispenser people would think of it as like… mine rather than “free stuff”. It’s a government office, so they’re stingy with supplies to begin with. Actually, at some point they decided that dish soap and hand soap were the same thing, so now there’s only hand soap. So sad.

            1. soap is soap right?*

              There was a recent photo of a container labeled antibacterial hand soap on the front and dishwashing soap in smaller print (still on the front) near the bottom. The photo taker was confused about what the soap could be used for. It sparked a large debate of hand vs dish soap in the group.

      2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        Ughhh – we had that with sanitizing wipes at the start of the pandemic. All supplies are now under lock and key in a closet because of a pair of people who were bringing in ziplock baggies to take them home.

        They are probably the same subspecies that is behind the you can’t have Kleenex (of any variety) anymore.

      3. ObservantServant*

        HR was several floors away in my old office. Since the accounting team was tasked with purchasing meds, tissues, snacks, etc., these supplies were housed in their area. Meds were especially tight so the basket sat on Angela’s desk and was locked up every night and on her lunch breaks. Didn’t stop the worst offender (a highly paid sales guy, because of course it was) from going in and taking things by the handful whenever she was in a meeting.

      4. HigherEdAdminista*

        I was once at a university function where someone (who definitely was not food insecure) went up to the buffet with a bag of containers before the event had even started and started clearing off plates for stuff to take home.

      5. SeluciaMD*

        I used to work for a very, VERY high paid senior partner at a big law firm. We had our own in-house “restaurant” for staff that also did in-house catering for big meetings/events. Any time there was a big meeting on your floor, when it was over, they’d send out a mass email to everyone on that floor that there was food available in conference room X for anyone who wanted anything. I swear to god, that attorney – no matter what she was working on – would drop EVERYTHING to RUN to the conference room and pack up as much food as possible before anyone else could touch it. She had bags and bags of stuff in the fridge and freezer in the office kitchen all the time that would constantly get chucked at the end of the month clean-out because one person was never going to eat all the food she hogged.

        SHE BILLED $500 AN HOUR.

        I knew to the penny how much money was in her checking and savings accounts because I used to balance her checkbook for her and to say that she did not need one bite of any of those leftovers is a massive understatement. I have no idea why she felt the need to do that – it was so bizarre, and frankly pretty mean and disrespectful to the lower-level staff that, you know, worked around the clock and didn’t make a ton of money while living in a very high cost big city. There were people that could have really used that extra food and for whom it would have been meaningful. It was freaking bananas.

    4. Jean*

      Gotta love the “well it’s free” people. They all seem to think that “free for me to use” means “a gift from on high that just appeared here spontaneously” and not “I don’t have to pay for this, but someone did.”

      1. Generic Name*

        I once watched a woman pick up a pair of sunglasses that had been left (by someone else, obviously) on a picnic table. She said “ooh! free sunglasses” and put them on her head. I was aghast and said something along the lines of, “Wow, someone lost those and is probably looking for them”. She just shrugged and seemed unconcerned.

        2. Seriously?*

          I found my laptop tote that I’d been looking for, full of a new manager’s stuff! The culture here is that personal items get stashed (on coat hooks or a corner of a shelf), pretty much in perpetuity, until they reconnect with a grateful owner; and he’d just absconded with it immediately.

      2. wittyrepartee*

        Apparently the Google offices had to crack down on people doing this with like… coconut water. “We pay you enough, buy a case for yourselves guys!”

        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          WTF, why coconut water of all things? I used to work for a large non-profit that did walk fundraising events, and one year one of our temps (who loved coconut water) got a lot of it donated for use as a giveaway for walkers. I have never seen so many bottles that were abandoned almost full. Apparently, many people just took one sip of it, went “EWWW!”, then threw it away. I don’t blame them, that stuff tastes awful – though they probably have an upmarket, super-nice version at Google.

          1. Martin Blackwood*

            Coconut water tastes like cereal water, in a bad way. BUT I can see the logic for getting it donated for run type event, since its stupidly high in potassium which makes it a good for electrolyte balancing

          2. wittyrepartee*

            I think it’s an acquired taste that you like if you drank it through childhood. A lot like aloe vera drinks?

        2. Martin Blackwood*

          Coconut water isn’t even that expensive! When I worked for a health food store it was like, $3 for a liter!

        3. CJ*

          HAH an acquaintance was responsible for that. He would steal cases of coconut water to take home. And he wasn’t even an employee, just one of the contractors!

          He’d also steal packets of guacamole, granola bars, nuts, and other snacks. Every time I visited him he’d have an entire pantry stocked from things he stole from Google. His reasoning was that he was an underpaid contractor and Google owed it to him or something.

          1. wittyrepartee*

            HAH, your acquaintance is a man of legend. My guess is that he wasn’t the only one though. Regularly providing food for people as a perk seems to create some really odd behaviors.

    5. Beth*

      I had the flip side of that in my first career. In a field that’s usually 95% women, in a workplace with 100% women, including all the management, almost all in the age range where everyone’s having periods, there was no ibuprofen in the first aid kit. Just aspirin.

      I asked the manager if we could add ibuprofen; she looked completely baffled and demanded to know why.

      Deeply embarrassed to be talking to a woman, in an all-female workspace, about women’s health issues, I pointed out that it was the generally preferred medication for menstrual cramps.

      Her reply? “Well, anyone who needs it should bring it from home.”

      It was an early red flag in what proved to be a deeply effed-up work environment.

      1. wittyrepartee*

        My response to this sort of thing is generally to buy a GIANT bottle of whatever, and label it “to share” or something and leave it out. I don’t know if that’s passive aggressive or not.

        1. kicking-k*

          I was just thinking… I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the UK, but it’s never occurred to me that my employer might supply paper tissues, painkillers, what one would otherwise consider personal supplies.

          I don’t know why, since I’d consider it odd if they didn’t supply toilet paper, or paper towels in the toilets.

          1. workswitholdstuff*

            UK also here.
            I was also sitting going ‘wait, offices supplier pain killer and paper tissues?’
            Not in any workplace I’ve every worked in, and I was wondering if I’d just worked in the type of places that don’t….

            But, sounds like it’s a UK/US thing.

            That said, I do have a box of tissues on my desk at work that work paid for (a complete over ordering elsewhere meant a big surplus and the site supervisor basically stuck a box on everyones desk…)

          2. No painkillers*

            At least in Australia, painkillers disappeared from office first aid kits about 15 years ago due to legal liability concerns.

            1. Jamie Starr*

              I’ve heard this too — that you’re not supposed to have aspirin, OTC medicine because what if the employee took it and had an adverse reaction. Or it could be construed that employees who aren’t feeling well should just take medicine and stay at work.

              1. L'étrangere*

                Sometimes employees who are struck by surprise cramps/headaches need medicine in order to make it home safely.

                1. Jamie Starr*

                  But how hard it is to buy a bottle of Advil or DayQuil or whatever and just keep it in your desk drawer? I’d rather do that so I know it’s there if I need it and it works for me, rather than take the chance the office might not have anything, or if they do, that it’s the brand/type you want/need, etc.

          1. WS*

            Yes, I work in a pharmacy and we’re not allowed painkillers in the first aid kit, so we just have a drawer of “opened stock” which staff can “sample” if they need it.

        1. Eva*

          Yeah, in my experience ibuprofen actually doesn’t work at all and Midol was best. But at the same time, this is why if you’re going to stock painkillers you should at least stock both ibuprofen and an NSAID. There are plenty of people who can’t take one or the other for various reasons and they actually function differently and are for different situations. Painkillers run a very wide range.

          1. Zan Shin*

            Ibuprofen IS a NSAID. Are you confusing it with acetaminophen which can be safely used with any of the NSAIDS?

            1. wittyrepartee*

              yeah, and tylenol (acetaminophen) is actually really good in concert with NSAIDs like Ibuprofen. Taking one of each reduces pain more than the sum of each one’s pain relief properties.

          2. SeluciaMD*

            Interesting! Midol never worked for me at ALL. It’s basically tylenol plus caffeine (to help combat fatigue) and an antihistamine (to help with bloating/water retention) but as caffeine is also a vasoconstrictor, it tended to make my cramps worse, and even without that Tylenol was basically as effective as a sugar pill for me. While my #1 choice has long been Aleve/naproxen, I would have taken ibuprofen any day of the week over Midol. Isn’t it crazy how different our bodies can react to things?

            1. L'étrangere*

              +1 Ibuprofen is what was basically invented by the (woman) British doctor who proved that cramps really exist, thereby putting thousands of psychotherapists out of business. Much more effective than anything before

          3. kitryan*

            My office is just restocking from the in-office hiatus and the only pain meds were these off brand aspirin/acetaminophen combo pills – now, I’m not supposed to take aspirin, so this was bad news for me. We’d previously had a couple big bottles of Tylenol and aspirin individually, along with tums and I think excedrin, so I was pretty surprised. Good news is facilities seemed to get it when I explained that not everyone can take a particular pain med, so the all in one wouldn’t work for a lot of folks, and confirmed that we planned on stocking back up.

    6. Rosie*

      We have been told we can’t purchase medications using institutional funds, nor leave them out for all to take, because they are *medications* and we can’t have the perception that the institution is providing medical care outside of the health services office.

      Painkillers are included in the (regularly restocked) first aid kits, though…

    7. Mental Lentil*

      You know those ducks in the city park. They’re free. You can just take one every time you go there.

      I have 728 ducks now.

      1. SeluciaMD*

        I now realize I should have been collecting those free seagulls every time I went to the beach or boardwalk. Dammit! Talk about a missed opportunity. My collection could have been so large by now……

    8. JustaTech*

      When they stopped stocking aspiring and ibuprofen in the work first aid kits we asked about and were told that it was because we might accidently poison someone by forcing them to eat a medication they were allergic to.

      What?

      The real reason was that they were cheap and the company that stocked the first aids kits was completely overcharging. So now all the first aid kits in the labs are tied shut in a way that you an open them easily but it’s clear that someone has been into them. This, we were told, was so no one would be able to hide a workplace injury that needed to be reported. (Uh huh.)

  16. F.M.*

    The only office ‘supply’ that’s really caused drama in my workplace has been keys.

    See, all the grad students get a key to the grad student office, which also opens the door to the room used for grad student mail, the grad student printer, and a little kitchenette area. Straightforward enough, right?

    But there’s a key that they USED TO give out to grad students, and stopped, which also opened the door to the room most often used for grad student classes, and the door to the staff office printer room, which is inaccessible before/after staff hours and during the lunch break. That’s where the fancier printers that will print in color, do binding and hole-punching, and so forth all live.

    Which meant that you’d get clusters of grad students around the door to their classroom, waiting for the prof to arrive and open it…unless someone from an early enough cohort was there too and could open it for them. Or asking other people to come downstairs and open the door to the staff printer room because the grad printer wasn’t working and they needed to print 84 copies of a quiz before class in half an hour and it was during the lunch break.

    …and then it was discovered that if you had a good excuse, you could still get issued the Special Second Key. If, for example, you were teaching an 8am class, and thus regularly had to print things in the morning before the staff were in their office.

    This is before we even get into the Archeology Lab Key, which exists in exactly one copy given out in person with sign-out from a staffer in the office with prior appointment…

    (Everyone in the department is helpful and friendly, and none of this is handled in an unreasonable manner. But it’s the closest we get to drama, because only some people get the SACRED KEY that allows you into the holy sanctum of PRINTING IN COLOR.)

      1. F.M.*

        It’s possible! Was the seminar room in question weirdly half-circular because it was in the one tower-like part of the building left after the major refurb?

    2. OhNo*

      Maybe there’s something about universities and color printing, because the one I work for also has a Holy Sanctum of Printing in Color. Our campus is quite small, but there is only one color printer and it lives in a building that is exclusively used for staff offices, and always locked unless you have a Special Key Fob, which you can only get by having an office in that building.

      From what I understand, no one whose office is actually in that building ever really has a work-related need to print in color. But for every other staff and faculty member on campus, you better believe we are all hustling to make friends with someone who has an office in that building. Coffee once a week with someone you can’t stand is 100% worth it, when it means you can ask them to let you into the building to access the color printer when you need it.

      2. F.M.*

        Every time I went to the grad student archeology club meeting, where we each brought a print-out of an article we’d found & shared on the meeting’s theme, I would admire their shiny thick-papered full-colored printouts, especially compared to mine. Some departments just get All The Color, and in others it’s for Special Events and Tenured Professors.

      3. Nina*

        at my university, undergrads had to pay for printing (it was like 2 cents a sheet or something stupid but they had to pay). Staff got free printing (duh). Grad students… got free printing but only if they knew to ask a specific person at a specific time to activate their card for it. This information was never officially provided, but was handed down from grad student to grad student.

        Unpopular grad students paid for their printing.

    3. Dwight Schrute*

      This reminded me of a professor I had for undergrad. She required that we print the lectures ahead of time and bring them to class- we as students had to pay for printing and it wasn’t super cheap and her lectures were long. Professors could print things for free, when we told her about this she didn’t care and didn’t change the policy about requiring printed copies.

      1. Dramatic Romantic*

        She didn’t use it as a money making enterprise, like a professor I had? He would charge a $25 ” optional materials fee” paid directly to him for a pre-printed lecture book. Literally printed out his PowerPoint slides for the semester and handed them to the students. Oh, and he “wrote” his own textbook, and changed it ever so slightly each year so that he could reissue it.
        Legal? Maybe not. Definitely fishy.
        Made the class a hell of a lot easier? YES.
        Did some students occasionally get together, buy one book, and then make multiple copies and sell them at less than $25? YES.

      2. Becca Rosselin-Metadi*

        When I was in grad school, we had a binder of articles for certain classes for which we had to pay $10.00. It was convenient, since it meant we didn’t have to go to the library and copy the articles ourselves and $10 wasn’t that much, even for a full load of classes, although it did add up.
        It added up especially for the admin who wasn’t supposed to be charging for those binders, who kept all the money and bought herself nice clothes/nice vacations/an addition to her house with the money. I was shocked that it added up to that much (it was not a big program) but apparently it was enough for that. Oh, and she went to jail.

        1. L'étrangere*

          You bet it adds up. At an Ivy League institution I worked at, when paper was still king, everyone had to get their class packets printed at the local Mafia outpost, which had an exclusive contact. Some people would treck to New York to do their own copying and then have to collect the money directly from the students, but the university itself did the enforcement if you were caught. The same place did extensive remodeling of office space every summer, shuffling people unnecessarily till a certain amount was spent – they should have just forked over the money and left people to work in peace

    4. R*

      Oh man I played this videogame before…I could never find the third gem so I could never figure out the code to unlock the copier though.

    5. Tim*

      We had a similar issue. All the locks were re-keyed. Heightened security! Department could only have 3 keys for staff of 150 to a particular closet. Arguments; justifications – but no luck. Then a staff member discovered the new locks could be opened in seconds by slipping a credit card or gift card between the door and the frame. Problem solved!

      1. Dragon_Dreamer*

        We’re currently having fun with that. One storage room has a hallway door, and an exit to another room whose entrance is on the other side of the building. It was the former lab manager’s office, before he retired and passed away. Then it became the ombudsman’s office, as well as our expected storage room. She was given the only key… and has been working from home since the shut down. We’re currently waiting for new keys to be made.

    6. Mitford*

      I think I’ve posted this before, but I once worked at a Catholic girls high school where the very officious school secretary refused to let the PTO parents have a key to the closet where the PTO kept all its stuff. They had to check the key out every single day from Edith and then turn it back into her before they left the building. One day, the PTO president checked it out, unlocked the closet, then walked to the back door of the school and handed the key to another parent volunteer who was waiting there. That person then went to the nearest hardware store and had copies made. Edith never figured it out.

      1. Youth Services Librarian*

        See, there should be a balance – at my library one key opens all but 4 doors in the building (those 4 doors being part of the older part of the building, including a typewriter closet, office, and a basement door). I’ve always given my staff Very Serious Lectures about the Sacredness of the Key… and then discovered that we had somehow managed to spread an unknown number of them around the community.

  17. Cat Tree*

    A few jobs ago, the admin ordered me a box of pens. It happened to be breast cancer awareness month, so they had the standard black ink but a pink casing. One day a few months later, a male coworker asked to borrow a pen for a second because he wasn’t near his desk. I handed him my pen, which happened to be a pink one, and he recoiled in horror like I had offered him a poisonous snake. He refused to even touch a pink item and found a pen on someone else’s desk.

        1. Christmas Carol*

          I always ordered my stuff in pink too. My safety knife and tape measure still got swiped by the guys in the warehouse ALL THE TIME, because my desk was closer than the unlocked supply closet where they could just help themselves to a new one, but at least I could identify the guilty party on sight.

          1. Red 5*

            This is why I keep telling people at my office to label their stuff in big letters in permanent marker or paint pens, because it’s not going to stop a thief but at least when you walk into their office you can go “Oh, THAT’S where my stapler wandered off to, thanks!” and take it back and they can’t argue with you.

            Harder to do with pens, but works for anything bigger than that really.

            1. SeluciaMD*

              YES! Because of where my desk used to sit in my office (adjacent to the printer) my stapler would get swiped ALL THE TIME. But I put a huge nearly impossible to remove label on it with my name in bright red and all caps and miraculously, it never wandered away again. I never minded if people used it, I just got cranky that it would disappear all the time. Like, use it at my desk, leave it there and go on your merry way people! Not sure why that was so hard to begin with.

        2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Agreed. At a prior job spouse had a bunch of expensive and specialist tools. He painted all of them with blaze orange stripes because 1) you’re less likely to loose them in the field and 2) it’s easy at a glance to see and remind the other guy that those specialty sockets are actually mine.

        3. Professional Merchandiser*

          Yep. When I worked, the men on my team were constantly borrowing my tools and not returning them. Finally I went out and bought some hot pink ones, and the theft came to a screeching halt. :-) If they HAD to borrow one in case of emergency, they wasted no time in returning it.

      2. James*

        When my wife did field geology this is what she had too. I’ve also seen sites where they had pink PPE for folks who forgot theirs–pink vests, hard hats, etc. Most people on construction sites will never forget their PPE if you do that to them once! (Didn’t work with one archaeologist–she got her own pink hard hat and put rhinestones on it….)

        1. Smaller potatoes*

          I’ve been to factories where the ‘punishment’ for certain safety violations was having to wear pink gloves. As a woman in engineering I was pretty horrified to see that shaming people with pink things is a common practice.

          1. Recruited Recruiter*

            The sad thing is it works. The percentage of toxically masculine males in this type of position is a big problem, and one that can be abused for the solution to other problems in this way.

            1. James*

              To be blunt, if the worst expression of toxic masculinity on a jobsite is an aversion to pink I’m happy. Environmental remediation uses a lot of the same people as construction and oil drilling (a lot of drillers bounce back and forth), and…well, it can get a lot worse. And I’ve seen other colors used as well–the point is to stand out and single the person out for public shame, as shaming is a powerful tool for ensuring compliance with workplace norms. If it keeps me from needing to fill out more paperwork because these morons hurt themselves, I’m okay with using the tool.

              For my part, I don’t get this whole obsession with colors. I mean, I know for a fact John Wayne wore pink, and purple (another “female” color) was the color of royalty. Ironically every image of the Virgin Mother is shown in blue–a color that used to be considered feminine. I’ve never had a favorite color, and while I prefer to wear earth tones it’s because I don’t need to worry about what matches with what and when I tried to go with an all-black wardrobe my teachers nearly had me committed (apparently black=goth, and goth=clinically insane…to be fair, I’ve always been fascinated with bones, so I get their confusion). It’s a color. It has no gender, no sex, and no implication of anything.

              1. SnappinTerrapin*

                Pink was a uniform color for US Army uniforms as recently as WWII.

                When you see a black & white picture of LTG Patton in his riding boots and breeches, the breeches and shirt were pink, the coat was green.

      4. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        Lol spouse once had a job that required expensive specialty tools – company gave you a tool budget every year, anything above came out of your pocket. Now the budget was more than healthy enough to cover normal breakage, but not theft. Hubby painted pink and blaze orange stripes on his tools. They were easy to see at a glance in open fields, and nobody wanted to take them.

        1. pandop*

          Sadly this doesn’t work if you are the loser, not the losee. I bought myself a new steel rule that had a big & chunky pink/purple outer case, on the principle that I’d spot it much easier than a small black or silver one.

          Nah, still lose it. There’s no hope for me!

      5. Victoria J*

        Never had my calculator stolen when I switched to a pink one.

        Really narrowed down who was stealing the ones I had before. (To just the weirdly insecure men).

        1. Dragon_Dreamer*

          My gaming desktop is covered in sparkly butterfly stickers for this reason too! Keeps people from touching the BFGM at LAN parties. :P Before the stickers, people would be poking and prodding and looking in the side window at the innards. Now they steer clear. :P

    2. RabbitRabbit*

      You can replace a black Sharpie’s cap with a pink one if you want to ensure your black Sharpies don’t wander off, too.

      2. OhNo*

        I (accidentally) discovered this trick for keeping the office pens from wandering away too frequently. I had a ton of black-ink pens with not caps, and a ton of red caps from pens that were dried out. Combined the two, and suddenly, no one was stealing our pens any more because they thought they all had red ink.

        Since then, I’ve started doing it on purpose. I buy a box at a time of both black and red pens, swap the caps, and use up the red ones myself since I just use them for personal notes.

      2. EvilQueenRegina*

        That was my reaction the year my uncle refused to wear the party hat from his Christmas cracker because it was pink.

      3. Free Meerkats*

        65-year old male here. All my LAMY fountain pens are the limited pink ones they had a few years back. I even have one filled with pink ink.

        None of your pink stuff is safe from me!

        2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Lol -I mentioned my spouse above with the bright pink and blaze orange stripes on the tools. He was very much a guy, and loved how visible the colors made his tools when way out in the files. Neon and Blaze shades aren’t native in nature – or in many industrial hangars.

    6. Belle*

      I’ve kept Disney princess pens at my desk for years now – most men won’t steal them because they’re princesses, and the women (and the men who are cool about it) won’t because they’re super distinctive. It’s been years and I still have the full set – a few of them even on a refill ink now!

    7. Ari*

      At a company event a few years ago we all got branded hoodies to wear. They were either pink or blue (the brand colors) but distribution was at random, not by gender (because why would it be). OMG the big hairy deal that some of the dudes made about having to wear a pink sweatshirt, and trying to trade for blue ones.

    8. NoviceManagerGuy*

      My oldest daughter went to kindergarten with a boy who refused to color with pink, so he colored a pig blue instead. But at least he was a kindergartener!

      1. SnappinTerrapin*

        When I was in kindergarten, we used the pink crayons to color the skin of white people we drew.

        A few years later, Crayola came up with a color they called “flesh.” I’ve forgotten how many years it was before the racial assumption was called to their attention. I think they changed the name of that color to “peach.”

  18. Susie*

    At two past school districts I worked at, copy paper hoarding was rampant. And for good reason too—copy paper was never ordered enough. One district was under resourced and the other was a very wealthy town. In the latter district, supplies were under lock and key. I didn’t know there even was a supply closet until the very end of my first (and last) year there.
    Luckily my current school, though in an under resourced district, has ample copy paper and tries to get us the supplies we need. One less stress.

    1. Susie*

      Oh and another story I remembered.

      I did a brief stint as a admin assistant and was in charge of supply ordering. I didn’t over do it, but I reordered supplies as we ran out. Apparently this was so thrilling to my colleagues. So many people thanked me for keeping us stocked in supplies.
      I found out at some point that the previous person in my role had been incentivized to order less supplies by being told she could pocket the difference if she was under budget. I was not offered this same incentive, nor was I ever told there was a budget. So…maybe my former boss learned it is better to keep staff happier than save a little bit of money?

  19. Claire (Scotland)*

    I’m a secondary school teacher. A few years ago, we were informed by the Business Manager that orders for our usual teacher planners through our purchasing system would no longer be approved. We now had to buy these dreadful ones (softcover, cheap paper, wrong layout) from the local council’s print shop instead.

    People. Were. Furious. The emails flew thick and fast. No one talked about anything else for HOURS – which was all the time it took management to back down and say we could buy our proper planners after all. Just for that year, they said. Just until we sorted out the complaints about the alternative ones.

    We have never heard another thing about it, and we still have our planners.

    2. Selina Luna*

      I’ve been a secondary teacher for years, and I’ve never once actually used my paper planner. I hate the ones they give out here. I don’t even use typical school planners. I just do everything online. But I feel for you, ordering from the local shop. One year, the only pencils I could get at school were the plastic ones that destroy pencil sharpeners. They went back to good, old-fashioned Ticonderoga pencils within a semester because whatever they were saving on pencils, they were spending twice over on new sharpeners.

  20. Jamie Starr*

    At my first post-college job I worked for a proprietary art school. The man in charge of office supplies was so tight with the supplies. (I guess because it was for-profit and the owner was cheap when it came to salaries, etc. because he, of course, wanted more profit for himself.) Anyway, if I asked for paperclips, Office Supply Guy would say “How many paperclips do you need? Is 10 enough?” Or Kleenex…. “Do you need an entire box?” It was so ridiculous. Like what am I doing, stealing 99¢ boxes of paperclips? To do what with them?

    My next job after that was at a museum and on my introductory tour around the office, the office manager opened a cabinet (unlocked!) full of supplies – post-its, pens, paperclips!, etc. – and told me to take what I needed. It was amazing.

    I also worked for a Smithsonian museum and office supplies were under lock and key (being Federal property and all). I remember one time I asked the woman in charge to order ink pens – nothing super fancy, but slightly nicer than the basic Bic. I think they were about $4/box and the Office Supply person was like, “You really need a $4 box of pens?” I said it was for my department director and it could come out of our department budget and she was like “Okay, [department I worked in] got it like that? Fancy.” She was ex-military so she ran a tight office supply ship!

    2. Zephy*

      Oh man, the pens. My department got our collective hand smacked for ordering pens that were just slightly too nice – there’s only 7 of us down here, so the EA came down and handed out one pen to each of us from the box of 12, and then informed us that she would not order anything nicer than the bog-standard BICs for us ever again.

  21. Funny Cide*

    I started a position relatively recently where my duties include supply orders. I look forward to having some kind of horror story in the future and will be reading these with rapt attention.

    1. Funny Cide*

      Oh! I do have a story! When I was in high school, our school district administration (small, rural, not well-funded, a hot mess in so many other ways as well) started freaking out in about February that we were on track to run out of toilet paper in the schools and wouldn’t have any budget to any more, and if we ran out the students were going to have to bring in their own. (!!!!) There were toilet paper shortage PSA fliers throughout the halls and hanging in the bathrooms that we all needed to be conservative with our toilet paper usage. I guess we cut down on our squares enough or they found some room in the budget or something, because I thankfully never had to bring my own.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        My parents went to Gettysburg College in the 1950s. During the Great Depression a railroad car full of toilet paper was simply abandoned, presumably the owner having gone belly up. The station master called the college and asked if they wanted it. They were still working their way through it when my parents went there. It was incredibly bad toilet paper, so I suspect that people bought their own.

      3. Seeking Second Childhood*

        A few governors ago, my state had a budget crisis. Among other brilliant ideas for saving money, the state university system declared a moratorium on purchasing office supplies. Someone decided that toilet paper was included in this. My friends who worked there all had at least one roll stashed under their desk because supplies were dwindling before it got resolved. It was completely ridiculous!

  22. Reality Check*

    I worked for a company that had about 8 offices in the area. Each office was allotted $X for coffee & related supplies each month. 7 offices just got regular coffee, but 1 office ran over budget every month with the expensive brands. So they cut off every office’s coffee money, of course. Talk about all hell breaking loose.

    2. kicking-k*

      I once worked for a large institution which was opening a new building. It was architecturally interesting so we were all allowed to go and take a tour. And in passing, they mentioned that each floor had a coffee station with an instant-boil tap and unlimited free tea and coffee.

      The resentment! We had to bring in our own coffee. And we’d just been told we could no longer order biscuits for meetings.

      …but this isn’t a coffee thread.

    3. Galadriel's Garden*

      Ha, we absolutely experienced that when we moved to a fancy new downtown office from our suburban “traditional” office with fortress-like cubicles (and offices, with solid doors). A lot of people weren’t particularly jazzed about the move since it meant that instead of a 10-minute drive they now had a 45+-minute train commute into a much-hated open office, so the powers that be decided to buy our affection with free snacks and fancy coffee. They, for some reason, got 2 Keurig grind and brew machines for the entire office of 300+ people (you had to hit the machine before the 8 am rush, otherwise you’d be there for 20 minutes), which they initially stocked with nice coffee beans from local roasteries. Apparently someone came to the realization that buying local upscale coffee beans was going to be extremely expensive long-term, because the coffee was wordlessly replaced with the Aramark garbage-tier beans. Everyone was mad and opted to just leave the building to go buy better coffee instead, which of course took way longer than the stupid machines. Then the pandemic hit (and the fire nation attacked) and now I can just make my own good coffee at home, but…still. Our offices are supposed to open back up next year, and I’m curious if they’re going to try to lure us out of our houses and back into the office with good coffee again…

      1. La Triviata*

        At a previous job, there was free coffee; it came in pre-measured packs, so you could put the filter in the filter cup, open the pack, pour it in, and you’d get standard brew coffee (not good, but not terrible). One woman – in the name of economy – declared that you could re-use the grounds from one pot if you added half a pack of fresh grounds. The result wasn’t terrible, but was worse than using a complete fresh pack. Well, as you might imagine, she’d get confused and add the remaining half pack to the first used grounds and the first half pack that she’d used. That was terrible. People complained, but she insisted it was perfectly fine coffee and SUCH a saving. ick

      2. JustaTech*

        For many years my office had a coffee machine that brewed very large carafes. This was fine at the time, but eventually the office shrunk enough that it was silly to make a giant 30-person pot for 10 people. Then we learned that the other sites had Keurigs while we were still making drip.

        So we got Keurigs.

        Then it was decided that one site was going through *way* too much coffee, they must be stealing the pods, so they got a grind-and-brew machine and started charging. At a location that was 80% night shift, where there was no where else to get coffee.

        Then we had an office renovation and part of the renovation was new coffee machines that used these proprietary pouches rather than K-cups. Oh, and this company doesn’t sell machines for home use. Yup, it’s just like the coat hangers in hotels with the weird not-hooks: it’s specifically because they think you’re going to steal them and take them home. Thanks for the vote of confidence, bosses!

      3. L'étrangere*

        I experienced something along those lines, the bosses who think they’re saving money by switching to cheap coffee. Then instead of a quick swing down the hall everyone spends 20-30mn going out for it. No announcements, but the good stuff reappeared soon enough. Another place I worked at was known for being the first to provide Peets freely to everyone. I swear some people took the job on that basis

  23. Anonymous Koala*

    I worked in a lab where the lab manager had a locking file cabinet where she kept all of the office supplies, including these oil-based lab markers that we needed for everything. The lab manager would give everyone one marker when they joined and then refuse to replace it if they lost it or if she deemed you had used your marker up ‘too fast’. As a result, people would hoard those markers like they were pure gold, and a couple of lab members would steal the lab manager’s marker whenever she wasn’t looking (she had no problem replacing her own markers) and then give them to others who needed them, like marker-Robin Hood. It got to the point where I bought my own set of markers on Amazon and started giving them out to people to avoid the shear ridiculousness of the whole thing.

    2. FreakInTheExcelSheets*

      Reminds me of when I was in high school – one summer they swapped out all the dry erase boards (no idea why, only a handful were damaged in any way and they were tight-fisted about the budget the rest of the time). Something about the surface of the boards (finish, texture…) meant that only the branded Expo markers worked well, though oddly that was not the brand of the boards. The vendors threw in a ton of markers as ‘samples’ so the administration decided they weren’t buying any more. The markers would write, but none of them were as dark as they were supposed to be and were a finer tip, so they could be hard to read from the back of a classroom. They also had a weird sensation when writing, similar to when you got the wrong angle on the piece of chalk (I’m not that old but my elementary school was old school and to this day still has chalkboards) where it wouldn’t make the terrible noise but felt weird in your hand. Teachers were unsurprisingly hoarding the Expo markers and keeping them under lock and key to keep others from stealing them. My English teacher went so far as figuring out how to open the casing on the pens, extract the Expo’s innards, and put them in the other brand’s casing without it being obvious that the pen was tampered with.

      3. ragingsarcastic*

        As a former office admin, I know the exact brand of whiteboard you are talking about and will shake my fist at them eternally.

    3. Procrastinating Academic*

      Ah, marker drama! My office manager and dean once decided that the department was spending too much on whiteboard markers, and that therefore we would be limited to ten markers per semester, given out as a pack of markers at the start of the semester. This did not go over well with our math and science faculty and a thriving black market in whiteboard markers quickly developed. At the faculty forums to replace that dean after her much-deserved firing, candidates were baffled by the strange questions about office-supply policies…

    4. just passing through*

      My department’s one (1) meeting room was remodeled over the summer. There was partisanship, apparently, between those who wanted a blackboard and those who wanted a whiteboard. (Yes, we are academics.) So they decided to get… a black whiteboard. I can only assume this was some bizarre attempt at a compromise: it’s exactly like a whiteboard and uses markers, but the color of it is black, so you can only write on it using special neon markers. And two of the four colors of neon markers are so light they can’t be seen from the back of the room. (Ask me how I know.)

      1. just passing through*

        A grad student rep was heard to say–not entirely in jest–that the grad students’ main demand this semester is some FRICKIN SOLVENT so we can ACTUALLY ERASE THE BOARD.

        I’m not sure if this story has a point, except, maybe, don’t buy black whiteboards? One or the other. Actually, no, the point is, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

  24. Pauli*

    The first time I ordered supplies for my very small (2 person) office, the director mentioned that my predecessor really like the cookies the supplier sent with orders. Looking into it, I realized they sent treats with orders over a certain size, WAY more than we would ever really need to use. That’s when I realized why we had soooooo many of certain things (baskets of post-its, stacks and stacks of boxes of staples), she would order more to get the treats!

  25. Jaune Desprez*

    I once left a job over office supplies! I worked with a group of young physicians completing advanced fellowship training, and they wanted to be able to create notebooks of the hard copy study handouts they received with many of their lectures. I was told that we couldn’t purchase a three hole punch to be shared among the group. There was a three hole punch available to them in the copy room at the opposite end of the department on a different floor. It wouldn’t even take them five minutes to get there, so there was certainly no need to make a frivolous purchase simply for the fellows’ convenience.
    The punch I’d requested cost all of eight dollars. I decided it was a sign.

  26. Albeira Dawn*

    My office doesn’t use black pens. Period. I guess it’s from a time when we signed a ton of stuff and needed to be able to tell photocopies from originals, but now most stuff is digital. Still only blue or green ink, though. We don’t even order black pens, but I secretly have a couple in my backpack for when I’m writing stuff in my personal notebook.

    1. Jamie Starr*

      This would be my dream office… I loathe black ink and only use blue (have been that way since high school). But most businesses default to black. I carry my own blue ink pens so if I have to fill out forms (at the doctor’s office or something) I can use blue ink!

    2. The Rural Juror*

      We only use blue pens because of the things we need to sign pretty regularly. I do keep a stash of black pens hidden away, though. Every once in a while I need one, but people always take my pens and I feel the need to hide them so they don’t disappear. Blue pens are endless, though. People can take those, I don’t care.

    3. Enough*

      In college I used green a lot. Came in handy when I failed to file some paperwork and the guy in charge was sure he had lost it and called me for another copy. Good thing. Otherwise my dorm would not have had visitation that weekend. 70s and rules around allowing the other sex in.

    4. Meghan*

      I became a blue ink person after working in property management for a bit and it pains me now if I am forced to write with a black pen. I especially love certain blue BIC pens which seem to be disappearing from the world.

      I did recently get a pack of colored gel ink pens from the Container Store and I love them! They’re replacing my beloved blue pens.

  27. Miss Chanadler Bong*

    The chair swap! Facilities for some reason used to come in and swap our chairs around. Well, the problem is that for some reason the chairs are very stiff and for some reason, trying to get mine to go down where it belongs for my 5′ frame was a hassle. A lot of times they’d swap them, and my 6′ coworker would be like, “Hey, this is yours…” It would drive me crazy. The fact that they couldn’t put our chairs back where they belonged used to make me crazy.

    I haven’t been in the office for over a year, I go back two days a week in two weeks, and I’m dreading the chair situation. My chair in my office at home is so much better, and I fully expect not to have the same chair that was there when I left.

      1. PT*

        My husband’s old work, they had done something (moved offices, painted, I’m not sure) that had resulted in everyone having to label chairs with a label maker. But it had happened a few years before he worked there, and the office was starting to turn over, but the old names were still on the chair. The chairs evolved to have the names of their previous owners.

    2. Momma Bear*

      I once worked somewhere with a coworker who would grab extra chairs from wherever for meetings in their office and put them back willy nilly. You might get your guest chair/desk chair back. You might only get your desk chair. You might get someone else’s chair. Drove people crazy. I think eventually they were told to use conference rooms and stop “borrowing”.

    3. Hotdog not dog*

      I worked in an office where most of the chairs were either broken or missing. When I started, there was no desk chair in my office; I had to borrow a cafeteria chair. We were also not allowed to order any new furniture. The solution was for people to buy their own chairs. When I left that job, I took the chair I bought with me, and as you might have guessed, OF COURSE the office manager called me to ask if they could have it back! I told her that I still have the receipt showing I paid for it, so if they wanted to buy it from me for what I paid, sure. Otherwise, they could go pound sand.

    4. E*

      When my chair goes back into the office, I am labelling it with my name! I have one of the good office chairs, and I’m not having it nicked!

  28. Annony*

    I had a boss who hated blue pens. She actually went through the supply closet and threw away every blue pen she could find.

    1. Jamie Starr*

      This reminded me of when I temped for a small NFP and the Director was bananas. She was filthy rich (like own private jet and multiple homes rich); her husband owned a hedge fund, which funded the family foundation, which contributed heavily to the NFP, which was a pet project of hers. It was awful. But anyway — she only wanted paperclips that matched the colors of the NFP. So her poor assistants (she had two — it was very Devil Wears Prada) would order those tubs of colored paperclips from Staples, but we could only use one of the colors.

      She also asked the mail room person to call the post office to see if they could deliver the mail earlier in the day. In NYC. She legit thought the post office would/should change its route for her.

      1. fposte*

        Yikes on the phone call. That’s one where you straight up start by saying “My boss is making me do this.”

        1. Jamie Starr*

          I think he probably just lied and told her he called, but never did.

          She was terrible. When we were preparing the gift bags (some sort of cloth tote) for the annual fundraiser, she made her housekeeper come in the day before the event and IRON the straps of the tote bags. She had a driver bring her to work and the driver would call one of her assistants to warn us she was on her way…very Miranda Priestly. She didn’t have a computer in her office so everything was done old school – print it out, she would mark up the spreadsheet, or document, etc. then you’d go back to your computer and make the changes. She made her assistants wear headsets so she could talk to them from her office (where she also wore a headset).

          After my three month sentence there, the temp agency asked me to stay on and I told them absolutely not.

            1. Jamie Starr*

              I’m tried to block most of them from my memory but here’s one more:

              She had professional photos taken of her, her hedge fund husband, and their two dogs (can’t remember the breed – mid sized, nothing too outrageous). The photos were sent to the NFP office so her assistants could send them out to her social circle as the family holiday card. I guess maybe the hedge fund contact list was part of it too, because why would you send a family picture out to a NFP mailing list? So the photos show up a few days before they need to be mailed to arrive in time for Christmas and she HATES them. I can’t remember what was wrong with them – they were too glossy and she wanted matte, or color was wrong, or maybe it was even something with the photo itself (although one would assume she had seen the proofs and specifically chosen that one). So they had to fix whatever she wanted done differently, reorder hundreds of photo cards, and rush ship them to the office so they could be mailed out in time for Christmas.

              Most of her demands were, I think, a function of being so rich that a) she had no concept of how a real office worked or what was reasonable and b) she was accustomed to being able to just pay whatever the price was to get what she wanted, no matter how outrageous it was.

              The hedge fund was on one floor and that’s where the traders were, but then the hedge fund assistants, the accountant and family foundation manager, and the people working at the NFP all sat together on the floor one story below. The kitchen was full of all kinds of snacks and beverages, and they bought lunch for us every day — at first I thought that was great because I was a temp scraping by so yay for free food! But I quickly realized it was just a way to keep us chained to the desk – so we wouldn’t go out and could work through lunch. (We could not order Chinese food when she was in the office because she hated the smell of it.)

        2. quill*

          OOoh, I remember my boss making me call to try and get chemical samples for free! (Generally: nobody will sell you sample sizes. Everyone making industrial chemical batches rather than school and lab standard supplies wants you to order a 50 gallon drum at minimum.)

          “My boss wants to know if you sell…” was the way I ended up opening all those conversations, which came to a head when I was sent on a multiday phone goose chase to order nitrocellulose, AKA Gun Cotton. We were, it should be noted, a tiny startup lab known to absolutely nobody. I returned to the boss with the news that nitrocellulose could not be had literally anywhere wholesale, at least not in the format we required. One place informed us that they didn’t sell to anyone without a specific business license: my boss threw a fit.

          “Why would anyone say we’re not qualified to purchase nitrocellulose?” he shouted. “The website I researched said you could get it anywhere you buy film developer!”

          “Because it’s a fucking explosive,” I replied, in a fit of unprofessionalism, “And the website you’re reading was last updated in nineteen eighty nine.”

          1. JustaTech*

            I had a boss who, the day after he learned we’d not had our grant renewed (ie, we were all hosed) decided that he would have us work with some incredibly gnarly diseases (note, we were already working on HIV which did not count as a gnarly disease on this list).

            So his first step is to come to my desk with a hand-written list and ask me to email our animal facility about using these (very scary) things there. And he just stood there watching me type, so I couldn’t even start the email “hey, sorry to ask this, my boss wants to know if we can use hanta virus in the facility”.

            So I send the email, my boss leaves and I *sprint* down the street to the animal facility to apologize for asking and to beg them to say “no”. (Of course they were going to say no, this was like serious BSL3 stuff.)

            And my boss knew that the answer would be no, he just wanted some plausible deniability or something by having *me* send the email.

    2. Wendy*

      My old company’s rule was all our reports had to be in black ink (no idea why!) so anytime a vendor gave us pens, my annoying, thinks she’s in charge co-worker would toss them in the bin so people wouldn’t accidentally use them.

      I secretly kept some and used them for non-report stuff like signing cards and passing the lunch order sheet around the office that I knew she would have to see. It was my little rebellion.

  29. Hello*

    I worked at a large department at a college that had plenty of money but wouldn’t (or maybe was never asked to) purchase common office supplies like coffee, Kleenex, disposable plates and forks. Instead, every week everyone was asked to contribute 5 – 10 dollars for a supply purchase. It blew my mind because when I worked in a different department at the same college, all of those purchases were provided. Out of spite, I brought my own coffee, plate and fork and never contributed to the fund.

    1. Water Everywhere*

      Other offices I worked at provided coffee for staff, even if only a basic brand. At this one, though, the CEO had a special branded blend made for the company as a marketing tool. This was the only brand of coffee allowed to be served on site and staff who drank coffee had to contribute to the cost in the form of a set dollar amount payroll deduction or cash per cup, which I thought was ridiculous & said so to my manager.
      When the pandemic shut us down and we went wfh, finance* suspended the payroll deduction. When the office opened back up, finance* never did reinstate it.
      *whistles innocently

    2. Ainuvande*

      Every department gets $XXXX non-compensation budget and has to figure out how to prioritize it. At my old department the $100/month in coffee was worth not having the battles with professors. My new department has been “buy it yourself” since before I started, and puts that $100 into food for a monthly grad student meeting.

  30. Ophelia*

    My office is generally fine about office supplies apart from one kerfuffle about cheap pens, but we have a weird cultural thing about having Real Milk in the kitchens for coffee. About a decade ago we moved buildings, so facilities had to pause milk delivery for a couple of weeks so we didn’t end up with, like, gallons of spoiled, unused milk. The OUTCRY was amazing. People brought in their own milk, complained to management, etc. Finally the top leadership had to send around an all-staff email confirming the date that milk delivery would restart.

  31. Dwight Schrute*

    I hated being in charge of ordering supplies at my first office job. People would never put things on my order list in time and then get mad when they ran out of the thing they forgot to tell me to order. One time I ordered blue paper for a department and it wasn’t the *exact* shade of blue they were used to because Staples was out of the normal stuff and they had me exchange it for the normal shade. We also had a paper towel debacle where I ordered ones that one department likes but another didn’t and they got up in arms about it and told me I needed to order their paper towels next time.

    1. pancakes*

      Could’ve been worse – my mother worked in city planning and once inadvertently ordered quite a few police cars in the wrong shade of blue. The shade was named after her for years after that!

      2. SnappinTerrapin*

        I saw a few two-toned patrol cars (like the traditional black & whites, but shockingly contrasting -think purple & pink) sitting on a dealer’s lot. I asked the fleet manager.

        The chief who ordered them heard through the grapevine that he was about to be fired. This was his dramatic exit.

      3. SnappinTerrapin*

        Several years ago, I saw some jarringly clashing two tone patrol cars on a dealers’ lot. Think of the black & white pattern, but in something closer to pink and purple.

        I was nosy enough to ask. There was a police chief who heard he was about to get fired. This was his dramatic exit.

  32. Mr. Cajun2core*

    $35 per dozen Docket Gold 81/2″ X 11″ note pads because the $16 Staples brand wasn’t good enough.

    Post it notes:
    regular, pop-up, lined, not-line, 3×3, 3×5, and basically every combination and variation of those.

    1. Ismonie*

      I have to say, having used both the staples brand has lousy perforations so when you tear them you might leave the date/client name behind! Or carefully have to fold and tear each page.

      1. Mr. Cajun2core*

        I agree that bits of the top would stay when you would tear them but these were just regular notepads that most people used for random notes. I know I never put anything that high up on the sheet but maybe other people do.

    2. foolofgrace*

      I posted earlier about my government job not ordering any more small Post-Its until the next size up were used up. Well, they had ordered pop-up Post-It Notes but no dispensers, so we’re supposed to use those pop-up monsters without the dispenser. You never know which end is up. I was able to trade mine in for the regular kind, luckily.

  33. Marzipan Shepherdess*

    I once worked at an otherwise-excellent nonprofit agency in which the office manager was…very controlling. This was back in the typewriter era; to correct a mistake, you had to use correction tapes. She insisted that I keep the used-up tapes in their original box and would ONLY send me a new box of correction tapes after I’d sent her the box of used-up ones; this meant that, in between the time I used the last of the tapes and her sending me the new box, no corrections were possible on the typewriter. Since I worked in a branch of the agency that was several blocks away from the main office, this was NOT just a matter of walking across the hall to get new tapes! This went on until I told my supervisor (the second-in-command of the agency) about it. I’ll never know what she told the office manager, but the correction tape power game stopped immediately.

    1. The Rural Juror*

      The office manager who worked here when I started once admitted to me that she liked the feeling of controlling the office supplies because she had so little control over anything else in our office. She felt like she was on the lowest rung of the ladder (which really wasn’t true, we’re small and everyone besides the owner is on the same “level” and doesn’t supervise anyone else). She was just the one with the administrative role.

      She kept buying really cheap mechanical pencils and pens that would break quickly. Our owner/boss told her to buy higher quality so we didn’t have to keep throwing so many away, but she kept buying the off-brand ones. Finally, he told anyone that had a company credit card that we could buy our own pens if we wanted anything specific. She HATED when I would turn in receipts after buying any office supplies on my own and insisted I tell her specifically what to buy…but if I did tell her something specific, she wouldn’t buy the right thing! She was trying and trying to keep whatever control she could get. Finally the owner asked her what was going on and she admitted she was just ready to retire and stop working. We all felt relief when she did retire!

      1. Bagpuss*

        We had (and unfortunately still have) someone who does things like that. We have more than one office but used to order stuff centrally. She would take it upon herself to override decisions made by other offices – so for instance, I (as at different office) would tell her to order us a couple of boxes of lever arch files and she would then decide to send a bunch of used ones from the office she was in instead (or send us their used ones and order new for ‘her’ office)

        Recently one of our employees asked if we could order a specific type of pen, as employee has joint pain in their fingers and found the wider, softer grip ones much more comfortable to use. Controlling Admin (who has absolutely no authority and should have referred the query to her manager) took it upon herself to tell employee that “The partners will only pay for the most basic supplies – if you want anything different you have to buy it yourself – even Bagpuss as a partner has to buy her own pens” (which last part is I suppose kind of true in that as a partner it’s my business and my money, so I (with my partners) buy everybody’s pens ) But it’s not correct that I order or pay for the ink pens I prefer to use separately from the rest of our office supplies.

        She was told firmly that she was wrong, and that even if she had been correct it is not her decision to make.

        And then a general e-mail went round to remind everyone that we try to supply what is necessary without waste, but if anyone wishes to ask for something that we don’t routinely buy, ask the office manager and let her know why you are suggesting it, as we are perfectly happy to supply stuff so you can do your job, and we are very open to suggestions for stuff that makes life pleasanter or if you prefer a different brand/colour/style than we normally buy . If you want gold-plated biros or handmade paper for your rough notes, or a personal butler, you probably aren’t going to get it, but if your request is reasonable we’re happy to say yes.

  34. I’m Here for the Cake*

    Our supply closet was kept locked at all times. Only two people had a key. You’d have to explain what you needed in order to be granted access. I work in the HR dept. We finally instructed maintenance to take the lock off the door, much to the Supply Guardian’s dismay.
    This person was also in charge of postage. We don’t send a ton of mail but they would act as if the 50-cent stamp was coming out of their wallet!

    1. Enough*

      Had an company that kept the stamps in a safe. The safe was there when they bought the building. It was in the accounting office and made a nice storage area. I don’t know if they locked it.

    2. Sylvan*

      I used to work at a place with a locked supply closet, where I was one of the people with a key. It was ridiculous. There was one specific supply that I was supposed to keep people from using excessively, so all of the others were under lock and key, as well. :/

  35. The Starsong Princess*

    My former boss had the best stuff – a heavy duty stapler and hole punch from the 50s or 60s when they still made them in solid metal and they lasted forever. She also had the best pencil sharpener from the 70s. How did she still have these wonderful tools after so long? She kept them chained to her desk! You could use them whenever you wanted but they couldn’t disappear. My boss was a lovely kind women but under no illusions about human nature. When she retired, I hoped to score the stuff but someone beat me to it.

    1. fposte*

      We secretly had the best stapler on the floor. One very nice guy from the building figured that out and would always come down to our unit to staple his stuff. It would have been annoying if it had been everybody but we enjoyed his visits, so that was fine.

    2. Bagpuss*

      When a former senior staff member retired I inherited their office. I cleared out their desk (which was being disposed of as it was literally falling apart) I found a hoard of staples in the bottom drawer. two of the boxes were marked with their pre-decimal price so they must have been there since 1971 or earlier….
      I think this was simply because their desk drawers were a bit of a rats nest and they never dug don to find anything. I also found an unpresented cheque which was over 10 years old…

      1. A Library Person*

        The “pre-decimal” threw me (in the US) for a loop until I realized you must be referring to the older UK currency system! That must have been a cool find; as an archivist I appreciate little hints of life that come from ephemera like that.

    3. Smaller potatoes*

      When my grandmother passed away I took the stapler as a remembrance. Probably from at least the 1960s. It’s a tank!

  36. Dwight Schrute*

    Oh and my old boss got tired of buying plastic silverware for when people forgot their own so she made people wash and reuse them!

    1. Erininnnnn*

      Don’t get me STARTED on plastic silverware. When I started in my job we would order paper plates, bowls, cups and plastic silverware. A year or so later, they decided that was too expensive and people should bring their own. But our “kitchenette” doesn’t have a sink, so people had to wash their dishes in the restroom, which is VERY disruptive, and gross since those drains aren’t designed to be cleaned the way a kitchen sink drain needs to be. So a few people started buying their own disposable dishes etc and hoarding them, very hush hush. If you forget a spoon for your pot ramen you have to Know Someone or you’re just up a creek. IMO if you don’t provide a proper kitchenette to wash and store real dishes, you just gotta spring for the disposables and that’s the way it is.

    2. Recruited Recruiter*

      I wash and reuse my plastic silverware until it breaks, because I don’t like contributing to the plastic pollution problem – not because my boss is cheap.

      1. Cold Fish*

        I had a coworker that insisted we wash and reuse plastic silverware after company lunches for that very reason. After she left another coworker was practically dancing to the garbage can after the next event to throw all those dollar store reused multiple times plastic silverware out. I didn’t mind the washing but just wished we could get decent metal ones that wouldn’t break in half while you were eating.

        1. La Triviata*

          An office where I used to work had frequent lunch meetings. There would be leftover serving trays, serving spoons, plastic flatware, napkins, etc. One woman would insist that we keep it, since we’d surely need it in the future. So the day came when we could have used it but weren’t allowed to use it because we might need it some day.

    3. Roy G. Biv*

      My office had three small kitchenettes on the second floor. We were told the largest and most accessible kitchenette was reserved for C suite use only, even if most of them worked remotely and were rarely in the office. The CFO’s admin took it upon herself to enforce this like she was guarding a gold mine. She also persuaded the building manager to install a dishwasher in the closet in that kitchenette, and then was shocked that we all knew about it from random clues such as the box of dishwasher tablets, and the gurgling noises issuing from the closet.

      We all took turns hiding our lunches in the fridge and pretending we didn’t know whose food it was, just to aggravate her. She is no longer at my company. I presume she is guarding the kitchen in her house these days.

      1. Roy G. Biv*

        I forgot to point out the dishwasher was because the admin refused to stock plastic forks or knives any longer, so she “needed” a dishwasher to clean the handful of silverware that accumulated in any given week.

        1. JustaTech*

          When our office was renovated we on the lab floor were told to throw away (not even donate but throw in the trash) our ceramic plates and bowls and cups, and that we would get new ones when we moved into our new space.
          We were pretty sure this would not be true, as only the space belonging to the team of the person in charge of the renovation got things like a dishwasher.

          Not only did we not ever get new plates and things, no compostable alternatives were offered (except cups) and we got yelled at because someone bought a cheap dish rack so we could hand-wash our dishes.

          Then again this is an office where we were told that we must use paper cups with plastic lids for our coffee so we don’t spill and hurt ourselves. (This rule was utterly ignored the minute it was stated.) And also the office where they failed to notice the new fancy coffee machine was too short for most cups, paper or ceramic. So much style over substance in this renovation.

  37. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

    I love this kind of low-stakes drama! Sadly most of my tales of office supply woes and mysteries have to do with stupid procurement rules that let you by staples but not staplers

  38. Coast East*

    Our office supplies kept disappearing (pens were required to be on your person at all times to be “in uniform,” so losing pens/giving pens to people who needed them,etc tended to leave more of an impact than usual) but no big deal, right? Go to the supply department. Until you’re at sea for 7 months and the supply department shuts down for 8 weeks or receives no supplies in port. Eventually I just donated all my extra office supplies from home and made a giant trip to the dollar store to stock us up on pens, soaps, etc. Still not sure where all the pens disappeared to when all coworkers are stuck in a 500′ space and couldn’t leave.

    2. Enough*

      My husband is the only person I know to actually use up all the ink in his pens. They do not disappear. Also I throw out his pencils when they get difficult to hold. He would use them till they don’t fit in the sharpener.

    3. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      Lol – one of my coworkers is ex-Navy, and their stories about submarine life and the disappearances of all sorts of random things are hysterical.

  39. Scoffrio*

    My old manager really just couldn’t get her head around how many supplies we would need, or anticipating the need (even though there were clear usage patterns). A good example were her attitude towards tabs (the little post tabs that we then labelled with numbers of letters). We used them super frequently, and a singular filing would often use up 50 tabs. In our busy season I was putting out one-three filings a week. Without fail, when told we were out, the manager would order 3 packs of 24 little stickies. That we would then proceed to run out of in at most ten days (or 1.5 filings). We’d sometimes have to hold filings because we had no tabs, or I’d have to make a CVS run on my way into the office so that I would have enough tabs to make a deadline. It drove me bonkers and it took me TWO YEARS to convince her to buy in larger quantities instead of having to place an order every week.

  40. bamcheeks*

    When I worked as a medical secretary for an NHS trust, we weren’t allowed to purchase post-it notes because they were so often given out by drug reps. Which led to people literally chasing drug reps down the corridor to get some sweet, sweet post-its.

    1. Kate*

      I have this image of a horde of people running down after the reps like the bulls in Pamplona. Thanks for the laugh!

    2. RandomUser (UK)*

      Ahhh the NHS – I worked for a trust and they were the most demanding/greediest people I’ve ever worked wit when it came to supplies, always insiting on really expensive and bespoke pens and notepads, or fancy post-it notes to use at a one off event. I flat out refused some of these since our stationary closet was rammed from floor to ceiling with hoards of everything (which I wasn’t allowed to clear out, but thats another story)

    3. CreepyPaper*

      We have a freight company we deal with that monthly sends us a packet of sticky notes if their rep isn’t visiting us because they’re in the shape of a lorry and we’re lame as all heck in Logistics and they literally have seen our eyes light up when their rep walks in the building because we KNOW the lorry sticky notes are in his bag.

      1. Selina Luna*

        That is adorable.

        I love the idea that someone would save something special just because they know you love it.

        1. CreepyPaper*

          We just about lost our collective Logistics mind when they did a giant version a couple of years back. We each got one and I still have my stack because I can’t bring myself to use it because it’s SO COOL. Of all the freight companies we deal with, they definitely have the best swag.

    4. Kiwi*

      My dad was a drug rep – every office supply in our home was branded. We had Lilly notepads 15 years after he stopped workin there!

      1. just passing through*

        My grandad was a dentist and I’m sure there are ’90s pharmaceutical logos that would send me IMMEDIATELY back to my childhood.

    5. Other Duties as Assigned*

      Re: Medical Post-Its

      In my university instructor days, I liked to give my grading notes on large semester projects on the larger-sized Post-Its, rather than scribble on a report the student may want to retain for a portfolio. However, the department was under orders to keep supply costs down, so I went on the hunt for my own. I found a surplus store that had overruns/misprints of promotional items. They had a stock of the larger Post-Its for an amazingly low price and I bought them all. The snag was that they were from pharmaceutical companies and were for really personal or otherwise-embarrasing products. Cue the puzzled looks from students.

      The same store had a 3′ x 3′ x 3′ box of misprinted (but decent quality) ballpoint pens they sold by the bagful (they provided misprinted bread bags). I bought a bunch of these as well. I’m sure people wondered why I’d have pens from an addiction clinic or a wholesale meat market or a towing service from another state.

    6. WS*

      Same here in Australia! It was so disappointing when there was a rules crackdown and they weren’t allowed to give us branded stuff anymore. Ethical, sure, but disappointing!

  41. Put the Blame on Edamame*

    Adding this barely relevant story: How my colleague became known to my friends as The Pen Lady. She and my boss were talking over an excel document that was being shared on my work laptop, I wasn’t too involved in the document but was part of the wider project conversation, but all I could focus on was how this woman kept PRODDING her PEN (clicked to writing mode!) at my laptop screen. I did some deep breathing and told myself, she’s not going to hit the screen, don’t make it a thing, let them finish up. And then she gesticulated and DREW a LINE on my LAPTOP SCREEN.

    I pulled it to me and said, with frankly incredible restraint, “Oh, hey, woah now.”

    She just shrugged and replied, “You can ask IT for another one.”

    I… ok, we barely ever get laptop replacements (my boss has been waiting on one for two years) and also: WT actual F? It didn’t help that my boss found it hilarious and whenever I brought my laptop over to her she’d say, “I won’t touch it because I know you’re sensitive.”

    2. identifying remarks removed*

      This was a long time ago – our company had a shiny new projection screen installed in the conference room – the type that drops down from the ceiling. A coworker thought it was the same material as a whiteboard and wrote on it – had to get it specially cleaned and even then the faint smudges of his notes were visible.

      1. kelmarander*

        We had some conference rooms that had dry-erase walls and windows and some that didn’t. It was so sad to see the futile attempts at smearing off the ink from the non-dry-erase rooms! We had one workflow diagram in our closest conference room for 2+ years. Probably longer than the system took to create. I’d memorize it during boring meetings.

      2. quill*

        So my college had whiteboards (standard) and projector screens that slid down from the ceiling.

        The cord to one of the projector screens broke, and my latin professor, not at all a tall woman, could not reach. Well, she shrugged and went on projecting on the whiteboard, in the dark, and when someone asked if she could decline a verb, she just scooted the writing over a little, to a part of the whiteboard lit by the projector but wayyy off to the side… and the marker made a horrible squeaking noise.

        When the projector went down and the lights went up, we discovered that Puer, Pueris was declined not on the whiteboard, but the wall.

      3. Susan Ivanova*

        We have an annual tech conference, the leading attraction of which is that third-party developers can come in with their questions and talk to experts. We’re set up in a massive conference room with big stations for each area of expertise separated by walls of whiteboards.

        One year the conference design folks gave us station walls which were only 2/3 whiteboard, with a center section that was merely white. Of course people wrote on it, and it got scrubbed down the first day and covered with “do not write here” signs the next, totally ruining the designer’s esthetic. The next year the design folks were given much more specific instructions.

    4. WhiskeyTango*

      I worked with one guy who would use his pencil on MY screen to give me corrections to documents. Dude.
      (He always bothered me because he smelled like french fries to me. Turned out I was smelling vodka. So…)

      1. foolofgrace*

        This happened to me, the Big Partner Dude (who everyone hated) who was in a hurry stood over my shoulder and used his ballpoint to draw on my screen. I couldn’t say anything because he was a big partner, but I stopped typing, slowly got a Kleenex from my desk, and slowly rubbed away his markings. He stopped that crap.

    5. Pobody’s Nerfect*

      I used to have a boss that would lean over my shoulder and put her oily grimy fingers all over my screen, touching things she was pointing to instead of just pointing and not pressing her fingers on the actual screen. I hated that she was leaning so close over me in my personal space, zero sense of boundaries, but her touching my screen all the time almost drove me to screaming fits. Humans are disgusting.

      1. Lady Ann*

        I HATE when people touch my computer screen – why? Now I have a touch screen laptop and people continue to touch it which actually clicks random things, and yet they still do it.

        1. L'étrangere*

          Conversely, I had a client who had an early touch screen and who was always puzzled when my stodgy screen failed to obey her requests. And laughed when I reached for her keyboard. Lovely person though, I cleaned her fingerprints without anything more than chuckles

    7. The Smiling Pug*

      As someone who hates having her electronics handled by someone other than myself, this would infuriate me greatly. Oof…

  42. anonymouse*

    Story one: my sister is 13 years older than I am. She started her first job when I started kindergarten. She brought home some branded pens that the bosses told her to take because they were awful and they were trying to run out the supply. (30k employees in the state) Blue and black would work, the red were nightmares.
    I took a job there when I was 24. THEY STILL HAD THE PENS. And they tried to give them to me because I was new. I wasn’t trying to say or start anything, I just blurted
    “Those look like the pens from 20 years ago!”
    “Oh, you know these?”
    “Those are the same pens?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, I know them. They don’t work. Got stuck during a spelling test!”
    awkward pause and chuckle.
    “well, there are other pens over here.”

      1. anonymouse*

        my dopey self kept talking, like I did not get he was trying to pawn them off. “Oh yeah, they are terrible. I remember..”
        Yes, yes, anyway, you can use these.
        thirty minutes later i got embarrassed and was like, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.
        and thirty years later, I’m here like, GUESS WHAT I DID!

  43. Richard Hershberger*

    I have a supplies happy story. I am a pen snob. I hate cheap ball point pens. I use disposables, but good ones. This isn’t a fight I care about, so I just buy a supply for my personal use. This does mean, however, that I have to keep an eye on them. The happy story is that my boss borrowed one, realized that it was so much better, and started buying them for the supply cupboard.

    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      My office buys a brand of pens that I just love – we have black, blue, red, and green in two different line widths. (They also buy shitty PaperMate ballpoints, which are the worst.) One of my coworkers told me they were no longer going to stock my favorite pens because they have become too expensive, so I will admit to hoarding more than I need to extend their life. If my choice is the ballpoints or buying my own, I’ll spring for a decent pen.

    2. Teapot Repair Technician*

      As a new employee at one job, the owner of the company noticed my Uni Kuru Toga Roulette pencil and proceeded to engage me in an hour-long conversation about mechanical pencils, and thereafter was my de facto mentor. My successful career is thanks to that pencil, I assume.

    4. anonaccountant*

      Pen snobs unite! I’ve experienced a similar victory. My favorite gift to give to a colleague is a nice metal pen (the exact one I use but in a different finish). Once they realize how nice they are, they also start requesting refills on the supply order. I’ve converted most of my area at this point, and now we can have refills in the cabinet!

    5. Cold Fish*

      Speaking of cheap ball point pens, there is one regional bank in my area that buys those cheap promotional pens with the bank logo on them. Man, I don’t know where they buy those things but they are the most reliable, long lasting pens! They are everywhere in town; even in the other banks. It’s almost a town wide joke when you go sign something and look at the pen… yep, has the bank logo…but I swear those things are almost magical.

  44. Essentially Cheesy*

    I am amazed by the complainers that get things for free, and still complain. Don’t like the coffee or filtered water? Don’t drink it and bring your own! Want something more than basic sugar and creamer? Ditto. I used to order crackers (we make cheese spreads – I do still order some) and instant soup and they were cut based on cost savings measures. Oh the complaints. You would have thought we were actually reducing pay or something equally dramatic.

    1. KateM*

      Well, if they used to get crackers and instant soup for free and now do not, it does essentially mean losing something from their benefit package so equals to reducing pay?

  45. Alex*

    I worked in an office where there were two fairly senior people who had a major, months-long dispute over the angle of a chair. I worked in an open office that was L shaped, and in the front of the L, there was a small waiting area, with a little loveseat and two wooden chairs. One manager though that the one chair should face THIS way, and another manager thought that the chair should face THAT way. The difference was literally about five inches.

    For months, manager A would fix the chair, and manager B would walk by and move it five inches, only to be fixed later in the day by manager A, and then later manager B, etc.

    But I was the only one who knew that manager B was moving the chair because I was the only one whose desk faced the L. Manager A was very vocal about how the chair was always out of place, but manager B kept her mouth shut and just casually moved it as she walked by. Manager A, who was my own manager, would interrogate me about who WHO WHO was moving the chair, and I would just shrug and say I didn’t know, maybe it just moved as people sat in it or whatever. People speculated on who the second Chair Mover was, but I was the only one who knew, and I took my secret with me when I quit that crazy place.

    4. Bagpuss*

      That’s strange.

      I had a coworker who, without asking me, decided it would be a good idea to remove the two client chairs in my office and replace them with two armchairs (we were closing one office and the armchairs had been in reception)
      I was not at all happy. For one thing, I did not appreciate her messing with my room without asking me, and for another, the change was extremely unhelpful, not least as the armchairs were much heavier than my original chairs, and awkward, so it was difficult for me to move them when I needed to (which was quite often, depending on they type of meeting I was hosting) .

      I would up keeping them as the coworker who put them there was a *huge* drama llama and I knew that she would have seen it as a personal affront if I rejected them.

  46. wbw*

    Office supplies in our office are plentiful and easy to snag but similar drama unfolded back when we were in office over the office snack runs. We had a grown woman refuse to let us buy any sweets or crackery snacks because she couldn’t stop herself from eating them. Meanwhile several other staff requested that we get them and they would just keep them stashed at their desk. The amount of headspace I had to use keeping track of everyone’s snack preferences was ludicrous, all because grown-ups couldn’t regulate themselves.

    1. JustaTech*

      When we had our office renovated one of the things we lost were the vending machines (wrong aesthetic). We were supposed to get a nifty “pantry” like the other sites, but no, so we ended up with the “honor bar” – a table and some fridges in the corner with a plastic box for you to put your money in.

      OK, fine, that works.

      Except when it was announced the email said that if the money and the food/soda didn’t match we would have it taken away. Like, what? You’re starting off assuming we’d steal? It puts a bad taste in my mouth every time I go to get a Coke.

  47. JB*

    I’m in office services for a company that has 600 people in our city. The woman who hired me would order 2 kinds of soap for the bathrooms because 1-2 people preferred different soap. We had 2 kinds of coffee machines and she ordered 2 sizes of cups instead of defaulting to the one that would fit in both. She would order 8 colors of document flags, as many colors of highlighters possible, make people ask for batteries and tissues because “they may take them home otherwise” (who cares?), locked down every possible thing she could (lady, no one is taking home a docking station), and would only order the cheapest, most disgusting snacks (no offense to the folks who like the cheddar crackers with peanut butter).

    When she fired, I decided we would only order one size cup, one kind of soap (and then it turns out the building provides soap, something she said they didn’t do), stopped ordering floor cleaner (again, she said the building didn’t mop the lunch room BUT THEY DO), and stopped locking everything down. We still kept batteries behind a door, but didn’t lock the door and slowly people realized they could get what they needed. Also it turns out people only need like, 2 highlighter colors and a couple document flag colors. All in all it’s been a lot easier now that we aren’t catering to every whim and preference, and people make enough money that if they are picky about their pens or highlighters they can use their company card to get their specific supplies.

  48. Higher Ed*

    Out institution won’t allow us to order tissues or dish soap (we have a break room with sink and refrigerator) because they’re afraid people will bring them home.

  49. PJS*

    Maybe I’m weird, but it would never cross my mind to make special requests for basic office supplies that are otherwise provided. If I don’t like the kind my company stocks, I buy my own. I buy my own pens, pencils and notepads so that I can use the kind I prefer. I even bought my own mouse because I didn’t like the one IT provided. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it just because I’m picky.

    1. miss chevious*

      Same. I have Very Specific pen and paper requirements, and my office provides the generic stuff, so I just buy and use my own. They do provide all the basics and things aren’t locked down or anything, though, which is nice.

    2. Henrietta*

      Same. I will only use a Pentel mechanical pencil because any other kind scrapes (shudder) and I can’t stand it. So I use my own! I would never expect them to order one just for me.

    3. FreakInTheExcelSheets*

      I’m the type of person who browses office supplies for new/interesting things and like things to be pretty so I buy my own supplies a lot. I always supply my own mouse though and bought multiple when I found one I liked – I use my left hand and wanted one of the ergonomic handshake-grip ones. Unfortunately it drives other people nuts when they try to demonstrate something on my computer because either they reach to the right and nothing is there or they try to use their right hand at an awkward angle (plus right- vs left- click is swapped so your main ‘indicator’ finger is still your index).

    4. Sylvan*

      It’s no problem to ask. I used to order office supplies and I wouldn’t have known that left-handed people need ballpoint pens and top-bound notebooks if nobody had spoken up.

    5. Esmeralda*

      I always get the kind of pens I like, highlighters, nice tissues, my own reams of paper, etc.

      Because I am very very nice to the office admin, stick up for her in staff meetings, cover reception when student staff no show so she can get lunch or use the toilet. She works her ass off, crappy pay, and deals w arrogant “professional “ staff, confused students, and overbearing parents. The only truly indispensable person in the office.

      She gave me a dozen rolls of tp last
      March. (I brought it back when the stores got reapplied).

  50. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    IT peripherals – keyboards, mice, cables of all types, usb storage drives…

    Basically everyone has their own views as to which make/colour/material/shape these should be – you’d think a standard USB to phone charger cable would be simple no?

    Nope. We’ve had demands for them to be ‘golden tipped for better current’, ‘only brand X not whatever you’re buying in bulk down there’ and so on.

    The funniest, or worst depending on who they were screaming at, was a person who demanded only Apple keyboards and mice. We don’t have ANY Apple kit in house (company phones are all Samsung) and offers of cabled keyboard, wireless, membrane keys, mechanical keys (okay they’re noisy but hard wearing), ergonomic etc just pissed her off more and more. “It HAS to be all Apple!” she screamed down the phone and in all caps emails , “I can’t deal with anything else. I’ll panic”

    Turns out she had to have everything on her desk set up exactly like at home. Same tea, same water filter system, same computer, same OS, same keyboards, same colour network cable…

    So she’s the only one with a red network cable now. I had to cave on something.

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      What kind of masochist would want to use only Mac keyboards and mice? I got a brand new MacBook and accessories when I started this job and by the end of the first day told them that there was no way I could use either the mouse or keyboard as they were both so uncomfortable. Then I had to use my own (not fully Mac-compatible) ergonomic keyboard for several weeks while the occupational health service tried to find one that would work.
      The Mac gear certainly looks beautiful and my MacBook is great, but I’m convinced that anyone who tries to use nothing but the Mac mouse and keyboard will end up with carpal tunnel by the time they are 40.

    2. Jay*

      Not related to supplies but this reminded me….I left my first job because we were moving out of state. We had offices along a long corridor. All the offices were the same size and had the same furniture. When I gave notice, one of my colleagues asked to move to my office because it was quieter – hers was right near the front desk. Everything was going to be painted and she asked if she could choose the color for my office. Sure. Then she came in to “look around.” Did I mention that all the offices were the same size with the same furniture? I couldn’t figure out what she needed to look at but OK, fine, whatever.

      She walked in and said “oh, dear. I don’t think I can do this after all.” I asked why. My door was on the left side of the corridor wall. Her door was on the right side of the corridor wall. She could.not.deal with the difference because she had her furniture set up just the way she liked it and it wouldn’t work with the door on the other side.

      1. SnappinTerrapin*

        Well.

        I reckon it’s a good thing she came and looked. She would’ve really been distraught if she had made the swap.

    3. Annony*

      I HATE ordering IT peripherals. My employer makes it sooo difficult. It is a separate supply chain from regular office supplies and they cannot understand why you are ordering a computer mouse but not a whole computer and won’t process the order until you order a computer to go with it.

      1. kicking-k*

        I am a confirmed laptop person. My work computer is a laptop. But Health and Safety guidelines say that if a laptop is my main computer, I must have a full-size keyboard and mouse to use with it.

        They sent me one of each, new, wireless. As we were locked down at the time, they were delivered to my house. They have not been out of their boxes. I feel strangely guilty although I am now commuting with the laptop and working in multiple locations, and I’m not dragging a full keyboard around with me!

  51. Chocoholic*

    My last company was very stingy with office supplies. They didn’t do post-it notes, for example. We could get paperclips and staples, pens were the super cheap kind.

    At my current office, the person who is in charge of ordering office supplies loves office supplies so she gets post-it’s in all sizes and colors, nice pens in blue and black, paper clips and binder clips in every size available.

    1. Pepper*

      My old job wouldn’t buy post-its either, and my manager stopped buying new pens. Anytime anyone went to a conference or event they were expected to scrounge up some free supplies and bring them back. My folks went to an ag conference. Guess who used pesticide & equipment sticky notes for years!

    2. Bagpuss*

      When I was younger I worked in an office where they had some weird hang ups about buying stuff.

      At first, I didn’t get any pay slips (which is, and was, illegal)
      I needed mine, partly for my own records but also because I was setting up a pension and needed to provide them.
      At first, they told me they could do me a letter confirming my salary any time I needed one (No, I’m not coming to you cap in hand any time I apply for a financial product) then they started providing them but each one was handwritten on different bits of free promo stationery.

      I offered to buy them a pad of proper pay slips and they did start ordering some real ones after that .
      I *think* it was someone in the accounts office who couldn’t bear to waste anything, rather than a formal policy.

      What baffled me was that I was apparently the fist person to work there who thought this as a bit weird.

      It was the job from hell in many ways, and part of me still regrets the fact that, in line with their general incompetence, they never issued me with a contract so I could have walked out giving them a week’s notice (standard in my industry is 3 months) but didn’t. They did complain that I ‘only’ gave them 4 weeks notice . . .

  52. lilsheba*

    I’ve had a variety of situations…one place had lots of office supplies and it was open, they didn’t care what you took or how much. Then of course a call center I worked for kept supplies under lock and key and security had to get stuff out for you, and it was limited. One call center had no office supplies at all, you didn’t deserve them I guess. Now that I WFH they are my own problem which is fine by me!

  53. Not Tom, Just Petty*

    Favorite part of my first favorite job was how the office admin passed around the supply catalog and let us choose supplies. It was great. Maybe I didn’t need every color of post it note, but heck, I used everything I picked out, and so did everyone else. It was just a fun perk for people working 70 hour weeks.

  54. Stelle*

    I did my library practicum at a library that wanted people to reuse the masking tape that we put posters, etc. on the walls with.

    2. FashionablyEvil*

      Does that even work…? I would have thought it would lose its stickiness if you tried to reuse it?

  55. Quickbeam*

    My office holds everything under lock and key. It’s easier to buy your own than to grovel to the key master.

  56. Anon4This*

    Not exactly supplies, but I worked for 10 years for a non-profit which made employees pay for coffee (something like $1/cup) because they felt members would be upset if they found out their dues were going towards providing employees a “luxury” like coffee. The same org had dishes of mints in the conference rooms, and when I was new I took a mint during a meeting, not knowing they were for members only. The entire staff got a very angry email from leadership informing them that under no circumstances were staff allowed to consume these mints, and I personally got a talking to about my “inappropriate behavior”.

    1. Guacamole Bob*

      Most government offices I’ve been in also don’t provide coffee. The breakroom supplies that people talk about in threads like this – snacks, coffee, dishwashers – seem kind of amazing.

      1. fposte*

        Same, and they even took out our honor system contribution box for coffee, because–well, I don’t know why. We still had a boiling water spout, though, so as a tea drinker I was safe.

        1. Guacamole Bob*

          We had an electrical fire in our building a while back and they went through and removed all personal appliances, including coffee makers. I’m not sure it’s physically possible to make or get a cup of coffee in our office building any more, though I haven’t wandered each floor checked all the different kitchen and break room areas.

      2. kelmarander*

        Yes! I am a 20-year U.S. Federal employee and have never seen a single office that offered coffee, dish soap, snacks, drugs, Post-Its, or any other office supply invented after 1980. We are required to purchase any supplies we have from the Federal Prison system (or so I am told). Not that the quality is bad, but you’re definitely not getting name-brand anything.

        There is a dish-soap fairy who magically stashes a supply in our restroom (since not every spot has an actual kitchenette). My favorite is the elf/gnome who stocks the ladies’ room with otherwise unwanted gifts of random assorted lotions and soaps. Our bathroom is where Bath & Body Works product lines go to die.

        1. Guacamole Bob*

          I’m in local government so it’s a little better than what you describe, but there are definitely questions about whether tissues are an Office Supply or a Personal Item, and our supply cabinet is a graveyard of binder dividers, brass fasteners, white out tape, spindles of blank CDs, odd-size envelopes, and other things that no one actually needs.

          Our office admin does manage to order us reasonable stuff from Staples. It just goes straight into the desk of whoever requested it.

      3. brightbetween*

        Same here. I’ve been in public libraries my whole career and never have coffee, milk, sugar, snacks provided. We have equipment (coffee maker, Keurig, fridge, microwave, toaster oven) but nothing consumable.

        After reading about all the supplies here, I think back to my brief stint at a posh private sector company when I was in grad school and remember how good it was. Except that job sucked otherwise.

    2. SimplytheBest*

      I work for a house of worship and our budget has to be approved by a quorum of our congregants. That meeting is always a nightmare. We once had a congregant argue that we spent too much money on drinking water and we should limit how much the staff was allowed to drink.

    3. IWishIHadAFancyUserName*

      Ooooh! This reminds me of the time we bought cases of branded coffee mugs to give away as promos at some trade fair. Staff were explicitly forbidden to take them for their own use.
      One colleague’s spouse received one of the mugs at the trade show, gave it to her, and she delighted in repeatedly explaining how she came to have the mug in her possession as a way of highlighting the ridiculous policy.
      About 4 years later, they pulled a couple of dusty unopened cases of those mugs from the back of a supply closet and distributed them to staff as “motivational gifts”.

      1. Quickbeam*

        Oh that’s the worst, to get old branded crap as an “award”….we once had an award which was a mug filled with 10 year old mints. People would say “yeah thanks, keep it”.

      2. Fish Microwaver*

        One place I worked used branded coffee mugs as “gifts” for Employee of the Month”. Except for one low level manager who shouldn’t have even been eligible- she got flowers or a bottle of wine. When I was EOTM, I just got a cheap ass “certificate”.

  57. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    This is the good kind of drama :-)

    I worked in Moscow in the early 90s, just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We had an office with 3 expat professionals, 3 or 4 Russian professionals, and 2 office assistants/translators.

    Every time one of the expats traveled from Germany or the US to Moscow, we had to pack things like printer paper, post-its, etc. in our luggage. Office supplies were not easy to find, and the quality was iffy. Then we heard through the grapevine about an Office Depot- or Staples-style big box store for office supplies. So we scheduled a trip. It was just as advertised – pallets of copier paper on the floor, racks of pens and staplers and folders, etc.

    It was like Christmas for all of us. The office assistants were running back and forth down the aisles, shouting what they’d found to each other. The Russian professionals congregated around the furniture section and tried out every office chair and desk. And I just walked through touching everything. But the one thing we couldn’t find that really bummed me out was those pink “while you were out” pads, with the convenient check boxes for common messages.

    1. Distractinator*

      That sounds like so much fun – the candyland of office supplies, like a dream come true!

  58. M*

    Yesterday, my partner put in a work order for a new lightbulb for the projector in a classroom (he’s a building sub for
    the school, so not his classroom/projector). The maintenance person, with whom he has communicated with before, emailed him back, addressing him by a different teacher’s name, and said they were out of that type of bulb, and asked if my partner happened to have an extra one on him? Which is weird enough. And when my partner replied that he was just the sub, it’s not his room, and no he doesn’t have lightbulbs with him, the maintenance person emailed him an Amazon link and suggested he buy some extra in case it happens again! My partner did not buy the lightbulbs…

  59. NoDramaLlama*

    One of my partner’s former employers decided they needed to cut costs, so they did so…by refusing to provide tissues to employees. The memo explicitly stated this was to save money (and they were the ultra cheap kind of tissues to begin with). This was right after they spent a whoooole bunch of money buying the naming rights to a defunct sports stadium that hadn’t had a team for years by that point.

    I was honestly worried they might start rationing toilet paper.

    1. fposte*

      At my state institution, you could mark the budget status by the quality of the toilet paper. There were two notably sharp declines in the last ten years. Is there such a thing as half-ply? Because that’s what we have now.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        When I was at primary school in the UK in the early 80’s, our toilet paper was literally paper. It was a similar weight to greaseproof/baking paper and it was not comfortable to use. So I think that’s the next step down the toilet paper ladder…

            1. Quidge*

              My school still used this stuff when I attended in the ’90s! Sometimes I think my 8-year-old self must have been exaggerating or misremembering, but no, greaseproof paper is exactly what it looked/felt like…

        2. KateM*

          Once upon a time, newspapers were made of a material which let them to be reused as toilet paper.

      2. Quickbeam*

        When I worked for my state, the woman who sat next to me filed a Work Comp claim because of a rash leading to an infection from the low grade toilet paper. It was like old school onion skin. I coached her and she prevailed on her Work Comp claim. I was so proud.

    2. Gracely*

      This isn’t an office story, but when I studied abroad, my host mother rationed our toilet paper. My host sister and I each got one roll per week. It appeared in our rooms sometime each Monday while we were in classes.

      Thing is, host mom didn’t buy tissues, either, so toilet paper was serving double duty (because of course it was also allergy season). We both ended up stealing toilet paper from our uni bathrooms, and if our host family was out of the house when we were there, we absolutely took toilet paper from their stash in their master bathroom.

      To be fair, it was nice toilet paper, not the cheap stuff. But still.

    3. Cold Fish*

      My company stopped supplying boxes of tissues during the 2008 downturn. As a year-long allergy sufferer, my attitude bounces from annoyance when I have to bring in tissues to grateful I don’t have to deal with the extra cheap tissues office supply places sell. I think I land more firmly in the grateful category; so… that’s good.

  60. Art3mis*

    I mentioned this in a comment above, but I my first full time job was at a company called Quill in the 90s doing customer service. They are still around, they sell office supplies to businesses and are now owned by Staples. Anyway, you would not believe how up in arms people would get about office supplies. Wrong color post it notes was probably the number one thing. If you mailed or faxed in an order (people did that back then) without a color code for post it notes, you got the default yellow. You would think we had initiated a hostile take over of their fourth generation family owned business by sending yellow post it notes instead of whatever they wanted. Like we’re just supposed to know what they want when they don’t tell us.

    Accidentally ordering the generic version instead of actual brand name 3M Post Its though, that was a legit problem though, the generic ones were terrible.

      1. Retired(but not really)*

        I worked in an office supply store that also did ad specialty items. One of our school district clients decided to order pens with the name of the school district imprinted. Unfortunately they chose the cheapest pens and the were unhappy when the ink was very much iffy. It might write for a little while, or it might not write at all. Needless to say we ended up with the pens that they didn’t want. I was able to get a few of them to work but several years later we still had over half a box of those pens.

        1. SnappinTerrapin*

          Do you remember when the cheap ball points had a metal nib holding the ball? When they ran low on ink, you could get another day’s use by heating it with a lighter.

          I found out they had changed to plastic when one melted.

    2. anonaccountant*

      Oh, thank goodness. It’s nice to hear someone else hate off-brand sticky notes. I feel like I’m high maintenance, but I will not use generic post it notes. They’re so awful!!!

  61. UrbanGardener*

    At my first job, office supplies were plentiful in a huge storage closet! You could get anything you wanted. But people in my department, for some reason, would not walk down the hall to get their own tissues. They were constantly using mine, and I need them a lot because I have chronic runny nose. Until the day they saw I might only use a tissue once for one quick nose swipe, and then tuck it back in the box for later. That stopped them in their tracks! But one woman did complain to our manager about it. Our manager explained to her my tissues were mine, and I had the right to use them any way I wanted.

  62. Sleeping on the floor*

    My ex-manager told us we weren’t allowed to buy post-its! She refused point blank to authorise expenditure on them.
    We had to buy then for ourselves.
    The worse thing was other teams managed by other people WERE allowed them.
    Now though, everything is supposed to be digital which doesn’t always work (I mean I have a laptop which doesn’t work if it isn’t plugged in so it isn’t very portable!)
    Paper diaries aren’t reimbursed. You have to buy your own also.

    1. Bagpuss*

      I would have tried to form an alliance with someone on the other team and got them to supply me with black-market post-its…

  63. Oryx*

    My ExJob had an office manager who had full control of office supplies. Everything was locked up and if I needed, say, staples I had to go to her and she would escort me to the supply closet and give me a single sleeve of staples. Not a box, a single sleeve. So everytime I ran out of staples I had to go back to her for more. And she kept meticulous stock level notes, down to that single sleeve of staples.

    Eventually – I think after a year or two of my being there — she realized she could at least trust me enough to let me borrow the key to do it myself and know I would take a single sleeve and not a full box. Out of a staff of about 50, I think when I left only two of us had permission/trust to borrow the key on our own to unlock the supply closet.

    When I started my current job it was a huge mental shift to realize I could just walk into the supply room and get whatever I needed when I needed without having to go through someone else.

  64. Just Another Zebra*

    The field techs (all men) often raided my desk for pens, paper clips, scissors, highlights, thumbtacks, Advil, ketchup, tea… anything not tethered or glued to my desk was fair game. So the next time I ordered new supplies, I got myself everything in pink/ purple. My tape dispenser is a narwhal, my stapler is a crocodile, and my post-its are shaped like elephants, on an elephant holder. Anything on my desk looked like my middle school bedroom. Unsurprisingly, the thefts stopped shortly thereafter.

    This was a few years ago, and we still laugh about it now.

    1. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I did not know I needed a narwhal shaped tape dispenser until right now. My life seems empty and meaningless without one. I do have a cat shaped post-it note dispenser, but now I am giving it a side eye for its obvious inadequacy.

    3. Snarky Librarian*

      I went looking for the narwhal tape dispenser on Amazon and found the cutest hedgehog tape dispenser on sale. This thread has been a boon to my day!

  65. Wicked Stitch*

    This didn’t become a drama because I was able to resist temptation but I cannot tell you how great the temptation was.

    A thing my department was responsible for was scanning every single thing that needed to be scanned in the building. One department would send us massive stacks of paper that needed scanning. No big deal, we’re used to that! But someone found an ancient and rather terrifying stapler that they decided to start using. We all hated it, the staples were so thick they’d tear up paper and your hands when you tried to get them out. (Everyone with sense just used binder clips.) We need the staples out to do the scanning so we had to send repeated reminders not to use the old dinosaur ~please~ but it was like every few months someone new would discover the thing and ressurect it.

    When doing errands around other offices one day I saw it. Sitting in a window and practically glowing. I’ve never wanted to steal something so badly in all my life. For better or worse, I was able to resist temptation but I do admit I glared at it as I passed.

    2. Eva*

      Oh yeah, I absolutely would have mysteriously misplaced that stapler. Or just swapped it out with a better/newer one and then would act completely baffled if the topic ever came up again. I may or may not have basically done this once or twice…

  66. Goddess47*

    I worked at a community college and one of my areas of supervision was the public computer lab — where students would come and use campus computers to do homework (or just goof around). We also had a suite of computer classrooms where faculty would teach various subjects and make use of computers as part of the instruction. Lots of students.

    My boss wouldn’t let us have extra pens or pencils for the lab/classrooms. (“We don’t provide pens to students” !!!) We had a sign in/out space and we were supposed to tie down the single pen we were allowed to place there. And we only needed one pen at our desks!

    I would go to conferences and the vendors would almost always have free pens on their tables, so I’d tell them what I was doing and would get handfuls — they were glad to not to have to take them back at the end of the conference. Or I’d watch the school supply sales and buy like $20 worth of cheap pens (out of my own pocket), which really would last quite a while.

    It was nice when he retired!

    1. Sara without an H*

      OK, this puzzles me. When I ran an academic library, we freely gave out pens to students, but rarely had to order any. We just picked up lost/abandoned pens and pencils and kept them in a box at the circulation counter.

      I think I ordered maybe two boxes of pens and pencils in ten years. The system was completely self-sustaining.

  67. Merci Dee*

    We don’t really have office supply drama here, I guess. I usually bring my own writing implements because I prefer certain types of mechanical pencils and pens over others (the supply order only includes gel pens, but I hate gel pens with an all-consuming fiery passion), so I bring in my boxes of blue and assorted color 1.6 mm bold ballpoint pens. Ballpoints just write so much more smoothly.

    Speaking of paperclips . . . it’s not an issue with the supply order, but I have a co-worker who hate the paperclips that have the little ridges etched into them for extra grip. Those are the exact paperclips that I love. So every couple of months, she’ll go through her pool of clips and pull out the “ridgies” to bring over to me. In a show of goodwill, I go through my pool of clips and pull out the “smoothies” and give them to her in exchange. A goofy little supply exchange between two friendly coworkers. :)

    3. Guin*

      You can have all my ridged paper clips. I HATE THEM. When I ask our admin (very politely!) to please order me paperclips, I print out the page showing the exact kind I want – large sized, smooth! – and hand it to him.

  68. It's Only a Box of Kleenex*

    I worked at a university where the admin assistant was a control freak – she guarded the office supplies under lock and key, saying that Grad students were thieves. I came to get a box of Kleenex for my office and she gave me the third degree. I have a bit of a temper so I got a tad angry and made a comment or two in anger (nothing unprofessional or inappropriate, just heated). Got my lousy box of Kleenex, though. But the Chair, APO, and the whole Department Office staff were cc’d on a wordy e-mail she sent defending her position over the Kleenex. Good Grief!

  69. GrewUpBlueCollar*

    Asked for a box of TechWipes once, and was surprised to get it promptly ordered. Six months later, it finally arrived. That’s when I found out they had not in fact ordered a single pack of fancy, low-abrasion paper towels. I was greeted with a giant box of twenty. This was six years ago, and since the guy ordered three-ply rather than the single-ply everyone uses, I can’t even give them away most of the time. Still have six left. I use them to clean up coffee spills.

    The happiest day of my career may have been when I ordered my own pack of markers and discovered they were pigmented, not dried-out like the ones from the 1990s in the supply cabinet.

  70. Meredith*

    My mother-in-law still complains about the manager in her office who didn’t put a quarter in the jar for a cup of coffee as office etiquette demanded. She retired in the 90s. (I have sat through half hour rants about this more than once.)

  71. Forkless*

    Not an office supply exactly, but in my office of professionals, there are no utensils in the kitchen. None! (No dishes at all, either). People apparently couldn’t be trusted to wash their dishes, so they removed all the dishes. From the kitchen. So odd to me, especially since at the non-profit I worked for previously, our regional manager (highest position at our location) was the one who, by his choosing, ran and emptied the dishwasher daily with the office supplied dishes for anyone who needed them for lunches, etc.

    1. Serin*

      One of my worst jobs had the nicest kitchen setup I’ve ever had, with multiple microwaves, oven (no stovetop), dishwasher, and a full supply of dishes. Being able to eat leftovers off a china plate with a real fork was one of the few things that kept me sane in that place.

      The cleaning service cleaned the kitchen and ran the dishwasher, and there was shockingly little drama about it, but sometimes you’d put your coffee mug in the dishwasher and then you’d hear a huffing noise and some assistant vice president of finance would be taking your mug out and putting it back in CORRECTLY.

    2. NotYourMomma*

      Many years ago, I worked in a small department of 4. We had a small kitchenette with a sink, but no dishwasher. Two of my co-workers would routinely leave food-covered dishes/utensils and coffee cups in the sink for the dish fairy to magically clean. Except that we had no dish fairy.
      After two infestations of ants and roaches with no behavior changes from the offending co-workers, I began putting every dirty dish left in the sink in the garbage at the end of the day. Bippity-boppity-boo. No more pests.

      1. Bagpuss*

        We have had to threaten to do this because there are some lazy sods who don’t wash their own dirty crockery .
        We have paper plates as well as the china ones so if they can’t be arsed to wash up they could chose to use the disposable ones, but they won’t.
        And there are just enough people in our office to make it hard to identify the culprit

        I now keep a set of cutlery in my desk drawer as I got so sick of having to wash one up before I could eat.

    3. ragingsarcastic*

      One office I worked in had disappearing forks. No other cutlery, just forks. We only had maybe 10 people in the office. I think the same person also stole our half-full bottle of hand soap midway through the day once too. So, sometimes I understand why things aren’t provided.

    4. dishless*

      When I started at my admin/reception type job we had minimal kitchen equipment, but when a renovation was scheduled and someone floated the idea of getting a dishwasher, I quietly made it known that I was not interested in becoming the dishwashing and coffee girl.

      It sounds awful and in retrospect risky- but I’d been in that role a while, was desperate to transition out so I could focus on the more business-relevant tasks I had taken on, and worried the renovation was a slowly closing trap that would drag me back to things I really wasn’t interested in doing, and keep me from moving on.

      Fortunately my boss was understanding, and took on dishwasher-running responsibilities after OKing the installation. This kept up until a new office manager started, whose duties did include running the dishwasher.

      It’s surprisingly meaningful to me that I’ve never had to run a load of office dishes. I will occasionally scrub out the coffee pot, though, when I need a minute to think (and because ugh, people never clean it right)!

  72. Box of Kittens*

    Our admin is part-time now, and because our offices are next to each other I am the one that gets asked about supplies when she is off. She keeps the supply cabinet locked when she’s in. It’s full of regular office supplies and as far as I know, we have not had any issues with people taking everything home. I always conveniently forget to lock the cabinet back when she’s off because 1) who cares if someone takes a few extra paperclips? and 2) I am not about to get up and unlock the cabinet twenty times every day because 20 different people need staples.

  73. Clear Eyes, Full Hearts*

    My first post college job was at a very small office (only seven people). The office manager was a very nice older lady. I don’t know how her compensation was figured, but I always guessed that it was in some way tied to how much money she could save on supplies. She could squeeze a nickel until the buffalo pooped. My favorite example was the office bathroom. We only had one unisex bathroom, which really wasn’t an issue considering how small the office was. She would buy the supplies like toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, etc. She would usually go to the local dollar store for these items. She would purchase the liquid soap in a pump dispenser. When the dispenser would get about halfway empty, she would go in and fill it back up with water. She continued this process each time the dispenser got to the halfway mark, diluting the soap inside each time. Eventually, all that was left was basically water. It usually took a customer commenting to get a new bottle of soap purchased. I eventually learned to keep a bar of soap in one of those travel containers inside my desk which I used when needed. I know several other workers did the same thing. I was only at that job a short time. Not long before I left, this office manager hosted a party at her home to which I was invited. At one point, I needed to use the bathroom. On the lavatory, there was a brand new bottle of liquid soap. I couldn’t resist myself. I opened it up, poured a small amount out and refilled it with water. I never told anyone else about it.

  74. Cheap Ass Rolls Royce*

    I worked for a college that recycled old work docs and turned them into note pads by leaving the blank sides up and having the mail room apply glue to the tops of stacks of them. It was a pretty cool cost savings and green initiative.

    However several departments, and the mail room failed to use discretion. I found details about hr issues with employees, and a coworker found the pay scale for the entire leadership team. We hired a shredding service afterwards.

    1. Serin*

      I’ve made pads like that! The glue goes on with a brush like a sort of rubbery liquid and it takes a lot of practice to make it smooth and not lumpy.

    2. ThatGirl*

      Wow, that brought back memories…

      so back when I was a kid, my great-grandma lived in a nice retirement community/nursing home. She was in pretty great health for her 90s. Anyway they had these paper menus from the dining room where they would read over the dishes available for any given meal and check off what they wanted and give them to the staff. The back was blank, and they were a nice size for lists, notes, scratch paper (maybe 4 x 7 or so?) – so someone would gather them up every day and when they had enough, make notepads that way. We got a bunch of them passed through my grandma and used them frequently, they were great!

      1. fposte*

        I grew up with scratch paper that was printed out legal rulings on the other side. I was surprisingly far along in life before I found out that not everybody’s house had paper brought home by a frugal lawyer.

        1. E*

          When I was a kid, our scratch paper was REAMS of dot matrix printer paper, acquired by my mum when her office printers for switched out.

            1. Becca Rosselin-Metadi*

              LOLOLOL-mine too! My mom was one of the first programmers and that was what she brought home to us. It was a while before I understood their actual use.

          2. quill*

            My granddad had tractor paper reams for A THOUSAND YEARS because I guess he brought it home when his work started having modern printers.

            Anyway it was great for drawing really long things on, because you had to tear the little side tracks off and each sheet from it’s neighbor.

            1. fun times*

              I used to like tearing off the sides of those in 2 page long lengths to fold into little stars, because one page was just a tiny bit too short to make a nice star!

          4. KateM*

            Matrix printer paper, one side printed.

            And I cut up my misprints or leftover worksheet, too. I mean there’s no reason to waste actual notepaper for my 3yo to cut up or scribble on.

      2. My Brain Is Exploding*

        In the 70s Dad used to bring home old paper from THE work computer (the kind with small holes along the sides); IDK what was on it, but I worked out a LOT of math problems on it, and it lasted thru grad school!

    3. FreakInTheExcelSheets*

      My first hotel job we would do something similar – anything sensitive would go in the bin for the shredding service, but everything else went in a pile next to the printer. Then when the stack got big enough (or you needed more notepaper) it would get cut into quarters on the giant paper cutter, which was oddly satisfying to use so I definitely made the excuse to use it as much as possible. We didn’t bother to glue it though, just used it as loose sheets.

      For parents bringing things home, my coloring paper was the backs of architectural drawings.

    4. Bowserkitty*

      I think we do this in my office! It’s a pretty neat trick honestly.

      That is, when confidential/secure information isn’t being used…ahahaha

  75. TK*

    At a former job, my desk was right next to the copier/fax that the techs would use to send their completed tickets to the main office. My pens would always go missing because they would use them for the cover sheet and just pocket them. Solution? Store my pens in a tampon box. The (all male) tech staff would never check there.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      You are the opposite of Box of Kittens who I believe is being tapped to get supplies for people when the admin is out not because her office is next door (why assume that person covers for the admin?) but because she is a women (therefore we assume she is the backup admin). Dear Box of Kittens, sit in a tampon box when the admin is out. Nobody will bother you.

      1. Recruited Recruiter*

        I don’t really agree with you. I, male, have experienced the same thing as Box of Kittens due to the location of my desk, and knowing where the admin keeps the key.

        1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

          I was really curious if this would be gender specific. A small part of me is like, yay! I shouldn’t attribute to sexism what can be attributed to pretty much anything else.

  76. $6 pens can buy a lot of goodwill*

    The only office supply I ever asked to be special ordered are a certain kind of pen I really like. You get them at Staples or Office Depot for like $6 and the pack usually lasts me a year. We were allowed minor purchases like this as long as they didn’t go over a certain amount (I think it was $50 a year).

    Anyway, I had been working on a really thankless project for a long time, and it was finally wrapping up. Everyone knew how terrible the client had been to me personally (and sometimes publicly), it was a major account I had inherited from a team member who left suddenly. It was so awful, NO ONE would agree to help me – or rather, their managers refused to allow it because of the terrible client – so I had managed it mostly alone for 18 months and was SO HAPPY it was ending.

    The same day that the project ended, I put in my yearly pen order to celebrate (it’s the little things). However that year, our CFO decided this was an outrageous request, and called me into a meeting with my boss to berate me for my $6 pen order “wasting valuable resources!” How dare I, etc. My boss agreed and told me to never try to place that order again.

    I almost quit and walked out that day over it. (I did find a new job within a few months, partially motivated by this incident.)

    2. kicking-k*

      Oh no! I was hoping this was going to be the kind of story where, to say thanks for doing the awful project, they put your pens on the regular stationery order!

      Alas.

    3. Loredena Frisealach*

      How incredibly petty of them! I admit I hope you gave that as one of your reasons for leaving in your exit interview.

      1. $6 pens can buy a lot of goodwill*

        I was going to, but I didn’t get one! I left in mid-March of 2020 and exit interviews weren’t happening then.

  77. Murphy*

    This is only somewhat related, but I accidentally stole 1000 index cards when I was fired.

    When I was fired with no reason provided, I was told to leave the building immediately, because they “didn’t have time” for me to pack up my stuff. Ok… Months later they finally let me come back and get my stuff, which they had already boxed up.

    I’m a short person and the desk was extremely high, so I had a box I used to put my feet on. It was my box, yellow with happy faces on it, so they’d put it with my stuff. But I’d filled it with a massive pack of index cards I’d found in a drawer. They must not have opened the box to see what was in there, so they went home with me.

    Didn’t make the situation any better, but I got a good laugh out of it at least.

    1. Thursdaysgeek*

      Right. Because an empty box will collapse, so you’ve got to fill it with something substantial. Are you still using the index cards?

      1. Murphy*

        This was a long time ago….but I do have some index cards in a drawer next to me that most likely came from the accidentally stolen stash!

      2. Henrietta*

        I would love that many index cards. I use them to write out knitting patterns on and they are surprisingly hard to find!

  78. TotesMaGoats*

    The former admin for my suite, who resigned while on vacation, had ordered a super expensive balance ball chair thing. Which, ok, fine. But the minute she left, I rolled that sucker down to my office so my feet could touch the floor again.

  79. wittyrepartee*

    At my office in the before times, it was dish soap. It’s a government office, so supplies are scarce to begin with. There was never enough dish soap, and it bothered me. So I bought some. It immediately disappeared. So then I bought a dish soap holder and sponge, wrote my name on it, and wrote “Please do not move”. I filled it with soap that I purchased and kept hidden in my desk (and would slightly water down because apparently there’s a dish soap stealer in our ranks). One day a post-it appeared on the dispenser that said “bossy dispenser”. I replied with “yes, it doesn’t want to be moved. yours, wittyrepartee”. Then another post-it appeared saying “people keep stealing the soap, don’t move this.”

    At some point during this the government decided we didn’t deserve dish soap anymore, so now we’re supposed to use hand soap for all purposes. So we went from occasional supplementary dish soap that would get stolen to only being supplied by myself and the hand soap. I’m sure the drama continues now that I’m working from home and not refilling the dish soap dispenser anymore. Maybe it’ll have disappeared by the time I go back.

    Like, I really just wanted everyone to be able to wash their dishes.

    1. Anonymous Koala*

      We had this problem when I was in grad school – the university refused to supply soap for the grad break room. And because people didn’t have soup to wash their dishes, they would just leave dirty dishes lying around the sink for ages. The day I brought in an $0.88 bottle of Walmart dish soap, the kitchen was magically clean and free from dishes. 1000% worth it.

      1. wittyrepartee*

        Yeah. Dish soap is super cheap. I want clean dishes, everyone else wants clean dishes. I’m totally happy to purchase the soap as long as it stays in it’s spot and no one decides to take it for personal use and deprive all of us of washed flatware.

  80. Serin*

    When I was a church secretary, I was responsible for ordering supplies.

    The paper we used was available in 3 sizes, 2 weights, maybe 5 colors. I went down to the paper storage room to take a quick inventory and discovered that we had a full ream of each color, each size, each weight — SO much paper. And naturally we’d used up most of the white lightweight in the size that the weekly bulletins were printed on while barely touching the lavender heavyweight 11x17s.

    My immediate predecessor said she hadn’t ordered it; I guess someone before her had just contacted the paper supplier and said, “Give me a ream each of everything you have.”

    (I used to have a standing arrangement, approved by all concerned, that I could stick around after my day was over and do any personal printing I wanted and just pay the treasurer the cost of the supplies. Make calendars with my kid’s artwork, custom-print birthday cards, whatever I wanted. Full-color printer, print-shop-grade folder and cutter … that was my second favorite perk of that job, second only to having the office closed from Christmas to New Year’s.)

  81. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    The worst I ever got was at one job where I was doing 10-key data entry at 13,000 characters per hour, 35 hours a week. I asked our IT guy to order me a heavy duty 10-key pad after I, shocker, wore out three cheap keyboards in a month. He came back the next week with the flimsy $10 USB job from the checkout counter display at Office Max. I was like “…. this is not a heavy duty 10-key pad, Gary.” “No,” he says, “But it has a double-zero key!” I was so busy gaping at him for the incredible dumb of that statement (I was not entering anything money-wise where there might be any value at all for a double-zero key) that my boss came over, grabbed the flimsy keypad, threw it at him, and said “GO GET HER ONE THAT WILL HURT YOU IF I THROW IT AT YOUR HEAD.” He never would, and eventually my boss was like “Well, if he wants to blow his entire budget on replacing your keyboards, I guess that’s up to him.”

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        This is the same boss (the administrative office manager) who was having a silent war over what I was allowed to wear with the development director, who was seriously cheesed that my boss didn’t make me wear a suit in our office where no clients, donors, or anyone but our volunteers came in person (and hello, they were not paying me enough to afford a suit by any stretch of the imagination). Boss’s decree was that as far as she was concerned, the dress code for the admin staff who reported to her was “Cover your tits.” So I wore pretty much whatever I wanted, with boss’s blessing, and the look on the development director’s face the day she came in and I was wearing an untucked and oversized white button-down shirt with a neon orange necktie, sleeves rolled up to my elbows, jeans with ripped-out knees and leopard-spotted combat boots was PRICELESS.

        2. kicking-k*

          I love it.

          The only time I’ve really leant into inappropriate office attire, I was 25, working admin at a university, and had to dress a little older or be mistaken for a lost undergraduate. Except one week there were going to be anti-capitalist protests and the university was worried staff would be targeted, so we were told to dress casually.

          So I came in to work in platform-soled Doc Martens, black tights, a lacy gothy top and a many-coloured mini-kilt. And did wonder if I should just forget trying to look like a grownup.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Gary was a terrible TERRIBLE IT person. Luckily, he also didn’t do much work and delegated it to his assistant, who was an excellent IT guy and actually got the job when Gary got turfed out on his butt.

  82. Cedarthea*

    Not huge, but I just got back to my pre-pandemic desk and discovered I had labeled my stapler with my name (well my program name but it’s 100% identified with me and me alone).

    I have no recollection why I used the labelmaker to label it, but I am sure I had a good reason.

      3. Sunrise Ruby*

        Oh, yes. Many years ago I worked for a major bookselling chain, and making labels with the really fancy-schmancy label maker that looked like a small adding machine and came with two fonts gave us retail peons so much joy. We made legitimate labels for shelves and changing displays, but then we’d sometimes go nuts with it and make fun labels for our lockers, or we’d put silly messages on the parts of the information desk or the cash register areas that the public couldn’t see.

  83. Mental Lentil*

    When I was teaching, we had two copies machines. One that worked, and for which we could never get supplies for, and one that barely worked, and for which we had copious amounts of supplies. So guess which one everybody ended up using?

    Anyway, one day during lunch, somebody was running copies while eating their lunch. Barely working copy machine was chugging out copies, but nobody noticed when it stopped—they just assumed it was at the end of its run.

    It wasn’t.

    A piece of paper had jammed inside, but the barely working copier never registered this. It just kept running more blank paper in, until it all jammed up inside the fuser unit. Fuser units get hot by, the way. Hot enough to turn paper into smoke and blackened bits of paper, which is what we had coming out of the machine when someone opened the front door after they realized the machine was still running but paper wasn’t coming out.

    We’re lucky we didn’t burn the building down. The barely working copier was hauled away, and supplies for the working copy machine started slowly trickling in. I left that job three years later, and we still had about twenty toner cartridges for the old machine, just sitting in its place on the floor, like a little memorial to a long lost comrade.

    1. The Rural Juror*

      We have an old copier that doesn’t work, but apparently can’t be disposed of because of our boss’s weird attachment to it. It’s so strange! We ran out of toner for it, but I told my boss it just didn’t make sense to buy any more. Most people have to use a color printer and we have one laser printer that is for a specific type of paper that can also run sets of larger copies on regular at a low cost. Why would we spend money on the huge copier that is expensive to service and no one uses? I think maybe it’s because when he had the shelving built in the supply closet they customized it to go up and over the huge copier. If we get rid of it, there will be a large blank space to fill. So this 20-year-old copier that hasn’t been used in…3 years? 4 maybe? just sits and sits…collecting dust…

    2. Just Another Zebra*

      You can sell those toners! Not you, because you left that job. But for anyone who might have toners from machines that have “retired”. We swapped out one of our larger machines last year and had roughly $1,000 worth of toner left over. Sold it for ~$400, which was a loss, but we weren’t hoarding toner for a machine we no longer had. The added shelf space was magical.

    3. boxing day*

      We used to get those Xerox boxes to bulk-return dead toner cartridges, I definitely snuck a couple of full-but-obsolete supplies that had to have been at least 10 years old into the bottom of some of them. If no one working in the office remembers owning the machine they go to, you do not need to keep them.

  84. workworkwork*

    I worked in an office that only had 1 pair of scissors for ~30 people. No scissors were not 100% essential to our work, but stuff comes up. Sometimes you need them to open the annoying plastic on something that is essential to work, or there’s a thread hanging off your clothes. It came up a lot. Silly little thing, but it drove me crazy.

  85. librariandragon*

    I haven’t ever had difficulty accessing office supplies, but I’ve had some definitely weird conversations regarding what I am allowed to request. When I first started at my current job, I suggested keeping boxes of tissues and band aids handy for the public access area (multiple deep paper cuts in my first month, plus it being January…) and was told that the office would supply neither of them. I wasn’t sure how to explain that the visiting researcher was not going to 1. walk back into the kitchen, 2. locate the first aid kit, 3. fill out the workplace injury form, all for a papercut. I just walked down the street to the pharmacy and bought my own for my (the front) desk.

    Two years later I just added tissues and hand sanitizer to my regular supply request (toner, pens, packing tape) and had no problem getting it approved.

  86. Aphrodite*

    Up until March 20, I really had no idea how much I would appreciate pettiness in AAM letters. The most childish, stupid, irritating, idiotic acts by co-workers have now become entertainment I look forward to reading and relishing. I am rubbing my hands in glee with this post and will be checking back again later in the day to satisfy my pettiness urge.

    We had one of those too. Maria had worked at the same job for forty plus years and had no ambitions or interests other than irritating co-workers. It didn’t matter if you were nice to her or not; everyone got the same shit passive-aggressive treatment. And she had taken over two supply closets and had locks put on them where she kept all pens, PostIts, paper tablets, in fact everything needed to do the job. And she protected those closets from everyone. Locks were removed the day she finally retired at 78 years of age. Good riddance to one of the nastiest people I have ever unfortunately met.

  87. SparkleBoots*

    I work in IT, and a lot of our workflows are digitized, so we don’t really have a need for traditional office supplies. But you know what we do need? Something to open all the boxes of computers and peripherals we receive!!! We gets TONS of computers, monitors, etc all the time, and no way to open them. I have scoured the building for scissors or a pocket knife, and they are just GONE. One time I bought a pair of scissors, and then was told to keep them hidden and not let anyone know I had them, but my boss never explained why I should do that. I’m not sure what the deal is – maybe there’s a safety concern with having blades around, but I would think scissors are pretty harmless office equipment.

    1. Cookies For Breakfast*

      That struck me at my office too! There’s literally one pair of scissors in the whole place, where around 100 people are based. It’s not stored in a visible place, so anyone who needs it has to ask the office manager (who will make it clear they are doing you a HUGE favour), like a schoolchild going up to the teacher to get more glitter for their art class drawing.

      1. The Rural Juror*

        I seem to be the only person in our office who doesn’t carry supplies off to another place, set them down, then forget them there and lose them. Everyone in the office comes to me to use my box cutter, scissors, and box tape. It’s so silly! Luckily, they don’t carry them off, though.

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I have a tip for you! Go to Amazon and search “Slice Mini Cutter” – it’s a little doohickey that magnets onto a cabinet or fridge or whatever, has a ceramic safety blade that pops out and will cut open boxes, tape, etc, but the blade is only out while you’re holding the button, and – my husband has tried, because he frequently has throwback moments to his inner 12 year old – you CANNOT cut yourself with it, the closest you get is if you somehow manage to hold the button and contort your wrist to stab yourself with the absolute tip of the little blade thing, which would do slightly less damage than poking yourself with a pushpin or sewing needle. But it will open ANYTHING I’ve tried it on so far, and mine is going on two years old and I haven’t had to replace the blade yet (though it is replaceable). Nine bucks.

      1. SparkleBoots*

        Thanks! That sounds like a great thing to have around here! And at home, my children are like scent hounds when it comes to finding where we’ve stashed the scissors. :D

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          The year I first found these things, I put them in like EVERYBODY’S Christmas bundles :) they were very popular! And I haven’t had to threaten to stab my husband for using good scissors to open a box in ages. :P

    3. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      Oh this was my first job. I needed knife to complete a task. But there were no knives able to do the job. I was told one guy had a good knife. I asked him to borrow it. He told me to get lost.
      So teen aged me walked back to the prep table of a Ponderosa Steakhouse and continued to saw through lemons with their garbage steaks knives that bent out of shape if they got through the peel at all.
      (The menu included fried fish and a iced tea so we needed those lemon wedges!)

      1. SparkleBoots*

        Not having scissors/blades at an office….okay I can kind of see that. But not having proper knives at a RESTAURANT???? That’s just bonkers.

  88. ThisIsTheHill*

    We had a coffee war at one of my former workplaces. The admins were ordering an insane variety of brands (like, we had regular Folgers & regular Maxwell House in addition to our flavored blends) to make everyone happy. The president of the company got fed up with the waste, so a blind taste test was scheduled. Execs poured coffee in the breakroom for a few hours, everyone got to vote on which they preferred, & the winner became the only regular coffee brand going forward.

  89. Cookies For Breakfast*

    A few years ago, moving to a new office in a very fancy location was the company’s excuse to lean into a strict hotdesking policy. Part of it required people to never settle at a desk. Getting up from a desk meant immediately clearing it of any items you had brought with you, so others could use it next. They also built very little storage in the office, so people would be less tempted to leave their stuff behind (the health and safety hazard of having to put all our bags on the floor is a whole story of its own).

    That completely obliterated the provision of office supplies, because there was literally nowhere to put them. At the old office, we could grab anything out of a cupboard and store the supplies we were using at our own desks (with lockable drawers!). At the new one, the only way I know of to get a pen is grabbing it from the box of branded pens the office manager keeps at their workstation for clients to take. I still can’t be confident that I will find paper to write on, though.

    1. Warrant Officer Georgiana Breakspear-Goldfinch*

      You ….you have to take all your stuff with you when you go to a meeting or the bathroom or refill your coffee? WOW.

      1. Cookies For Breakfast*

        I know, right!

        To be honest, it got a little more relaxed over the years. Bathroom / coffee refills are quick enough that nobody cares. But if you go to a long meeting or take your lunch break, you may still find someone has taken your spot and moved your stuff (particularly annoying, to me, when I leave my laptop on purpose to charge it). And, bags must be left at the entrance, which makes for a lot of interruptions when you realise you needed something you didn’t think to bring with you at 9am.

      1. Prefer my pets*

        It really only makes sense for employees who are rarely in the office & almost never at the same time. We have a couple cubes set up as hot desks that are used for people like the field techs who are rarely in for more than doing time or trainings, when people are working on a project in the remote building instead of headquarters, IT comes on site for something for a week, etc. We’re looking at shifting more people to primarily work from home so there might be more shared desks for people who rarely come in. I can’t imagine having to do it for a normal office job though…I’d quit the day they implemented it!

  90. Belladonna*

    Twenty years ago a part of my job was ordering and stocking supplies for an organization that worked in renewable energy. Two stories come to mind.

    We stocked paper cups suitable for cold liquids and Styrofoam cups. I made the decision to switch to one cup for hot and cold liquids. Two employees just could not handle the switch, and I was lectured about how the Styrofoam cups were the perfect receptacle for their morning oatmeal. I tried to explain that Styrofoam was not recyclable. That stocking two types of cups took up to much space. That they had access to ceramic cups and a dishwasher. To no avail. They just wouldn’t let it go and neither would I.

    The second story is more nefarious. Employee A special ordered a set of fancy colored pens. About a week later, a drama llama special ordered the same set. When I delivered Employee A’s set (which came in first), she gave me a couple of colors she didn’t want. I then gave one to the receptionist. Drama Llama sees receptionist with said pen, asks where she got it and then accused me if stealing her pens…Pens that I could order for myself if I wanted. She spread this rumor all around our large office after I told her who I got them from and when her pens were expected. She continued to blame me when her supplies would go missing the rest of the time I worked there.

  91. EvilQueenRegina*

    I remember one time at my old job, my coworker “Phoebe” had placed a stationery order, and there was some problem at the supplier’s end meaning the order would come in two separate deliveries, the handwash being in the second one. Phoebe explained this to the team, there was enough to last until the date it was expected, and most people were fine with that except another coworker “Ross” who oddly sent out an email to the entire building the next day ranting about how we appeared to have run out of handwash, how we were going to be in the position of having about 25 people to a little bar of soap, and “ok, I know we could all bring our own in.”

    Phoebe was not happy to come in the next day to this email and blasted Ross via replying all.

  92. animalistic cleanser*

    I worked in the animal department within a much larger organization. As one might imagine, we were regularly cleaning and disinfecting our facilities and equipment. Do do this, we used the least absorbent paper towels know to man – the brown types that seem to sit on top of water, rather than absorb the water – which made the task much more difficult and time consuming. I asked my supervisor if we could order different supplies and was quickly told no: the company provided those supplies and if we wanted our own then we’d have to use our departmental budget. We were all exempt salaried employees, so I guess no one (other than us) cared how inefficiently we worked.

  93. Another EE*

    Opposite of drama, but our organization has an annual “Drop and Shop” for office supplies. There’s one week to drop off off unwanted supplies, then another few days to “shop” for items you need for work (if stuff is for work it’s all free). People can buy anything left over and take it home, always for inexpensive/yard sale prices. It’s a great way for departments to get rid of clutter.

  94. anon for this*

    I work in a radiological facility that requires you to wear two pairs of gloves when working with radioactive materials. For at least the last 10 years, we’ve done extended cuff nitrile gloves with a pair of vinyl gloves on top. Well, this year our health physicist decided she wanted us to wear two pairs of nitrile gloves instead. People. Went. Ballistic. There were multiple meetings about how terrible this change was, she was interrogated in a division wide meeting about the reasons behind this… the poor woman was blindsided. It’s amazing how angry scientists can get about gloves.

    1. quill*

      It’s probably bad that I totally understand the scientists, but… two layers of the same type of glove is extremely annoying! They stick!

      1. Mental Lentil*

        Oh, no! There’s a huge difference between nitrile and vinyl when you wear them all day, every day. When I worked in a lab, there was practically a revolt when they tried to switch us from nitrile to latex. (This was back in the day.)

      2. anon for this*

        Oh yeah, agreed! We change our outer gloves pretty frequently too and it’s way harder to remove secondary nitrile gloves than vinyl ones. But also, there was something just so funny watching a bunch of people approaching retirement age absolutely lose their mind over gloves.

        1. quill*

          I mean, I got into a shouting match about forceps once (There was no professionalism present in that lab…) so yeah. I get it. But STOP HIDING THE GOOD FORCEPS JANET.

          1. LabTechNoMore*

            Having lab flashbacks from this thread. Trace metals work – everything we ordered had to be “the weird expensive version” of standard lab consumables. Which had to be explained and justified to soulless university bureaucrats. Who seemed to believe this insistence on the “expensive kind” was all in our heads, or a misplaced sense of self importance (as though academic lab techs have any in the first place). And don’t get me started on explaining the difference between Clean Air Hood and a PCR Hood…

    2. I hate migraines*

      Many years ago we switched from using the powdered latex gloves to the unpowdered gloves, and stopped being allowed to order the powdered version. I was the person kicking up a fuss. Turns out that there is a significant difference is size between the two versions. After the glove and the microfuge tube I was holding took a trip to the other side of the room while I was trying to mix the contents, they had to special order the extra-expensive extra-small gloves.
      This is the same place that routinely ordered binder clips to hold sequencing gels together while they set. The really big ones. I don’t think at the time that I’d even seen standard size ones. We all bought our own marker pens though, otherwise I’d never have been able to label anything. With hindsight, we spent a fortune on office supplies that never saw the inside of an office but did get a lot of washing and disposed of in the hazardous waste sometimes…

    3. A Genuine Scientician*

      I mean…a lot of the point of double gloving is that different materials provide different protection against different substances, so you generally get more protection from two different types of gloves rather than two copies of the same type. I suppose if you only have a single hazardous substance that’s less important.

      I’m just happy that they got rid of those damn powdered gloves. The powder used to clump on the hairs on the back of my hands / wrists and itch like crazy. I actually took to shaving the back of my hands because of it, so my arm hair would stop abruptly at my wrist. It looked a bit silly, but practicality over appearance.

    4. JustaTech*

      The glove drama I hated was this weird thing where, if you were going to one of our sister labs in another building to use their Fancy Instrument you had to take an offering of a box of gloves.
      Because their grant was so stingy they had to re-wear gloves, so if another person came over they might get caught short.

      We did HIV research. (Thankfully not on the whole virus, but still!)

  95. misslucy21*

    This is only drama because it was just silly, but one of my coworkers ordered 12 boxes of 12 binder clips. Which was already kind of a lot of binder clips, but he was an office supply hoarder and over ordered *everything*. Except… he actually ordered 12 *sets* of 12 boxes, each with 12 binder clips. Or, in other words, 1,728 binder clips. Our manager totally did not believe him when he said it was an accident. We were still using supplies cleared out of his desk 3 years after he left the company. The binder clips followed us through three different office moves before I finally dumped them in an excess supply drive before the last move, since it had been about 4 years and we had still only used 3 individual boxes of binder clips.

    1. The Rural Juror*

      My coworker (in construction) once forgot to convert his material estimate from inches to feet. He ordered 12x too much trim lumber for a project. Luckily, the lumber yard was able to take it back and sell it to another customer since it wasn’t a custom-milled product. But yeah…always check the math!!!

    2. Other Duties as Assigned*

      We had the exact same thing happen, except it was cases of Windex in bulk gallon containers. The order was supposed to be for 12 gallons, which is one case. However, it got put through as 12 cases. We ended up with 144 gallons of Windex. This was years ago and they probably are still working through the supply.

    3. LizB*

      I always seem to have the opposite of this problem. I will order what I think is a case of white-out, and it will end up being a single bottle. I will intend to order regular size post-its and get the tiny ones. I don’t know why I suddenly have zero reading comprehension when faced with an office supply ordering website, but that’s apparently how my brain works.

    4. Goody*

      Been there done that. I had been our acquisitions associate for years and had a good sense of our consumption levels. Management had me hand off to our new accountant, who clearly didn’t read descriptions or any of my notes. His first order consisted of 12 cases of paper towels, at 36 rolls per case. He claimed he was ordering 12 rolls. One would think the price should have been a red flag….

  96. anon for this*

    We ended up with a stapler graveyard. All of the office staplers broke at the same time, except the super old one with non-standard staple width that no one was using anyway because it was so impractical. Someone would go out and buy a cheap stapler as a holdover, and it would break. Repeat several times until we had an impressive collection of dead staplers and quite a bit of accumulated frustration.

    I did not share the mini-stapler that I keep in my desk that I bought in the summer of 2001. It appears to be indestructible.

    1. Toads, Beetles, Bats*

      OMG I love this so much. Please tell me it was an actual “stapler graveyard” with an actual location in your office. You know, like a fairy garden but with office supplies.

  97. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    For whatever reason, I relax and write comfortably in pencil and will subconsciously make error after error in ink, so strongly prefer the simple, hardwood and graphite pencils. It’s to the point where I have accepted I’m better off signing paperwork in pencil and photocopying it than I am doing so in ink.

    In every office I’ve ever been in, I get the side-eye every time I go looking for one. Usually they’ve been waiting for me so long that the erasers have calcified.

    1. Mental Lentil*

      Oh, I love writing with a good cedar pencil. I still have a box of J.R. Moon “Chamfer” #2 pencils! What a lovely scent when you sharpen them by hand.

    2. Distractinator*

      Cue to the time I was writing in pencil – I often use mechanical pencils but there are always a few wooden ones lying around – and the lead snapped. I suddenly realized that I had been working here for 4 years and had *no idea* where a pencil sharpener was. Not in our main office/printer area, that’s for sure! So I contemplated who were the greybeards who like to print their emails and store them in binders, walked over to John’s office (he was out, doing retirement half-days) and found an adorable battery-powered pencil sharpener (so high-tech!) on his desk, as expected.

  98. Dwight Schrute*

    I had a boss who would only let us clip things together with the medium binder clips- she did not like the small or big ones but she also wouldn’t be more mediums and liked to hoard them when not in use

  99. Generic Name*

    I was an intern for a large helicopter company. The department I was in was considered a cost to the company in that we weren’t involved in building or selling helicopters. Our existence was mandated by federal and state law, but it was clear that we were the red-headed stepchild of the company. We had no budget for office supplies. As in we were literally not allowed to purchase any. However, there was budget for travel, so the folks who traveled would bring back the tiny note pads and free pens from their hotel rooms. Conference swag was the only source of post-it notes we had. It was very silly.

  100. Salad Daisy*

    My previous employer hired a VP who had a thing about office supplies. Every purchase, no matter how small, had to be approved by him. I needed 6 rolls of tape at $1.29 per roll for a project we were doing and it took 4 emails back and forth before he approved the purchase. (Yes I remember the amounts because it was so stupid). I’m sure they were paying him more that the cost of those 6 rolls of tape.

  101. Reality Check*

    In my industry there is a ton of paperwork. There are sales reps -overwhelmingly men – and service reps, 100% women. I do think gender plays a role bc I see stuff like this all the time.

    Docusign. Company doesn’t want to pay for everyone to have it. So only the sales reps have it. Never mind we service reps send out 10x more stuff to sign. We begged management for Docusign, but they wouldn’t budge.

    So: we service reps flood the sales reps with stuff to be signed by the client. There are twice as many of us, so the guys are really getting bombarded. They’re totally annoyed and I don’t blame them. Talk to management, I tell them. Maybe they’ll listen to YOU.

  102. desk platypus*

    We had a change in who orders supplies for our department that came with a LOT of drama. All names changed but: Sally ordered things for years with very hands off supervision. Change in management meant looking more at our very sparse budget and decided to try someone else doing the ordering/inventory so it went to Steve.

    Well. Steve discovered excess ordering going into the tens of thousands of dollars. Instead of properly taking stock of what was already on hand Sally was just… ordering more. And more. We have paperclips for YEARS. And some supplies were extremely expired. A higher department got involved to redistribute general supplies throughout the organization. Post its, paperclips, printer paper, pens, notepads, highlighters, sharpies, you name it. We had boxes upon boxes of supplies shuffling around for weeks. Steve orders on a ‘as we need’ basis and it’s working brilliantly to cut waste and keep certain supplies fresh, and performs regular inventory checks. And because of the new money saving measures (which, need I remind you, is in the tens of thousands) we were able to buy new equipment we thought we couldn’t afford.

    How Sally escaped all this unscathed baffles me. She got extremely defensive and initially refused to tell others she was no longer in charge so it would cause delays that made Steve look bad. Her argument was “well I didn’t get trained for this” but also refused all outside help. Whatever, at least I get to enjoy fancier pens we can now afford that aren’t from the piles of dying BICs.

    1. LizB*

      She didn’t get trained for… how to order a reasonable amount of things? That’s not something you need to get trained for! Is her kitchen full of expired cans of soup she never eats but keeps buying more of anyway?? Baffling.

  103. Anonymoose*

    Oh, god, office supplies.

    * I worked with a junior executive who would only use 3M flags, not post-it notes. The flags were special order, the post-its were abundantly available in all sizes and colors. He would chide staff for using post-it notes instead of flags, even though the post-its were much easier to write notes on. Of course, being the mature people that we were, we plastered his whole workstation with his entire precious stash of 3M flags when he went on a business trip once.

    * One of my peers at my first job was proprietary about his stapler. I kind of got it – the company had started buying cheap plastic staplers instead of the heavy-duty, metal Swinglines we’d had for years, and the “good” staplers became a hot commodity. This guy named his stapler (Annie, I think), engraved his name on it, and locked it in his desk when not using it. He had it out one day and stepped away from his desk for a few minutes and an executive assistant, unaware of the stapler drama, grabbed it on her way from the copy room to bring stuff to her boss and clients, fully planning to bring it back. This dude flips out about where “Annie” is, finds out where it went and, goes into the conference room and TAKES HIS STAPLER BACK FROM THE EXECUTIVE’S HAND IN FRONT OF CLIENTS, while loudly declaring it HIS stapler. Needless to say, this was not well-received.

    * We had two people start an all out interpersonal war over one of them “hogging” all the highlighters of a particular color. My office is not stingy with office supplies – there are unmonitored supply rooms on every other floor (that are restocked weekly) as well as a central supply room. Granted, it’s harder to find a purple highlighter than yellow, but apparently this one person went through and picked up all the purple ones and locked them in their desk. The other person went to HR because they couldn’t use yellow as the bright color gave them migraines and *only* purple would do – not light blue, not green, both of which were in abundant supply everywhere. They also asserted that the highlighter hogger was doing this to them deliberately and wanted them to have migraines, miss work, and get fired and demanded HR fire the highlight hogger (still unclear on what grounds they expected this to happen).

    * One of my summer internships was at a place with a policy that stated what level of chair each position was allowed. Interns got basic models with no arms, admins and people with a year of tenure got arms, senior staff got a nicer chair style with arms, and the c-suite got Aeron chairs. I’m not sure who was so bored and short on actual work that they thought writing a chair policy was a good use of time, but it was ENFORCED. One of my fellow interns worked in the c-suite and was offered a chair swap to a C-somethig-O who hated the Aeron chair… they got formally reprimanded by HR. Yet HR was still surprised when none of the interns applied for a full-time position post-graduation…

    * Someone kept stealing all the toilet paper out of the bathrooms on the floor of my office. It was determined that the person doing this was a well-paid, higher-up within the organization who was allowed, for political reasons, to keep cleaning us out of TP regularly. They did at least start locking the installed rolls so we weren’t constantly in a no-square-to-spare situation.

    2. The Rural Juror*

      My coworker, who spends most of his time in the field and not in our office, has a running joke with me because I have a red stapler. He’ll come by my desk using his best “Milton” voice and ask me if I’ve seen his red stapler. He does actually need to borrow it often because he doesn’t have one of his own, but he always brings it back. One day my boss’s stapler got stuck, so he borrowed mine to get some stuff together quickly for a client meeting. My coworker saw it on his desk later and we had a pretty good laugh about the boss “stealing” it. I did actually have to remind my boss a couple of days later I needed it back, though… It’s a really good stapler and apparently is a discontinued style…so I do need to protect it!

    3. AKchic*

      I hate it when a random executive decides to make power trip decisions about chairs.

      We’d had a VP who had a very nice chair for her spine. She… outgrew her chair and needed something bigger for her frame. I was in need of a chair like hers for MY spine as I had just had surgery and was in a contraption to realign my hips and lower back (this being the first surgery after the birth of my 4th child). Walking was not pleasant, and it was well known that my spine from top to bottom was bad (in some places since my own birth).
      The c-suite were happy to give me the hand-me-down chair. Saves them money, keeps everyone happy and keeps me working and comfortable. Win-win.

      Then we bought a new building. The new building came with “upgraded” furniture already in place. It all matched. We’re a non-profit and none of our furniture matched. In comes my boss, a new c-suite hire with gumption, ambition, and very little sense. He tried to give away the VP’s chair. He got shut down. She wasn’t having it. We moved buildings. My chair didn’t come over. Uh… why? Oh, he sent my chair to one of our staff members in another city who’d been eying it. A manager. Uh. Why? Because I’m just an assistant. I don’t need such a fancy chair. I ended up with a student chair. It took me months to get something with arms. I never did get something “new”, or anything that helped my back. He eventually got fired for his multiple ineptitudes. My back continued to deteriorate. What that did show me was what my new supervisor valued more: public image and status over the health and well-being of his employees.

        1. AKchic*

          She got her new one, why should she care? She made her disappointed noises, but ultimately, it didn’t affect her.
          And there was no budget to buy me a new one. I was told I could buy my own, but they certainly didn’t pay me enough to spend the money on such a nice chair.

    5. Dragon_Dreamer*

      Re: the yellow highlighter.

      I also have an issue with the yellow highlighters. Due to my autism, my vision is extra-sensitive to colors. When I was in high school, it was physically painful to read anything highlighted in certain colors. The neon yellow highlighters are the hardest, though I can use most other colors. The purples were the least painful!

      Nowadays, I’ve gotten old enough that highlighters aren’t as bad, but neon poster board (ESPECIALLY yellow, orange, and pink) hurts like heck to look at!

      1. Anonymoose*

        I am 100% with you on yellow highlighters – I actually hate ALL highlighters and would sift through used books at the college bookstore to find the ones that had no/very little highlighting in them. The neon color highlighters and poster board are eye-assaulting (the pink is actually worse for me than yellow).

        The thing is, the blue highlighters that office stocked were designed to be pale enough not to show up on black & white photo copies, so they’re actually easier on the eyes than even purple. My bigger issue with that situation was the zero-to-eleven nature of the reaction and the assumption of very ill intent with no evidence of it. I felt so bad for our generally very good HR department who had much bigger fish to fry at the time.

    6. merope*

      I would never have guessed that there was a modern equivalent to the chair etiquette of Versailles … and so nearly exact in terms of types of chairs and rank!

  104. Dotty*

    The Office Manager at one job used to send her assistant around with a basket every Friday, to harvest any visible office supplies from our desks and put them neatly back in the supply cabinet. No pen was safe unless hidden. I started buying my own binder clips, in silver tone instead of black so they were clearly not company property, and then we got an all-office memo that only office-supplied clips were permitted, for aesthetic uniformity. Also this was an architecture firm, where we used drafting dots (little masking tape circles that come on a roll) to stick drawings to drawing boards, and we weren’t allowed to have our own boxes of dots, only 8 dots per person at one time, necessitating many trips dot-getting trips per person per day.

  105. Sean*

    Before I switched jobs, I had worked my entire life in a newsroom, which are notoriously cheap about everything. People would horde the “good” supplies at their desks like they were cigarettes in jail, and if anyone got a nice pair of scissors bought for them everyone else would be insanely jealous. But the funniest part was when anyone left for a new job, we would descend on their desk like a pack of vultures trying to upgrade our Rolodex, tape dispenser, scissors, etc., until there was nothing left. Then the poor schmuck who took that desk next had to start all over again.

    1. quill*

      This, but for keyboards / mice / that third monitor and extra monitor cables… contractors are cube cannibals wherever I’ve worked as one.

  106. All Het*

    I work for state government for the first time and was told we can’t buy tissues. I have never in my life worked somewhere that did not provide me with tissues. At least based on some of these comments, I’m not alone. I bring my own from home now, but I’m extra horrified, because you know pandemic.

    1. Clodagh*

      I’m so baffled by this because I’ve never worked somewhere that provided tissues. Toilet paper and paper hand towels, yes (although I’ve worked places where paper hand towels were a big no no), tissues, never.

    2. Mr. Cajun2core*

      Welcome to government work. “Personal supplies” can not be purchased using state funds. Every purchase has to have a clear “business purpose”. I got dinged once for ordering an “air wick” because the person in that area thought it was a but stuffy and just wanted a “fresh smell”.

      Before the pandemic, we could not order tissues. If we did, we had to say that they would be placed in a public place and that they were for students to use. Since the pandemic, things have gotten a bit more relaxed about tissues.

  107. hbc*

    I think I shared this story here before, but: The accountants were reviewing our contract with the supply company for the paper towels, toilet paper, and such. We had to pay for actual supplies used and also a monthly rental for the dispensers. They noticed that we hadn’t had to buy more toilet seat covers so the accounting manager put the holder in the list for potential removal/reduction. His employee mentioned in passing to another manager that they were removing the holder. That manager was apparently the only guy using the covers and was on bad terms with the accounting manager.

    And that is how I ended up in my office with two grown men *who were responsible for half the company headcount between them* yelling at each other with such gems as “You don’t get to tell me where to put my ass!”

    2. FD*

      And that is how I ended up in my office with two grown men *who were responsible for half the company headcount between them* yelling at each other with such gems as “You don’t get to tell me where to put my ass!”

      Gold!

  108. Gracely*

    When I was a teacher, the first school I worked at had was underfunded and we had super strict limits on paper. I got *really good* at using my paper super efficiently–I would shrink pages down so that I could get 4 copies on each side of 1 piece of paper, and do double-sided so I’d basically get 8 pages out of 1 piece of paper. Even so, the secretary of the school still gave me her “secret copy code” so I didn’t have to make my tests that tiny because I had so.many.students (30 students x 6 classes, 500 copies per quarter is just not going to cut it no matter how efficient you are, and every teacher got the same # of copies regardless of how many students they had). And the paper was *only* inside the copier; you couldn’t add paper to it, either. We didn’t have our own printers/paper/etc. That’s how they kept ink/toner costs down. If you wanted to use your own paper, you needed to have a printer at home.

    Well, the second school I worked at had slightly better funding. We got a whole box of paper per semester. So 5x the paper I’d had per quarter. The other teachers grumbled, but I was like, damn, this is SO MUCH PAPER, I can do so many more things now! And my last year there, in like, February, everyone got a *bonus* extra box of paper–normally by this point, the other teachers had started buying their own paper to finish out the year. Y’all, I was still so used to conserving paper/copies at all costs that I had only just opened my second box. At the end of the school year, my extra box untouched, I was able to leave half a box of paper to my successor, *and* dole out the other half to the other 4 teachers in my department.

    You have never seen adult professionals so happy just to get extra paper.

  109. WhiskeyTango*

    I used to work in the legal department for an insurance company. (Read: VERY old school. The most conservative department in an already conservative industry.) Our printers used to print out a cover page for each print job with your login on the cover page to help you identify your print jobs. Someone decided that this was wasteful and no one needed a cover page in the entire company. It might have made sense in every other department, but in Legal, it was a disaster. Sometimes the cover sheets were for confidentiality, others times it was just to distinguish between the print jobs of 40 attorneys and 20 staff members. This was before everything was digital, so the 15 member Board wanted their thousand page Board books every quarter in hard copy. The mandate to eliminate cover pages lasted three days in our department before the CLO told the COO we needed an “exemption” from the new decree. We got it.

    Every year in October, they would install a moratorium on ordering office supplies until January 1st. We ran out of note pads one year and they wouldn’t let us order any more. So attorneys started taking unopened reams of printer paper to meetings to take notes. We would hoard printer paper all year to prepare for the Q4 shortage…. It was amazing. (And yes, we started hoarding note pads throughout the year to avoid it happening again….)

  110. Damn it, Hardison!*

    I had a coworker who was obsessed with the fact that I got a new “special” chair. When I joined the department, the head told me I should order a new chair because the one in my cubicle was old, stained, and wobbly. So I consulted with the office manager, and she ordered a basic, no frills chair, similar to what everyone else in the office had. To hear my coworker talk about it, it was gold plated with a with a seat made from unicorn hair and stuffed with goose down. I finally got annoyed and said if she liked it, she was welcome to it and I would take her (nearly) identical chair. Several years later, after I left, my husband joined the department. This coworker complained to him about my (not at all) special chair!

    1. ggg*

      I accidentally got an admin in trouble for getting me a credenza that was too nice for someone in my position to have.
      I just wanted something to hold some files and put my coffee maker on. An admin went to the warehouse of old furniture and brought me back a slightly beat-up 40 year old wooden credenza.
      The front-office admin got very upset because apparently only certain levels of management are allowed to have wooden furniture. So SHE took the wooden credenza (since she supported a higher level of management, apparently she deserved it?) and gave me her cast-off metal credenza.
      That credenza was actually in better shape and had better storage organization than the wooden one. But it was not made of precious higher-management-level wood.

      1. FreakInTheExcelSheets*

        Oh man the way people get weird about furniture. My dad is a (now retired) architect who ran the design & construction department for a resort company. He also does woodworking/carpentry as a hobby (and made custom furniture to pay for his degree). When he was promoted to his final role with the company and we relocated across the country, my mom, sister, and I helped move his stuff into his office (don’t ask me why an SVP was responsible for this – they didn’t even bring the boxes of stuff from his old office up from the loading dock). One of the things he had was a desk he had built ~20+ years before (at the time, this was 20 years ago) and it’s beautiful. It was mahogany left over from a custom job he’d done and it has a glass top. We got that all set up (including carrying this giant piece of glass up 3 flights of stairs because it couldn’t get around the tight corners from the loading dock to the elevator) over the weekend, and 2 days later my dad tells us about the C suite exec who got his panties in a twist that my dad had a nicer desk. His boss shut it down by saying ‘because he’s the head of design and built it himself, also if you want non-standard furniture you’re allowed to bring it in’. The furniture that was in the exec’s offices was really nice, so no one had bothered buying anything different for themselves, so I think part of this guy’s issue was that the furniture was different.

  111. Dating for envelopes*

    We mail checks out daily in my department and each person could go through a dozen fed ex envelopes a day easily. Management decided we were hording too many envelopes so they started rationing them and we were given 4 to 6 at a time unless we had immediate need which slowed things down considerable as we had to use all 6 and then come back for 6 more etc. One person in charge of the envelopes had a crush on one person in our department so as part of their wooing they brought them a box of envelopes (our person went through 20+ a day so not unusual.) Pretty soon this person had a few boxes stockpiled and everyone was taking from them because they couldn’t use all of them. When our coworker hinted that they didn’t need any for a while everyone told them to hush and flirt a bit more as we all needed envelopes! It was so ridiculous but continued for months.

      1. Dating for envelopes*

        Yup they are free but apparently we were being greedy with what we were keeping at our desk.

  112. Belladonna*

    At my current company pre-Covid, they don’t stock kleenex in the supply closet. When asked about it, we were told that the company was going through too much (it was cold and flu season). When we needed kleenex, we were supposed to get one from the communal boxes spread about the office. Oh ok, I’ll just hold my sneeze in until I walk the 20 feet to the box!

    1. Terrible as the Dawn*

      We had an admin a couple of years back that got touchy about ordering a new case of tissues when we were running low. “There’s a couple of boxes left in the supply closet!” Okay, but it’s cold and flu season and you know we’re going to go through those before you do your next order! She relented and ordered a new case, but kept it under her desk instead of putting it in the supply closet–so that she could track who was using the most tissues, I guess?

      1. Belladonna*

        I was really tempted to just use the box on the admin’s desk. I figured after she was sneezed on a few times, she’d relent!

  113. quill*

    I’ve been guilty of hoarding sheet protectors and plastic folders… in my defense, I was the only one who dealt with legal documents that absolutely should not have gotten wrinkled!

    Also, someone always hoards the really smooth gel pens.

  114. AnotherSarah*

    Not an office supply per se, but a place I worked had a budget line for a certain type of soda, which was stocked in the fridge, but which was only for the Executive Director. It drove me mad that soda was basically an office supply, but only for one person. Bring your own damn soda.

  115. Staja*

    When I worked at the toilet paper mines, I used to have them order me boxes of Paper-mate Profile pens in purple, which I would lock in my desk. I hated using the cheapo pens they bought for the rest of the office.

    We also had a gentleman who was loathe to see anything tossed out. When we decided to clean out the supply shelves, there was a kitchen bag full of rotten rubber bands, and we needed to cut them, so they didn’t make their way back into the building.

    I did always like when our TP and garbage liner reps came in, though! 4 years later and I am just finishing the last of my sample contractor bags and I have an industrial roll paper towel dispenser in my garage workshop!

    1. PhyllisB*

      When I was a teenager, my grandparents had a friend who worked at a paper mill. He brought them one of the spools of toilet paper that individual rolls were spun into. (I know this is not proper lingo, but you know what I mean,) That roll was HUGE!! They set it by the toilet and everyone who came to the house was like ???!!! They didn’t have to buy TP for years.

  116. Tape Dispenser*

    Not drama, but a slightly humorous anecdote. I was cleaning out one of our supply cabinets, and there was a very old looking tape dispenser box. At the time, I didn’t have a tape dispenser at my desk, so I excited opened the box to find…cassette tapes.

    The box itself was a tape dispenser!

  117. Victoria, Please*

    I work in higher education, in an office that does a lot of training around campus. We still have stacks and stacks and stacks of decorative paper from 25 years ago because we used to put out flyers instead of sending emails period. Before the pandemic I called the director of the University Makerspace and said come and get a bunch of stuff. She was thrilled. And we still have bushels!

  118. Caboose*

    I did take office supplies from a former job, but I did ask first! I found a bunch of pretty powerful magnets (for nametags that our retail locations no longer used) in a filing cabinet, and I’ve been very pleased with them for various crafting and home improvement projects.

  119. SocialLerker*

    I have worked at several non-profits that tried to squeeze their budgets by not buying office supplies. One time myself and the temp receptionist couldn’t find pens or notebooks. When we dug deep in a supply closet we found some nice ones engraved with the agency logo. Got yelled at for “using the board of directors’ pens”! When we asked were to find the supplies we needed, we were told “I don’t know, where do you keep pens and paper at your house?” Needless to say, I only stayed at that job for 3 months.

  120. AKchic*

    Every place I’ve worked at has been extremely cheap about pens for the admin staff. I am picky about my pens. I have nerve damage and can’t feel my hands, so at the very least, I like a slightly thicker pen with a grip so I’m not dropping my pen as easily. I also love color. Good days mean I can use the colorful pen packs (the Pilot G-2’s). Bad days mean I need something thicker or maybe I just can’t write at all because my hand has stopped gripping completely and I need something different (like the Y shaped pen that lets you rest a finger on it while writing, for example).

    Eventually, staff and bosses take notice of my pen collection. I don’t keep cheap pens in my office because if I can’t use them myself, I don’t want to risk accidentally grabbing it to take notes (and my dumb self would). So, eventually, a tech or boss will “borrow” or “procure” one of my pens for personal use. Meh, whatever. I have hundreds. Until I see that the supervisor specifically orders the same pens for him/herself for the office, but refuses to buy any pens for the staff “until we use up the 50 pens still in the supply cupboard”. The same 50 broken pens that have been in the cupboard since the Reagan administration and have no usable ink and everyone knows it, which is why they aren’t being used.

    At this point, office supplies are a sign.

  121. Ann Onymous*

    I used to work in a small (6 person) office at a large state university. Part of my job was ordering supplies for our office. This was done through a centralized university purchasing department that required a reason for all requests (no matter how small the dollar amount)- and requests frequently got rejected for not having detailed enough reasons. It was crazy having to keep explaining why our office needed printer paper or pens or other basic stuff. I can’t imagine they were catching enough wasteful purchases to justify paying someone to scrutinize things so closely.

  122. House Tyrell*

    My whole institution is undergoing a massive reorg AND moving buildings across town in 2 years. They won’t buy anything new for the buildings the currently exist because of this. You have senior people asking random junior staff to clean out their offices because they don’t know who to go to anymore, there is supplies hoarding, there is a whole system for facilities to pick up furniture and supplies not being used by the departments that changes offices and cataloging it all for other departments to request or pick up from the basement OR they try to connect it to who had the office before but has moved offices since the reorg/reentry to in person work after covid. But everyone has different hybrid schedules so it’s almost impossible to catch when someone is in person now and there are many people still full time remote. There are three different buildings along two blocks in a major city so sometimes you see facilities pushing dollies with filing cabinets or boxes of tape across the street. If something breaks it won’t be replaced. My office has a pile of stuff we don’t need stacked in a corner awaiting pick up. People who started in person sooner went into other offices and stole their supplies before they came in person. It’s madness.

  123. Terrible as the Dawn*

    I worked retail for a hellishly long time (I am not well suited for retail). Sometime in my first few years, I worked under a Very Spiteful Manager who was, among her other duties, responsible for the store supply budget. This budget was meant to cover such luxuries as printer supplies, toilet paper, and paper towels. We were CONSTANTLY running out of these things, which caused all sorts of problems in a big box retail environment. She would say there was no money left in that month’s supply budget when we told her we’d run low, and that we needed to wait. Maybe we should bring paper products for the store’s bathroom from home? BYO hand soap? I’m sure customers really loved having to follow their salesperson around to different registers until they found one with enough toner to print an order.

    Fast forward a couple of years, and I was in a position now responsible for store supply orders. Not only did I have enough in the monthly budget for toner, paper, and bathroom supplies, but I was also miraculously able to afford new uniform shirts for employees at their anniversary dates (a perk advertised in the employee handbook). I never figured out what she’d been spending all the supply budget on.

  124. Judy Seagram*

    Many years ago I’d worked in an organization that was reasonably functional, but the conference room was half full of boxes holding ancient documents that had since been digitized. I asked if we could throw the boxes away, so the conference room could be more comfortable. Oh, no! We needed to save them… in case there were ever a power outage… and we needed to access them. Because, of course, if the power goes out, we’re going to go into the conference room and start cracking open boxes of un-indexed documents in order to sort through them for bits of non-critical data? Instead of, say, waiting for the power to come back on?

    I moved to another job. The place seemed better organized and more dynamic. Yay! The conference room held chairs and not boxes!

    One day I was working at our service desk and opened a drawer. It was full, FULL, of broken staplers. Um, why do we have all these staplers, I asked my supervisor? So we can get them repaired someday, she said. By who, I thought? The Stapler Repairman? Over the next few months I threw away one broken stapler at a time and nobody noticed or cared.

    That job had its issues, but it was a good fit for me. I was happy there.

    I figure that every organization has some way that it’s crazy, a metaphorical drawer of broken staplers. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for you to find it, and whether it’s something you can tolerate, or even better, laugh at.

    1. D'Euly*

      And the day after you threw out the last one, the Stapler Repairman stopped by the office on his annual visit…

    2. OyHiOh*

      Indeed, I have a tower of defunct desktop computers sitting in the corner of my office right now. I’ve been trying to get my boss to let me donate them to the local electronics recycler but he’s loathe to give up equipment that “could” be useful.

      Dude! One tower doesn’t even turn on and another was severely canibalized at some point. Give them up!

    3. Serin*

      I love that! The Drawer of Broken Staplers is like a specialized, work-specific version of Captain Awkward’s Broken Stair.

      1. Judy Seagram*

        Yesssss! I’d hit “post” too quickly, but that was the point I was trying to make. Every workplace has it’s Crazy. It’s just a matter of how big it is, how hidden, and how long it takes you to find it. If it’s small and benign, and takes awhile to see, then you’re good. If it’s huge, or everyone complains about it, or sees it but refuses to acknowledge it, then it’s time to brush off the resume.

  125. Buni*

    As the buys-supplies person for my little office, can I personally suggest stringing up people who take the last Thing and don’t tell me? Not counting myself there are only 3 supply-using people here, so there is a 1:3 chance that the person whingeing about us being out of something will be the person who took the last one and didn’t say, or at the very least will say something like “Oh yeah, I noticed we were low last time I looked….”. They will also walk past the cupboard itself to ask me if we have any Thing.

    My best supply experience was when I worked for a school that decided to change the style of all the kids’ notebooks, and gave free rein on the walk-in room of the old ones. A4, A5, lined, plain, half-lined-half-plain, maths grids – I went a bit mad….

  126. OyHiOh*

    One of my job duties is ordering office supplies. No real drama, more of an amusement: I and the big boss work in an office suite. The rest of the organization works “remote” from home offices across our region. We have business accounts for ordering supplies set up through several on-line retailers. Everyone was informed how to set up their own access to these accounts and as far as I can tell, everyone did follow directions. However, over the course of the past year my job duty regarding office supplies has gradually morphed from approving their orders to *making* their orders. Every couple weeks I’ll get an email that starts with “Oy, can you order X and Y for me???” and frequently accompanied by links to the exact thing they want (I appreciate links, takes all the guess work out). In the interest of efficiency, I then go around to everyone else and see what they need.

    Then there’s the fun of shipping addresses. In our rural part of the US, PO Boxes are relatively common. Amazon, in particular, is weird about post office boxes. Some days, I can ship anything and everything to a p.o. Other days, Amazon will refuse to ship a box of staples to a p.o. Playing “which address will this retailer reject today” is about as close to office supply drama as I get, thankfully. I have a list of each person’s preferred pens, we’ve settled on printer paper everyone likes, the only drama is shipping addresses and the occasional supply chain delay.

    1. e271828*

      Talk to your PO—there is a workaround where you can specify the post office’s street address and box number (“Suite NNN”). It may still work, although Amazon has been moving to having their own vehicles deliver things and thus it’s not just rerouting things internally by the post office now.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      That PO Box thing is a PITA. Some places (lots (??) of rural places, IDK) the USPS does not deliver to your house and your PO Box is your only mailing address where you receive mail.

  127. Abogado Avocado*

    This is not exactly an office supply story, but it kind of is. . .

    I worked in a legal aid office where the kitchen had a full set of silverware, but no forks, which was both odd and inconvenient, so I bought an inexpensive package of metal forks at IKEA and placed them in the appropriate slot in the kitchen silverware drawer. Which caused the office manager to walk into my office, close the door and ask, accusingly, “Are you the person who brought the forks?!” When I admitted that, yes, I had brought the forks, she said, darkly, “You know, the interns take them. That’s why we can’t have forks.” Feeling as if I had fallen down the rabbit hole with Alice, I asked what she wanted to do. “There’s nothing we can do,” she said. “All we can do is wait until they disappear again.”

    Which they didn’t. Maybe we got a better class of intern or maybe the IKEA forks weren’t to their liking. In any case, the forks stayed and may be there to this day for all I know.

    1. Abogado Avocado*

      We ran out of Post-It notes and I asked the office manager if she could order more. No, she said, I’d have to wait until she went to off-site storage because there were additional supplies out there. Fine. She went to off-site storage, we got more Post-It notes, and I was happy.

      Several years later, I was in a leadership role and, so that new stuff could fit, had to consolidate or clean out off-site storage. Where I found multiple large boxes of office supplies that had been purchased 10 years earlier. Why, I asked, did we have so many office supplies in storage? It seemed that, long before I joined the place, we had had a grant that had to be spent before the grant term ended and the office manager decided to use up the grant on office supplies. Of course, off-site storage was unheated (the office was in the deep southwest) and had a mice problem, which meant a lot of these bulk supplies were yellowed, crumbling, studded with mouse turds, or all three. And we had boxes and boxes of obsolete supplies (think floppy discs and dot matrix printer paper). It taught me that some things need to be bought as needed and not in such bulk that the bulk has to be stored off-site.

      1. Lunch Ghost*

        When I was a kid, we had a couple pairs of long-handled, short-bladed scissors in the craft drawer that I found out years later were surgical scissors. My mom worked for a government-run hospital and her department director always bought a bunch of scissors at the end of the year to use up the budget, so they wouldn’t be under budget and get the budget decreased for the next year. This meant they had way more scissors than they needed, but scissors weren’t going to expire or stop working, and the director was fine with people taking them for personal use.

    3. Duck the Pens*

      You are lucky. I think I have spent upwards of $100 on miscellaneous forks and spoons (thrift store, Big Lots, Dollar Tree, etc) for the work kitchenette and people KEPT. STEALING. THEM.

      The last batch I found near a dumpster (I sanitized them, they’re metal), and hilariously, those haven’t walked off. Tbf, my building has gone from 65 people when I started there to 22. Maybe the fork thieves retired?

    5. PJ86*

      “There’s nothing we can do… All we can do is wait until they disappear again.”

      It sounds like the beginning of an urban fantasy novel.

  128. JustMyImagination*

    At former company, there was a specific size/type of printable label that we always needed and they never ordered enough of so you would have to ask everyone if they had extra or use the scraps of previously printed on sheets to try and get by. When they laid the whole building off, I took a whole box of 50 sheets of labels (100 labels per sheet)! I still have them over a decade later. Nobody needs that many labels in real life but I chuckle every time I see the box.

  129. Victoria J*

    I have a thankfully very ex manager who 15+ years later I still refer to as Mr Evil.
    These are not the worst things about him by a LONG way – but they are the stationery related things.

    When I first met him I was working at another branch of the same charitable organisation that had just been moved under his management. I ended up getting very reluctantly moved to the branch at which he lurked. He was one step up from the managers running the individual branches.

    My first day there was also the first day for the new manager of his branch. She did my induction but could not give me a pen or a notepad (definitely needed for my job and supplied by the organisation) because he had gone on holiday that week and had taken the only key to the stationery cupboard.

    She lasted about a week as manager before going back to a lower level because essentially everything else was on the same level of promoting her to manager but not allowing her the key to the stationery cupboard.

    He also had to be the most important person, and needed this to be made very clear at all times. He would only by a single printer for the office which we all had to share. So if you were printing on headed paper you had to shout out and make sure no one else printed on it before you could. But he couldn’t be disturbed and lurked in his room with the door shut. He would yell at people if they disturbed him. And yell at people if he printed his stuff over their headed paper.

    I still hate that man (more because he made me cry the first time I met him, screamed at me when I left, and tried to cost me the job I left to take than any of this). He ran at least 3 good voluntary organisations into the ground before he got stuck somewhere at a low enough level he couldn’t do too much damage.

    1. FreakInTheExcelSheets*

      As an aside for anyone dealing with similar printer woes around special paper – most printers with multiple trays have a ‘manual’ paper feed, even if they’re pretty basic. So if paper source/tray 1 is letter, 2 is legal… there is sometimes a tray 3. Normally it’s something that folds out to let you put in your paper, and it can’t start printing until paper is there, so you set up your print job for that tray and then go over and put in your paper. Also as a bonus if there are other tasks in the queue none of them are assigned to that tray so they won’t use your paper.

  130. it_guy*

    At one company the supply person ordered a million paper clips. BECAUSE SHE COULD! She wanted to see what a million paperclips looked like.

    It was years before they ordered more.

      2. Zelda*

        Well, a paper clip is the standard explanation of a gram for USian chemistry students just getting the hang of the metric system. So a thousand paper clips is about a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds. A million is a thousand thousand, so a million paper clips is a thousand kilos, i.e. one metric ton, just a bit over a US ton.

        What it looks like would be another Fermi question; I’d want to measure a box of 100 to make sure I was off to the right start. But what it would feel like is, well, a ton. Lift with your legs and not your backs, kids.

  131. LunaLena*

    Oh my, did the person in the second story work at Unseen University? Cuz that’s exactly what Ridcully did in Hogfather, until they found out that the reason no one could produce a pencil stub short enough to warrant a new pencil because the Eater of Pencils was devouring them.

      1. kicking-k*

        I’m thinking the comment above, about newsrooms being very cheap when it comes to supplies, may hold the answer! He was a journalist when he was young.

    2. TiffIf*

      I was literally listening to that part of Hogfather two days ago!

      “Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated “proper financial control” with the counting of paper clips. Even senior wizards had to produce a pencil stub to him before they were allowed a new one out of the locked cupboard below his desk. Since of course hardly anyone retained a half-used pencil, the wizards had been reduced to sneaking out and buying new ones with their own money.”

  132. Res Admin*

    Many years ago (like 30+), I was working a bookkeeping/accounting type job for an office that did billing and collections. My work involved posting payments received for multiple accounts with multiple sub accounts and these payments had to be logged individually–as in a lot of small charges for $1 or $5 as well as charges for a few $100. The remittances, however, were often for well over $100,000. The rule was that I had to run an adding machine tape twice for each account after posting (once forward and once back for both the charges and the remittances) and these had to be enclosed with the deposit (why, yes, I collected the payments from the lock box, posted them, and took them to the bank…not an audit issue at all!).

    I could not save or close the software or move to another account until I had those tapes. Transactions could not be edited after the fact and closing the software (or even a power glitch) would lose all of the work performed.

    I should also note that I was the only person in the office performing this function and the numbers posted each week were a HUGE deal.

    I came in early one morning (I usually tried to get started around 4am to avoid interruptions), finished posting about $350,000 worth of payments around 8:30am–and discovered that there was no tape in my adding machine. And none to be found in the office. Turns out, the secretary forgot to order any, everyone ran out, and the big boss’s assistant needed some for a meeting and I had the only remaining tape in the office.

    I may have pitched a bit of a hissy fit… I left that job not long after. Worst job I have ever had, hands down.

  133. Nicotena*

    Ugh I remember these dramas – I’d forgotten, in the wake of being from-home so long. There’s gotta some psychological thing at play when you’re trapped in the cube hell all day, and you’re one tiny perk is like, the free donuts or whatever, and then something happens to change the status quo – it’s so irrationally upsetting!! It makes no sense!! Someone here compared it to being a zoo animal in a cage or something, that’s how it feels, like I’m just pacing at the bars waiting for feeding time.

    1. Serin*

      I have a theory that it taps into the sibling part of the brain that just can’t endure it if any of your peers get more or better than you.

  134. Purple Penny*

    I work several days a week in a mildly dysfunctional warehouse set-up, where pens, pencils, Sharpies, staplers, scissors, you name it, go missing the moment they’re set out on a bench. Literally, they just vanish if you turn your back for a second and no one seems to know where they go (though my pet theory is that the rats are running a stationery store).

    Apparently, I am the only person who has figured out that the simplest thing is to keep the things I need most in the pockets of my fleece (pen, pencil, Sharpie, scissors). Surprisingly, rather than becoming the go-to person when anyone needs a pen or scissors in a hurry, my habit is regarded as some sort of eccentricity. Possibly because my ballpoint has a very distinctive profile and contains purple ink, I use a mechanical pencil which seems to baffle everyone as a concept, and my scissors are very, very orange and have my name on the handle. :-)

  135. Mockingjay*

    Post-It Notes.

    In the late 80s, my company went through Chapter 11 reorganization. This was the era of leveraged buyouts and the company had bought several unprofitable units that they then had to unload when they couldn’t turn them around. During the process, all assets – even my profitable division’s – were frozen while the bankruptcy court and the company negotiated.

    Which meant we had to stop ordering office supplies, since we couldn’t write checks to pay vendors.

    Post-It Notes became the new Gold Rush. Everyone wanted them; everyone hid and hoarded them. People took them home, locked them in drawers and hid duplicate keys. It was comically crazy. We were short on other supplies too (mostly copier paper and ink), but Post-It Notes became the thing we fixated on during the reorg.

  136. Slinky*

    This may be a little sideways, but I still find it amusing. When I started my current job, I inherited my predecessor’s desk. It had largely been cleaned out, but they left office supplies, as those may be useful to the next person. I found a gigantic stack of tiny, hotel-branded notepads. Apparently, every time this person had stayed in a hotel, they always took the notepad from the room and squirreled it away in their desk at work, I guess preparing for a coming notebook shortage. There was more there than any human would ever need. I never used them and, when moving offices, left them behind.

  137. MechanicalPencil*

    In my first job post-college, my desk chair broke. It would cant to the side. I spoke with facilities, and they said no replacements. But they managed to find this chair in the basement that smelled incredibly musty and must have been older than me. Or I could keep the tilted chair. No other options. And the icing on the cake was that the chair was a bit rusty, so any time I swiveled, it sounded like I was breaking wind. That wasn’t at all mortifying. Mind you, the company was absolutely not hurting for money. At all. I think they could have sprung for a new chair just fine.

  138. Irish girl*

    Dry Erase markers…. people hoard those and steal from conference rooms because no one orders more when they dry out. When we started coming back, people were hunting around the different floor conference rooms and supply closets to find some without trying to find someone to order them…. I just bought my own and dont let anyone use them.

  139. Office Supply Empress*

    A colleague asked me to order highlighters for her team, didn’t specify a certain type. So, I ordered a typical variety pack. Not only was I apparently only supposed to order only yellow, had to be a certain shade of yellow. So she made me process a return for the variety pack that cost a whopping $2. Now with this group I always make them send screenshots of what they want after several small returns/exchanges like this one.

    1. OyHiOh*

      I appreciate links so much! Once in awhile, one of my colleagues needs drafting supplies. When I get the please order email, it includes a list of items, followed by links on the oddities. I had no idea there were specialty pens for drafting, much less that a person would need B specific pen rather than choices A or C. Links save me so much time!

  140. Dasein9*

    I ordered supplies for my department in a library at a state university. Got in trouble because our supply budget was so much higher than any other department’s. A higher-up who just didn’t understand how things worked commented snarkily on the fact that I left work one day with a pencil still behind my ear.

    So I started buying my own pencils, a different color from the ones I purchased for the department.

    (Why was our spending so high? Because we had to buy the security strips for the books, which in those days were hundreds of dollars per box.)

  141. Jack Straw*

    I used to teach summer camps at a local university for middle and high school students, and the camps were often of an academic nature (leadership, debate, etc.). We were assigned a classroom for the week as our home base that was also used for evening classes. Because they were somewhat academic, I used the whiteboard pretty often, always making sure to erase our writing at the end of the day so it wouldn’t be in the way of the evening class.

    One summer, the university installed a clear box mounted to the wall with a key lock–for their whiteboard markers and erasers. Every prof had a key to unlock their markers for classes and was disciplined for not relocking the markers at the end of class. There were literally people who would go around and check the status of the markers. I found this out because I’d brought my own and left them on the tray overnight. Whoever taught that evening pulled my markers and hid them so they wouldn’t get in trouble.

  142. The Real Persephone Mongoose*

    At my first Big Girl job, only Leads or above were allowed to get supplies (pens, highlighters etc) for their group. There was an Admin who managed everything for the Director in charge of all the groups and she managed the supplies. Which were kept in a locked room. Up to this point, it’s fairly normal. Not a free for all to get the supplies. A process. Bit rigid but a process. Except that to get a new pen, pencil or highlighter, you were required to turn in the old one to prove it was used up!!! No mechanical pencils were allowed for anyone lower than a Lead. The rank and file got regular pencils and had to return their stubs to get a new one. Leads got ONE stick of lead at a time for mechanical pencils. Highlighters had to be proved to be completely dead before getting a new one. No Post-Its were allowed to be requested. One notepad at a time. Everything was doled out in the smallest possible amount. When I moved to a new team in a different building, I found out that this was NOT the norm for the company. The rest of the company had a supply closet and you just took what you needed. It’s been 28 years since I left that group. The madness of it all still makes me laugh.

  143. Panicked*

    I used to work for Child Protective Services and we would often need hygiene items, clothing, shoes, etc… for our children in care. (Many came with absolutely nothing.) We relied heavily on donations to keep the room stocked and occasionally we would get really fantastic/expensive/name-brand products. The room where we kept all of these supplies was near the admin assistant’s desk. She had no control over what we took, but she felt that she had the right to judge and comment on it. If you took the “good” stuff, she would often say “Are you SURE that kid needs THAT one? Wouldn’t this generic be better for them?”

    One day, I entered the room with one of my kids so they could pick out what they wanted. This kid was incredible; funny, quick-witted, and had zero filter. The admin assistant was away from our desk when we went in, but was there when we were leaving. She didn’t see him at first, just me with the supplies. She started in on the “does the kid deserve the name brand” line and this kid pops out from behind me and says “I don’t know. Am I worth it? Does this poor kid DESERVE the good stuff? What do you think, Panicked?” The admin turned eleven shades of red and never commented on anything that we chose again.

    3. acmx*

      Good for him!

      But who did the admin think would deserve the good stuff? Obviously, the kid that needs hygiene supplies from CPS deserves the good stuff.

  144. Lizzie*

    My boss. While we have a decent supply of supplies in our mailroom, some things are not stocked and have to be ordered. Which isn’t a problem. I used to do a quarterly filing, for which I had to burn something like 20-25 CDs each time. Those had to be ordered, as well as the printer labels for them. Because I was a peon at the time, my boss had to sign off on the requisition. To make things easier, i’d order enough for a year’s worth of filings, and he would always question WHY i was ordering so many. Um because we need them? and its MUCH easier to just order once a year than have to remember to do it every time we do this filing!

  145. infopubs*

    I volunteered in the IT dept for Red Cross disaster relief operations. On one job, my table was right next to the Job Director, Dave, who was notoriously demanding and lacking a sense of humor. He had a chair for himself, and another for visitors. We were short on chairs for that operation, so the visitor chair kept disappearing when Dave wasn’t looking. Dave demanded that I solve this problem. I gently reminded him that I was Technology, not Facilities. “So use technology to solve this problem!” Back in the warehouse, I found a really filthy, ratty, frayed hunk of rope, and tied the second chair to the legs of Dave’s table. When Dave asked why there was an ugly line around his chair, I explained to him that rope is one of the oldest forms of technology, allowing ancient empires to flourish (they hauled stones for the Pyramids with rope!) and the oceans to be conquered (hoist the mainsail, Vasco de Gama!) This particular rope had the added benefit of being too gross (covered with nanoparticles!) to want to touch to untie it, so his chair was secure. Problem solved. Dave laughed, the chair remained, and I was able to do my job in peace.

  146. AreYouBeingSeriousRightNow*

    I worked at an office where people were awful about just picking up your pen and walking away with it. And some people CHEWED on the pens- to where it looked like we had a dog in the office using pens as toys. So, I bought my own purple felt tip pens. The box stayed locked in my desk. This way, I could know for sure which pen was my pen, never risk picking up a pen that had been in someone’s mouth and be able to remind people walking away from my desk that “Excuse me, that’s my pen. Could I have it back, please?” I hated to be weird about it but I just couldn’t stomach the idea of using a pen that could have been in someone’s mouth.

  147. Iced Mocha Latte*

    Nothing dramatic, but maybe weird.

    My department was moved to a different building when we came back to the office a few months ago. I went to the kitchen and used some of the artificial sweetener that was on the counter. It looked a little off-color when I dumped it in my cottage cheese, but it tasted fine so I ate it. I used it a few times after that. A couple weeks later I decided to go looking through the kitchen cabinets to see where stuff is and noticed two huge boxes of the sweetener. I was going to fill the container on the counter and happened to check the expiration dates–they’d expired SIX YEARS ago. I threw them in the garbage can. I went down later to get water, and someone had fished them out of the garbage and put them back in the cabinet. I then wrote on them with a Sharpie, indicating they’re six years expired, and tossed them again. Came down again later and it was clear someone had again attempted to take them out of the garbage and only put them back in after seeing my note.

    I get not wanting to waste supplies, but at least maybe look to see why someone might throw something away.

    1. JustaTech*

      Several years ago I went into our lunchroom right after the soda machine guy had come to re-fill the soda machine. And what do I find but that he has filled the compost bin (the compost bin!) with *full* cans of soda.
      Soda doesn’t go in the compost bin so I’m fishing it all out (thankfully the bin had been empty so nothing was gross). As I’m stacking cans on the table (so I can figure out how to get rid of them) a coworker wanders in and says “hey, free soda!” “The soda guy put them in the compost, make sure there’s not some thing wrong with them.”

      Turns out the cans were very slightly expired (a week or two) but as this is technically a “best by” date and not an “expired” date I ended up leaving all the cans out with a note “Free but expired”.

  148. Dark Macadamia*

    This is more drama in the “beautiful sweeping epic” category: My first year of teaching our school got some kind of grant or budget specifically for books – like novels for classroom libraries, not textbooks. Imagine the Scholastic Book Fair except EVERYTHING IS FREE. At the time I shared a tiny resource room with another teacher and we literally made ourselves a bookshelf out of empty boxes and filled it with books two rows deep.

    The next year I had my own regular classroom and scavenged throughout the building for a wall’s worth of mismatched bookcases. We had a second shipment of BOOKS (not as many, still a TON) and I was literally roaming the halls like Book Santa making sure every homeroom class had a decent selection of books. There were at least 2 boxes of unclaimed books in the storage room because people ran out of space/interest before we ran out of books.

    On the petty end, one of the other English teachers later complained about how “it wasn’t fair” that I had so many more books than her and that she didn’t have as much space as I did for them. My classroom library was my first and only priority in setting up my classroom, she had like… boxes of folders that she wasn’t even using on her shelves. I told her several times that there were extra books in storage and she was welcome to claim them, but no.

  149. Kelly White*

    I once worked at a place where I ordered the basic office supplies. The place I ordered from had a deal- with every order you could buy paperclips for a penny a box.
    Every time I ordered stuff I also ordered 100 boxes of paperclips.

    I worked for a husband and wife and the wife was in on the diabolical plan- we wanted to see how long until the husband’s head exploded. It didn’t take too long, and was actually pretty funny!

  150. LostInTexas*

    At my first job, I was required to do a lot of detailed map work and it was all on paper (This was NOT in 1974…this was 2003). We had to provide our own pens because DrabColor Delivery Corp would not provide them to us. When I finally said, “Hey we really need pens and some colored markers to do this”, it required THREE LEVELS of management approval for $8.99 of supplies. Additionally in an open office (no cubicles, only long counters) layout, the company did not provide enough chairs for all the work stations. People were writing their names on the chairs and EXTREMELY territorial of them. Management claimed that “you shouldn’t need an assigned chair, since your work isn’t primarily done sitting at your desk”. Yes, I had to go talk to people for 1-2 hours per day, but when writing up reports I still would like to be able to SIT DOWN.

  151. Trvh*

    I work backstage in a large theatre, usually in the wardrobe department.

    Every 6 months or so, the upstairs office staff will get new chairs, and put their old ones on the loading dock either for the stagehands, or for disposal. The hands will often snag all the good ones for the dock area, so I then sneak up there when they’re busy, grab one or two, then roll them down to the wardrobe room.

    It’s amazing how much the kind of chair matters when you are sitting, sewing, for hours. If I don’t label the chairs, someone will sneak in and take them away again. People lose sleep over this stuff. I just go grab another one.

    1. Gumby*

      Every 6 months or so, the upstairs office staff will get new chairs

      I’m sorry… what? Every 6 months!?!?! I haven’t ever worked in a “buy your own coffee” place but not even the most generous of my employees would replace chairs twice a year! (I did once work somewhere that the entire staff had Aeron chairs by default. So that was nice.)

      1. JustaTech*

        Reading all these I realized that I’ve had the same least-fancy Aeron chair for 10 years and it’s still great.

        Least-fancy meaning the seat is the mesh stuff but the back is stiff plastic.

  152. Nancy Drew Lives!*

    Sputtering, angry, red-faced employee came in to yell about the sin our admin had committed by buying a fancy coffee blend instead of SINGLE ORIGIN beans.

  153. Beth*

    I have a happy pre-pandemic story about supplies — specifically, pens.

    My wife works in a very large branch of the county library. They pretty much bleed pens — in the Olde Tymes before the plague, lots of foot traffic and lots of students of many ages meant that pens just melted away.

    Meanwhile, I was attending industry conferences once or twice a year, the kind that are held in big hotel complexes with a huge room full of vendors with tons of branded swag — USB drives, golf tees, candy, sticky note pads, and lots and lots of pens — often very fancy upscale pens, since it’s an upscale industry: pens with cushy grips, pens with a phone stylus at one end, pens with mini-flashlights.

    I usually collected a handful of nice pens for myself. But I eventually took to waiting until late on the last day of each conference, and then making the rounds of the entire room. I didn’t just help myself — I would ask the various vendors if they would be willing to give me “a few extras”, and tell them exactly what I wanted the pens for. Most of them were delighted! I’d be handed a half dozen, or a fistful, or be offered an entire box! Sometimes they’d tell me that the more pens I took, the fewer they needed to take back with them. I’d end up trying to fit several dozen pens into my suitcase.

    I think the library is still using pens from my last haul, even though it’s been over two years since my last in-person conference.

    1. DeweyDecibal*

      This is amazing! We used to ask any vendor who came into the library of they’d be willing to donate branded pens- most were more than happy for the advertising and we had enough pens for the students.

  154. BlueBelle*

    This isn’t office supplies but office furniture. When my chair broke I contacted the facilities guy and asked about a chair. He came and got me and took me to a huge warehouse at the back of the building. He asked me what my title and level was and took me to a section and said you can pick from any of these chairs. I pointed to one and he said “no, that is for the next level up.” LOL.
    Chairs, file cabinets, the height of cube walls were all labeled for your level. How dare you think you can have a chair with a high back if you are only a manager those are for directors! Faux leather was for VPs.

  155. Cookies For Breakfast*

    Just remembered some more! Got lots of time for this on a sick day.

    1) My first day on the job, my then manager handed me a laptop charger with an extension to make the cable longer. At the time, this was a big deal, because there were fewer chargers than employees, and bizarrely, the company wasn’t buying more. She jokingly suggested she had to call in favours to get me one, and I should not let it out of my sight. I took her to heart, and, many years later, still guard the same charger (they now provide them to everyone, but they all come with very short cables, so I still prefer that one!)

    2) The company used to provide laptop sleeves, but doesn’t anymore. One time, coming back from holiday, I couldn’t find my laptop at the office. Turns out it was because someone had removed the sleeve, pocketed it, and put the sleeveless laptop back on a shelf too high for me to reach. I used to travel for work and really needed a sleeve; the only one IT could find for me was spare because the zip was broken and the fabric had seen better days. Better than nothing, so I used it for years. I’d have loved to spot my sleeve in the office and get it back, but they all looked the same, so I never found out who took it.

  156. Anvi*

    Our procurement person decided a few years ago that we were using too many tissues, so she locked it up in her desk and you had to go an ask her for a box, instead of going to the supply closet where it had always been. I had bad allergies that year, and went through a box in a week and then went back and asked for another one and she said no, because I wasn’t using them judiciously enough if I needed more after a week. I told my boss about this weird confrontation and he told her she had to give people to tissue when they ask for it. She escalated it to her boss because she said that usage had gone up dramatically in the past month and she suspected people were stealing it for personal use and that is why she had to lock it up (it was the terrible single-ply tissue they have in all offices. No one was stealing it for personal use, it was just a bad allergy year). This escalated until the CEO and COO of the company had to decide if she was allowed to restrict tissue use. It ended up that she was allowed to lock it up, but she had to give it to people unless she had proof people were taking it home. She then started interrogating people about how much they were using every time someone would go ask for some, so pretty much everyone started bringing it from home instead of dealing with her.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      Ergo, people WERE stealing it because obviously they didn’t NEED it. See? See? Once it was locked up people didn’t use it anymore.
      /sarcasm-indignancy.

    3. Essess*

      Seems like this interrogation of people’s use of the tissues would be overstepping into demanding private medical information (as to whether they were suffering from allergies vs colds vs whatever to fit with her perceived allowed amount of tissues each day)

  157. CrazySauce*

    I worked at a company where one of the co-CEOs hated the look of clutter, so Post-It Notes were not supplied and were technically prohibited. Whenever I would hire someone new, I would have to tell them “Post-It Notes are prohibited” as I handed them a stack of Post-Its from my private stash. All the managers did the same thing. Also, every person was given a bulletin board and ten clear push pins. There was a dissident sect that claimed that eleven clear push pins were allowed so long as one was used to pin up a required notice (I can’t remember what it was).

    2. just passing through*

      I don’t think I could accomplish anything at all in an office where all clutter was forbidden. I do regularly make a sweep of my desk, but still, I can’t work without something to doodle on, something to tie knots in, and something to poke things with. That’s how my brain works. So I always end up with scratch paper, bits of string or leftover cables, and something like a straightened paperclip. If anyone knows a fidget toy that includes these specific functions, please let me know, I will instantly become much tidier.

  158. SlimeKnight*

    Years ago now I worked at a big box store. This was during the financial recession and the store manager thought he could cut costs by ordering small amounts of toilet paper and paper towels at a time. We were getting these at a bulk discount through corporate. Inevitably we would would run out and one of the assistant managers would have to “expense” out the overpriced toilet paper we sold in the store.

  159. SarahKay*

    When I worked retail the store manager was obsessed over how much we spent on pens, and would sometimes refuse to allow the store to order new ones. It did us no good to point out that customers tended to take pens (sometimes on purpose, but often just absent-mindedly); there were still regular memos sent out that boiled down to “Stop using so many pens!”
    Stationary was stored in the cash office, in a cupboard next to the main safe which held, you know, the entire store takings. This was a three-storey department store, 20-odd years ago, so it was a lot of cash. Not many pens, though….

  160. Kyrielle*

    We had a really nice, easy office supply approach in our group – and then our admin position got removed and we were given a co-admin with another team. In another office. I’m not sure how I get office supplies now (I used to just walk over to our admin and ask for whatever-it-was, or take it from the supply cabinet that we don’t have any more, depending on what it was), but in any case, I decided it was easier to buy my own post-its than figure it out.

    To make myself feel better about that, I got decorative/fancy ones. And then I left them locked in the office unused for over a year, thanks to covid.

  161. MissDisplaced*

    Since the Pandemic I’ve been WFH an so have to buy all my own office supplies because we’re not given a stipend for working from home. But I’d still take that tradeoff over my former 2-hour+ daily commute any time!

    —-
    “I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire… ” Milton Waddams

  162. Sammy Furbs*

    My office mostly used those large, clunky, tape-filled adding machines. As I didn’t work in accounting and simply needed a regular old calculator for basic everyday math (this was in the days before smartphones), my boss told me to request one from IT (who, oddly, handled supplies).

    I made my request, and for reasons I still don’t know, a power struggle ensued regarding whether or not I could acquire said calculator. This was brought up at management meetings, emails were sent for ACTUAL WEEKS back and forth discussing the merits of my need for a basic calculator instead of using an old adding machine that was already in the supply closet, etc. It was an absolutely ridiculous overreactive shitshow that I wasn’t even really part of; managers just fired off nasty emails back and forth about it.

    Someone finally brought me a supply catalog so I could pick out my calculator. THEY WERE TEN DOLLARS. TEN. DOLLARS. They must have wasted at least a grand on peoples’ time discussing the calculator purchase. I’m thrilled to say I don’t work there any longer.

    1. LabTechNoMore*

      THEY WERE TEN DOLLARS. TEN. DOLLARS. They must have wasted at least a grand on peoples’ time discussing the calculator purchase.

      I had this moment with a $5/month membership subscription which I needed to do my job. I looped in our CEO and spent DAYS fighting the IT department head over it. Only to find out the whole issue was over $5. I was livid.

  163. foolofgrace*

    This was back in the days when IBM Selectric typewriters used ribbon cartridges. Well, the time came when money was tight, and we had to rewind our typewriter ribbons. I’m sure there were other measures also but this one sticks in my mind.

  164. Nethwen*

    Not really drama, but a funny story about how life experiences inform workplace actions.

    At one job early in my career, I scrounged rubber bands from anywhere I could find them because sometimes we needed rubber bands, but I couldn’t find a stockpile of them. At one point, I made an offhand comment about the lack of rubber bands and my boss said, “We can order a bag.”

    My mind screeched to a halt to process this revelation. My mouth said something sensible like, “That would be helpful. Can that happen in the next order?” My brain scrambled to comprehend that rubber bands were something that were bought. In an abstract way, I knew that rubber bands were available for sale but in my experience, rubber bands and paper clips were the sorts of things that just existed. No one bought them; they were just in the drawer and seemingly multiplied at night when no one was looking. Buying things that you could collect for free would be an excessive extravagance akin to buying the $7/dozen eggs when $1/dozen eggs were available and your weekly food budget is $25.

    After the revelation that not only could one buy a bag of rubber bands, but also that this was an acceptable office expense, I started looking around for other office supplies that I needed that maybe we could buy. Turns out, you can buy almost any office supply you might need to do your job.

    1. anonymouse*

      I feel this. When I started my first job, there were some remnants from my predecessor, so I just went with that. When I ran out of tape and or staplers, I looked for desks of people who’d left. FOR A COUPLE YEARS.
      Dude, grab a box of of staples. OMG. I can do that??

    2. Former Mailroom Clerk*

      When I worked for a mailing place, bulk mailing was a service we offered. Letters would need to be sorted (in zip code order), and then grouped together with rubber bands … apparently the USPS has restrictions about what rubber bands can be used for bulk mail, so we had to make sure those were what was ordered.

    4. Murphy*

      Not work related, but when I moved out on my own I had to face the reality that paper clips and rubber bands were not in fact naturally occurring in drawers and I had to go out and buy them. It was so weird…

      1. just passing through*

        Same. I feel like I’ve spent my entire adult life waiting for Sharpies and AA batteries to spontaneously generate. They do not do this, except apparently in my parents’ junk drawer.

  165. Not Really A Waitress*

    I work for the e-commerce side of largest retailer Wally”s World. In a facility with a 1.5 million square foot footprint plus an addition 1.5 million square foot in levels, each department had to bring their own paper supply to use the one copy machine. And ordering supplies was a nightmare because it got delivered to the same receiving dock as the product we sold so it would just get putaway in the pick mod to sell. So in order to get supplies for your department you had to receive them at home and bring them in…. from file cabinets to pens

  166. AliCat*

    A few years ago, someone decided a genius way to save money at our corporate office was to have the default settings for the color printer be black and white, and double sided. So people would print, realize it was wrong, change the settings and print again…. It took far too long to realize how wasteful this was and change the setting back.

  167. irene adler*

    Small company -with a lab – environment here.

    When funds become extremely tight, our CFO takes action!

    She:
    -placed a moratorium on the purchase of any and all office supplies. “Make do!”, she says.

    -doles out pens – one to a customer. Interrogates those who have recently received a pen. “What happened to it?”, she asks. Cautions folks not to write too much.

    -personally rifles through desk drawers and lab drawers for extra pens or other office supplies. Confiscates whatever she finds (Witnessed this myself.).

    -continues to order the colored pens, markers and Post-its, new folders and the like for her needs. Cuz that’s important!

    We lab folks contemplated writing up our notebooks in blood -not necessarily our own. We do possess the blood drawing equipment in the lab.

  168. Allison*

    I didn’t need a lot of office supplies in my last job, but kept accumulating them because every desk they moved me to would come with a lot of stuff from the last person. Again, didn’t need much apart from a notebook, pens, some post-its and the occasional paperclips, but my boss “borrowed” my stapler, never gave it back, and then asked for it again before realizing he’d taken it and let it to someone else. And then forgot THAT conversation and kept asking for a stapler I didn’t have because he’d already taken it.

  169. Meghan*

    I was just asking myself how much drama I wanted to stir up by requesting the next time we buy small note pads to make sure they are college ruled and not wide ruled. I decided that answer is “no drama” and I would politely request college ruled when the current wide ruled ones run out. Honestly at this point, if I want a special supply I buy it myself and then take them with me if/when I leave.

    I do have a ruler that has gone with me from job to job for the past 8 years, that I use specifically for an aspect of my hotel jobs. It is just a pink, plastic ruler but I would cut someone if they tried to take it from me. They can have the other 4 rulers in my drawer that I made companies purchase in a feeble attempt to replicate my beloved pink ruler (that had apparently been in a drawer in my house for 2 years, oops).

  170. Starchy*

    I used to work in a lab and the company was notorious for holding off on ordering supplies for as long as possible. When I took over a new department, I found out that they had been stashing secret supplies of gloves, tubes etc in the ceiling tiles. You’d have to climb on the counter and push up the tile to get the stash.

    2. Recruited Recruiter*

      This was where my department stashed our masks (we ordered a box in November of 2019, and received a case) when I worked for a hospital. Previously the case had been just taking up space in our supply cabinet. In March 2020, we moved them and our supply of disinfectant to the ceiling. When the ICU ran out of masks, and no more could be ordered, we were heroes when we delivered 11 boxes of masks to them.

  171. Mary*

    Very early on in my career I worked for a sales manager who had this very particular filing system with a specific purple color folder and specific label. Whenever she had a new prospect, I would research them and create a file on them (this was the early 90s so paper files were the norm) The company that made these started producing their purple filing supplies in a slightly different shade of purple. Like the difference was barely noticeable. Not only did she make me call the office supply company to make an official complaint, but she made me scour stores and warehouses in the area to buy up any leftover inventory in the old shade of purple.

  172. Not Tom, Just Petty*

    I am the only one who writes with pencils in my office of 200 people. This was verified/brought to my attention by the office manager in 2012, when she said she’s going to order some for me, because she saw me using them, and did a quick poll and found, yep, just you. They are in the general supply storage. Each year I see a new box of 12 in the supply cabinet. I take one a month. That office manager has been gone for 8 years. So I don’t know if the new person knows why there is one lonely box of pencils in the order once a year.

    1. New Jack Karyn*

      But your pencil supply continues! Life is good.
      When you leave that job, maybe don’t tell the admin it was you with the pencils? Try to find out if boxes of pencils accumulate over time.

  173. Former call centre worker*

    I once started a new job and observed that the person at the next desk, who wasn’t there that day, had aggressively labelled her stapler with her name in large capital letters. I thought it was odd and joked about it – who cares that much about a stapler? Just a few weeks later, I had to take it back, because after experiencing the frustration of having to hunt around for things I needed to use all the time, I’d acquired my own stapler and done exactly the same thing.

  174. LF*

    I once dated someone who worked as a paralegal for a solo lawyer who did not like to spend money on office supplies. He once instructed my then-boyfriend to pick up paperclips off the ground if he happened to see them. Like from parking lots or wherever, presumably.

  175. Queen of the World*

    When I worked for a nonprofit I had to run our supply list past our finance manager. She was very tightfisted and had to approve every purchase, down to the last pen. Post-it notes were frivolous and out of the question. We couldn’t order pens because we could collect them from hotels or other agencies when we had meetings. No notebooks because we could use the backsides of paper from printing that was going to be recycled. You get the idea.
    When she left and our new FM came, I took our supply list to her and was met with a blank stare and told I could order whatever supplies I wanted. I rejoiced and we stocked up on actual supplies. TWO kinds of pens! Post-it notes in DIFFERENT sizes! Pads of paper, not just scrap pads that we got in the mail from other nonprofits hoping to garner donations. All were happy in the kingdom. The day our first supply order came in everyone was crowding around me watching me unload the box like it was Christmas. It was ridiculously happy…..and a little sad really.

  176. Drink Surveys*

    I used to work in an office that was very generous with supplies and more importantly food and drinks. We had granola bars, fruit, pop tarts, oatmeal, pretzels, nuts, etc. As a new college grad, the ability to eat breakfast at work was a huge perk!

    The office admin was a really kind woman who would typically take requests for the grocery order if you asked nicely. So if we had creamy peanut butter but you like crunchy, you could ask and she would buy both going forward. As you can imagine, this quickly gets out of control……

    It all came to a head with the drink fridge. We were ordering no less than 20 different types of soda, 6 different flavors of sparking water, and various powerades and gatorades due to requests people had made over the years. The fridge was impossible to organize logically due to the variety! The admin finally had enough and presented everyone with a survey to reduce the the drink options. We each had 15 points to allocate to drinks. So if you felt strongly about something, you could put all 15 points on your favorite option to try to keep it. The day of the survey, people were running up and down the halls strategizing the best way to ensure they could keep their favorite. In the end, I think we reduced the options in half, but the admin was still taking requests, so I have to imagine the process will have to be repeated again soon.

    1. Anonymous Koala*

      Your admin is really too nice, but I love her solution with the 15 point system. I might have to steal that the next time I have to get a consensus on something.

    2. Drink Surveys pt 2*

      At that same job, we had one filing cabinet that was the food filing cabinet. It’s where the granola bars and packaged snacks lived. When I started, it also had packs of gum. Several varieties because heaven forbid someone not have their preference.

      One day, the gum was gone. A real bummer as it was nice to have a piece of gum after lunch, but seeing as it was a perk I just moved on with my life. Well this was not acceptable to many. Eventually we learned that the reason the gum perk was taken away is because many people, including the CFO, would apparently take entire packs of gum when they left the office. Apparently instead of requesting that people not do that, the COO just removed the gum privilege and we never earned it back.

  177. JLZ VRN*

    Confession: at my first office job, we had an open supply closet that no one seemed to really check or keep inventory on, so I would “borrow” some AA or AAA batteries whenever I needed new ones for my, um, Toys. I didn’t need to buy batteries for nearly 2 years, and no one ever noticed.

    This was at a consulting firm where they billed clients $100/hour for my labor, but my salary was closer to $25/hour before taxes. Since the total value of anything I “borrowed” was a fraction of the profit that my bosses made off of a single hour of my labor, I have never believed there’s anything morally wrong about holding onto small quantities of office supplies for personal use. I’m simply reclaiming some of the surplus-value created by my labor!

  178. anonaccountant*

    Ooof, the supplies person at my office could probably call me out! Between what I prefer from a functional standpoint as well as what fits my color scheme, I don’t think I have any generic supplies. As a compromise, I buy most of my own stuff so she only really has to order refills. I know I’m picky, and I don’t mind purchasing my own stapler if it means I get the exact one I want (a very unusual, out-of-production stapler that I had to get on eBay). I do have my company order refills for the specific metal-bodied pen I use, but they have no issue accommodating requests and I just send her the Amazon link to add to her weekly order. Just being nice about it and asking politely gets you a long way, tbh.

    1. irene adler*

      Yes, when one is nice about these things, one generally gets cooperation.

      I own a stapler- given to my by my dad. Big and sturdy it was. It was something he had from many years ago that was just laying around. He gave me an old box of staples for it too.
      Worked really well too.
      Unfortunately, I can no longer find the size of staple that fits it. So it’s just shelf decor now.

  179. Torvil and Dean*

    I worked in an academic healthcare setting and was in charge of preparing large documents for committee members for review twice a year. I was stapling them at a 45 degree angle, which seemed to be working just fine, but at one of the review meetings, a doctor chastised me in front of the group for not stapling them straight across. I submitted my resignation not too long after that!

  180. Jaid*

    Federal employee here. I’ve been buying my own glue sticks and white out tape for a while.

    What we are sorely lacking now is folders. When we finish our work for the day, closed cases go into a bucket to be reviewed and there’s guidelines on how they are supposed to be assembled. You can’t just rubber band them together and slap a paper on it to notate how much work you closed and what program it’s assigned to. Noooo. You need to put that work in a folder, then a verrry specific sticker on the folder (to notate info on) and then an additional piece of paper to staple to the folder (also to notate work info on).

    Because we’ve been transitioning to working online, products to use for paper work are not being ordered as much, which means I’ve been scrambling for folders and stickers. Yay!

    1. JustaTech*

      We don’t use a lot of folders in my work (we’re more binder people). That is, until mock audit (or real audit) time comes. Then every single document going to the inspectors has to be printed on special yellow paper, then put in a green folder inside of a red folder.

      (There’s a good logic to all of this, but when it’s described it sounds absurd.)

  181. Ivy*

    A former boss had gone to art school and worked as a set designer on Broadway for about 10 years before transitioning into our field, where he’d been for about 15 years when I worked with him. He remained devoted to a very expensive, very specific brand and style of pen typically used in architectural drafting. The rest of us were given cheap bulk ballpoints that were constantly leaking and breaking. He’d flip out if he saw anyone using one of “his” pens and would tell us to use pencils or makers if we were out of working pens instead of taking his. The pens were bought by the company – a VP once complained to me about the expensive pens, and told me my boss had asked for lower quality supplies elsewhere in the budget in order to keep his precious pens.
    FormerBoss had to write a daily end-of-day report and once, upon realizing that none of his pens were left at his desk, refused to let anyone go home until we’d searched all our own workstations and bags and returned all the good pens. Once he got three back we were allowed to leave. I brought pens from home after that, and left 6 months later.

  182. Strategic Priorities*

    Back in the 90s, I worked for an organisation that was extremely paper-heavy – lots of bundles held together with treasury tags for easy of page-flipping. The CEO took terrible offence at the metal-ended variety of these tags. They scratched his desk and That Would Not Do. After a period of vague grumbling, the CEO snapped. He stomped around the entire building with a box, ordered startled staff to hand their tags over to him at finger-p0int, and rummaged through stationary cupboards (of which there were Far Too Many in his view) in case someone had a secret stash. Several people nearly did themselves a mischief trying to suppress their giggles.

    He must have been hell to live with.

    1. Zephy*

      Treasury tags! THAT’S what those fasteners are called!

      I was in the International Baccalaureate program in high school – the final exams have a coversheet for the answer booklet and these documents are held together with what I now know are called treasury tags. We just called them “hookers.”

  183. RussianInTeaxs*

    At my old job we got one of those fancy touch screen machines. They let people test drive them first, they were nice – you can get espresso, latte, hot chocolate, different flavors coffee. Everyone loved them.
    When we got them permanently, most of the functions were disabled, and the only fully functioning machine was left for the executive floor.

  184. Sam*

    I worked for a charity that was obsessive about cost-cutting, and one of the things we were encouraged to do was save and reuse scrap paper. If something was printed on one side of a piece of paper, we were supposed to save it and re-print on the other side for internal use.

    In 2018, I got an internal memo printed on the back of an email printed in 2004. THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND FOUR. That scrap paper was packed up and moved between at 3 different offices.

    1. Sam*

      I also once cleaned out a cupboard (before a move) and found an ink cartridge that expired in the early 1990s. I threw it out and got scolded by the secretary who found it in the garbage and said she’d keep it “just in case”. FOR WHAT PRINTER?

  185. Teach*

    Teachers are over here just jealous that all the rest of you get provided office supplies where you work lol…

  186. nanscatsmama*

    When I first started work, many, many years ago, we were not allowed to buy paper clips. Actually, though that wasn’t unreasonable, we received a lot of paperwork from other departments, so we always had a good supply, it was just a matter of finding which part of the office ended up with all the surplus and grabbing some. All the paperclips we had though were the standard plain metal ones. I remember one group ordered new paperclip holders that happened to come with a few plastic coated paper clips. Our director came unglued when he saw them in circulation, launched an investigation into who purchased these extravagant paper clips and only calmed down a little when he found out what had happened. Oh and we also had to present our eraser stubs in order to get new ones- they were kept under guard by our department secretary.

  187. Ange*

    One time my department was having really bad budget issues, so if you needed to photocopy anything you would have to go to the secretary and say how many copies you needed to make, and she would give you that many sheets of paper. Too bad if you got a paper jam, you weren’t going to get more.

  188. Snow Globe*

    Here’s a positive one – I start a new job on Monday, that is primarily remote (1 day in the office per week). Yesterday I received a large box filled with office supplies – post-its, paperclips, scissors, tape, stapler and staples, etc. I likely won’t need most of that stuff, I rarely print anything on paper, and I have a dry-erase board for notes, but it was very thoughtful to help me get stocked up.

  189. Polite Persistence*

    When I was an editorial assistant, we were told near the end of one year that because money was tight, no more office supplies would be purchased (we went through a LOT, so this was very bad news). That Friday, the editors went out to a company-sponsored lunch, returned hammered, and bragged about its expense, which did not go over well. Know your audience, people.

  190. Former Mailroom Clerk*

    Job #1 – We never had enough pens. They were always constantly disappearing. Customers frequently “borrowed” them, vendors did the same, etc. Plus our manager ordered very cheap pens that didn’t always work well. So most everyone working usually kept at least one pen tucked behind their ear at all times.

    Job #2 – this was at a theme park. The park rented mobility scooters for guests that needed them. At one of the rides I worked at, we would move the scooters from the load to the unload area for the guests. The old scooters had a key that was just a 1/4 stereo plug with the wires shorted together. One of the manager had gone to radio shack and gotten enough parts to make about 20 of these, so all our coordinators had one on their keychain, plus there were a few kept in a drawer at the load area. Then they changed to a different type of scooter that used a real key. One of my managers went to the scooter rental location and asked if he could have just 1 key so we could move them safely. (Without a key, you could put it in neutral and push it, but with a key was far easier, and safer) The rental location said no. So one day, he gets a hold of a key somehow, and goes to our park’s central Key Control office, and asks if they can make 100 copies. Key Control responded that even THEY hadn’t even gotten one of the new keys, and they’d be happy to make the copies if they could keep one as their master. They only ended up charging our department for 50 of the 100, too.

  191. PeteyKat*

    I love love love colorful binder clips! A previous employer would only supply the basis black ones so I would purchase the multi color boxes of clips and use them. It became an unofficial game to see who could get the most color clips around the office. They would even sometimes end up in the supply closet for a hot minute until someone snatched them up. No drama but just some low stakes fun.

  192. Zephy*

    When I started at my current workplace, I wasn’t actually an admin but everyone treated me like one, so naturally supply orders eventually got absorbed under my purview. I followed the procedure I was taught (here’s a form, we order from Office Depot, fill it out and send it to Jane), and got chewed out because I guess Jane assumed I expected her to special-order us pens and post-its and whatever when we had that stuff on-site already. Well sor-ree, Jane, I don’t know where the Super Secret Supply Closet is or I’d just go grab some pens we already have myself. I don’t give a single flying rat’s ass where the pens come from, we just need pens and this is the procedure I was told to use to ask for them.

    I also mentioned upthread the time we ordered pens that were Just Slightly Too Nice and Jane came down, distributed exactly one pen to each of us, and informed us we would not be allowed to order pens anymore – we’d get a box of 200 cheap-ass BICs and like it. Uh, okay Jane, we just need pens??? What is??? The problem?????

  193. Rosie*

    I worked at a day camp for a few summers in my late teens and early twenties. Every day, the camp would provide morning and afternoon snacks for the kids and staff. It was never anything particularly fancy or exciting – things like fruit, cheese and crackers, or plain popcorn. The (very reasonable) rule was that kids got to eat first, then staff, then seconds for kids if there was enough left over, then seconds for staff.

    The staff always LOST THEIR MINDS over these snacks. People would hover around the snack table waiting for all the kids to be served so they could have their share. (And that was the best-case scenario – often they’d just cut the line.) On the rare occasions when we didn’t prepare enough food for the staff to have seconds, or if we ran out of food before someone got there, people would loudly complain. Sometimes people would complain if we served a snack they didn’t like. Our boss would often have to remind us that the snacks were primarily for the kids, and our first priority during snack time was to make sure they got enough to eat.

    I cannot stress enough that there was nothing special about these snacks. We were also free to bring our own snacks if we were worried about getting hungry. (We got paid fairly well for the type of work it was, so everyone who worked there could almost definitely afford to bring their own snacks.) We were usually overstaffed, so it was almost always possible to take short snack breaks if we needed to, and we also got a long lunch break. We all had access to the kitchen, and no one cared if we helped ourselves to a few crackers or a piece of fruit if we wanted to. There was absolutely no reason to make such a big deal out of the specific snacks that were being served at snack time!

    1. Rosie*

      Also! When our boss learned how much the staff loved snacks, she started bringing in extra snacks *specifically for staff* and leaving them in the break room. They were usually better snacks than the kids got – things like cookies, muffins, or pastries. She also kept the break room stocked with coffee and tea. We were free to take as much as we wanted as long as we left enough for everyone else.

      Somehow this did not deter people in the slightest from clamoring over four apple slices and a paper cup full of trail mix.

      1. La Triviata*

        At a previous job, there were frequent meetings that included lunch. People went wild over the leftovers; the general rule was that the people in the meeting would have their lunches first and, after they were all done, the leftovers would be brought out for staff. If the person who’d ordered/served/cleaned up didn’t get the leftovers out soon enough staff would be gathered outside the conference room, just out of sight, arguing whether someone should go in and clear it, since the person responsible obviously wasn’t coming soon enough. At times, when the responsible person brought the platters out, staff would be grabbing food off the platters while they were going back to the kitchenette. And one person would deliberately order too much food so that not only could staff get lunch, but that she’d be able to take home enough food for herself and her daughter to have dinner. Every so often, one of the higher-ups would ask why their meeting lunches were so expensive, but I don’t think they ever got an answer.

        1. JustaTech*

          We’ve had some issues ordering food for work events since we’ve been back to the office (folks keep ordering for the number of people assigned to the building, not realizing/acknowledging that many, many people are WFH and do not want to come in and eat with coworkers).

          This could have ended up with a shocking amount of waste (even after it’s been offered to everyone in the building including the security folks who don’t work for us). Thankfully, our facilities manager has some connection with a homeless teen center and has been able to take the food to them.

          But it’s been a real difference since the Before Times when food just went away.

  194. Anon Karen*

    I worked at a company that was very stingy with its supplies and equipment.

    Chairs were one size, very uncomfortable, non adjustable. If you needed a chair that adjusted, you needed a doctor’s note.

    Computer monitors were 12”, non widescreen. You could not get a larger monitor, even if your work dictated it (I worked in IT). The rationale was that “everyone would want a large monitor if they saw me with two widescreen monitors”. I haven’t used a 12 inch monitor in 15 years before this job!

    The office supply room was also locked, and only able to be opened by one admin, who worked from home multiple days a week. If you needed a pen or some other supply on a day she wasn’t in the office, you had to borrow from someone else or wait until she was back in the office.

  195. beaton*

    Not long after I started at the company where I have been for 11 years we had a highlighting problem. Someone (one single person, one time) faxed a document that had been marked with a dark highlighter, causing information to be illegible on the other end.

    This should prompt a quick “Hey, don’t use a dark highlighter on a document that needs scanned/faxed” conversation, right? Wrong. My immediate supervisor at the time (who was probably the most reactionary person I have ever met) silently ran around to everyone’s desks and stole all of the highlighters – placing them in the supply cabinet which now had a padlock installed on it.

    I asked her what that whole whirlwind of thievery was about, which is when she told me what had prompted her bizarre behavior. I then informed her that 1) I only ever used a non-yellow highlighter on internal documents that were purely for my own use (categorizing the items as I went through them) and 2) those highlighters that she snatched from me (one that was literally IN MY HAND when she took it) were my own, purchased for a previous job and brought in by me because I didn’t want to ask for colorful highlighters just for me.

    She did open the cabinet for me to get my highlighters back (which I then hid in the back of a drawer) and thankfully after like a week the weird highlighter lockdown fizzled. That supervisor didn’t last much longer.

    The other story I felt the need to share is about my stapler. The mechanism that keeps the stapler “open” (meaning the top is held away from the bottom by the hinge) stopped working and so I asked if we had an extra stapler that I could use (it also kept jamming in a really weird way – I tried to bear with it as much as I could). Our bookkeeper knew how much our CEO balked at any supply orders (that’s a conversation for another day) and she decided that as long as she could keep my stapler un-jammed there was no reason for me to get a new one. So she carved into it with her scissors, and got it unjammed. I still have and use that stapler to this day. Said CEO has used my stapler more than once and EVERY TIME he asks me why it’s so weird and floppy, and every time I remind him it’s because I was not allowed to get a new stapler – which he laughs at and then drops until he needs my stapler again.

  196. Liz*

    My org has a real issue with distributing phones and laptops. My department were all supposed to have work mobiles, but it took 18 months for me to receive one. I only got one in the end because covid happened and we were suddenly working from home.

    Apparently when we first opened, our manager was able to source a couple of laptops (we are a hotdesking office of 9 staff with only 6 computers) but they were then stolen by our sister department. We were then told we couldn’t have more because we had 2 already. The incident was dubbed “laptopgate”.

    We had no work laptops at the point we went into lockdown. Some members of staff had no computers at home and were trying to work on tablets and even smartphones. Our administrator did no work for the first 2 months of lockdown. Many people used their own computers. Some even went and bought them, at their own expense. Eventually we got a new manager who put pressure on the IT department to fully furnish us with laptops, but there are still members of other departments who are 6 weeks behind on admin tasks because a computer broke and isn’t being replaced.

    1. LQ*

      Computers has been a bear. Our IT shop really doesn’t want people hoarding laptops, but they also think it’s ok to have someone wait 5 days to get it repaired. So I am personally assigned nearly 20 computers, which is our rotating pool for when someone’s machine breaks down and we hand them another and then we don’t complain that the IT shop won’t even pick up a machine to repair it for multiple days. I may have had several very clipped conversations to get that done.

      They mostly wanted us to stop escalating the number of days that critical people were without the ability to do work during the pandemic. And I think someone (way higher pay grade than mind) may have talked to Top Top Boss about it.

  197. TimeTravlR*

    We used to have the opposite problems. Departments within our group could order their own. We recently moved and recycled so much toner for printers we don’t even have any more. As part of the move, we decided to consolidate supplies and make it one place and one pot of money. Boxes and boxes of every type post-it imaginable were turned in. Every imaginable brand of paperclips of varying sizes… what a mess of stuff people were hoarding. I hate to think what the total amount spent has been just in the last 5 years. And here you all are not being able to get a pencil without trading in an unusable nub!

  198. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain*

    My boss retired at the beginning of the year and he basically dropped his keys off and walked away from his office with everything left inside. It was a time capsule of office supplies. He had White Out! Not just the little bottle, but also white out tape… the kind you use in a typewriter. And pens, sharpies, highlighters, paper clips, boxes of binder clips in 4 different sizes, rubber bands, double stick tape, push pins, glue sticks, there were 6…SIX…wooden foot long rulers…the kind you find in an elementary school classroom, 6 different pairs of scissors, 4 staplers, 2 extra large green cutting mats (the craft kind)… This was the hoard to end all office supply hoards. And to me, here’s the kicker, we’re graphic designers and most of our work is completely digital.

  199. Calculator*

    I was a new corporate trainer ordering supplies for myself and my boss refused to approve a calculator. It cost less than $1.00 in the supply catalog but he said “No” because I could use the one on my computer. So for the first class I had to teach I ordered calculators and kept one. That was more than 10 years ago and I still use that calculator for my personal use at home.

  200. Polly Hedron*

    At a university, I started to pour a little cream into my coffee. “Oh, that’s for the faculty,” said the attendant. “I mix half-and-half for the staff.”
    I had no preference, but thought that it should have been the reverse: the faculty were mostly older men who were being advised to avoid saturated fat and the staff were mostly younger women who wouldn’t have worried about that.

  201. Jay*

    We moved to this area in 1992. About two weeks before I started my first job here, the admin called me and asked what supplies I’d need, because she was about to put in an order. She told me to list everything I thought I might need. This was back in the all-paper-everything days, so I asked for legal pads, pens, pencils, paperclips, binder clips, Post-Its, memo pads – plus a bunch of other things I can’t recall. I know I *didn’t* ask for rubber bands because I never used them. The admin told me she always ordered this way as part of a general war with the overall department admin.

    I arrived for my first day and she took to my office, where I found HUGE quantities of everything I’d asked for – 24 legal pads, 24 memo pads, a box of a thousand paperclips, an enormous pile of Post-Its, reams of paper, at least five boxes of pens holding 20 each – and five hundred rubber bands.

    When I left that job in 2001, I took the remaining supplies with me. It’s now 2021. I’m still using some of them.

  202. The Troubadour of Admins*

    ~The Tale of the Pen Wars~

    Once upon a time, in the kingdom of OldExjob, a jaded court secretary was given charge over the Supply Room for the Palace offices. She tried very hard to keep the cost down by choosing off-brand items and tracking down discounts on parchment at the PokeyFasteners market, thus pleasing the King and Queen [married owners]. The generics were generally well-received, but the jesters [Inside Sales] in particular were fixated on one particular item: quill pens.

    The Queen, who did next to nothing all day as befitted her royal status, preferred an ostrich quill [gel pen]. She instructed the secretary to buy this precious thing but say nothing about it to anyone else. “Just get the songbird quills [basic Bics] for everyone else,” she said. “Don’t buy the goose quills [Pilot Super Fine Tip pens].”

    Of course, in this small and open workspace, the ruse was quickly discovered. The jesters, all grown men though greatly entitled, began clamoring for goose quills. Instead of petitioning the King and Queen for allowance to their preferred writing instruments, they besieged the secretary, whining incessantly, “It’s not faaaaaaiiirrrr Queen gets a special quill; we neeeeeeeed this.”

    Occasionally, they would send a pigeon with a flyer for the goose quill, saying “Please order me this.” If it did not produce the desired result, the fit would commence. “I NEED this pen to do my Work! MY PRECIOUS WORK!”

    The secretary tried to ask the Queen for permission to order the goose quills but was denied. How could she get around a royal decree? It seemed ridiculous to quibble over the cost of quills when the parchment alone cost the Palace $4000 ducats per year and much business could be conducted without it.

    Then, the favored child of the court, the Curator of Logistical Magic, decided he also needed a special lead quill [Pentel mechanical pencil], which had to be requested separately from another market. This, of course, was allowed.

    When the jesters found out the Curator of Logistical Magic had lead quills, they could not be contained. Their whining and the jingling of furious bells from their motley reached such epic proportions that the secretary had had enough.

    She decided to cut corners on other items and just buy the goose quills to shut them up, Queen and King be damned. The secretary delivered these to desks with great discretion and warned the jesters to say nothing that could reveal the existence of the goose quills to the Queen on pain of great suffering and potential harm to their persons. The jesters quietened down, the Curator happily resumed sucking up to the royals, and all was well in the Supply Room. As the budget did not change, the Queen remained her oblivious self.

    The secretary decided that if jesters could have their favored products, she could too. She discovered the PokeyFastener market offered beautifully colored decree pastings [sticky notes] in jewel tones of blue, purple, and pink instead of tired old pale yellow and at the same price. These she chose for her area and was content.

    During an economic downturn of alarming severity, the kingdom became the province of a larger one. Working conditions at the Palace grew grim. The secretary’s kindly supervisor Lady Smile escaped to another kingdom where her hard work was appreciated. The King and Queen retired after a transition period; in their place, the Knight of Royal Operations took over and proved unhappily ineffective. The larger kingdom appointed a new Steward, but he favored his patrons for key positions, and he culled much of the Palace workforce without warning.

    The secretary, packing up her desk before being unceremoniously tossed out the gate, espied a fresh, unopened packet of the beautifully colored decree pastings in the drawer and slipped it into the box containing her personal belongings. Her new supervisor Sir Babyhead, so dubbed because of the round paleness of his visage and a tendency toward fits of his own, did not notice.

    And thus did the secretary gain an act of small revenge on the toxic workplace of OldExjob and the saga of the Pen Wars concluded.

    ~The End~

  203. Teapot Librarian*

    At my old job, I was the director of the office and the only woman. When we started trickling back into the office a few months into the pandemic, someone on my team complained to my boss–who was based in another building–that we didn’t have PPE, and we didn’t have soap in the men’s room. So my boss comes over to our building and asks me to account for why we didn’t have these things. Well, the PPE was exactly where it had been put when she delivered it (and one of the people on my team sent an email saying where it was), and how was I supposed to know that there wasn’t soap in the men’s room? I didn’t make a habit of going in there to look for supplies. Our amazing cleaning crew had been replaced like a week before the pandemic, then the cleaning crew didn’t come in because we weren’t there… once they came back, they should have replaced the soap, it’s true, but all anyone needed to do was to tell me that there wasn’t soap, and I’d deal with it.

  204. B*

    I worked in corporate dining for 13 years. The last place I worked, our GM decided that he was done buying office supplies so I resorted to stealing pens, post its, and dry erase markers from conference rooms when I was cleaning up after catered meetings. I had a deal with the guy in the copy room that I’d hook him up with free lunches and treats for copy paper and paper clips. I bargained with the facilities manager who owned our contract that she was sole point of contact on events if she kept me in printer ink and label maker cartridges (wildly inconvenient for me but she wanted to micromanage and I was able to do my job.)

    1. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

      Such a major workaround. It would be fun to not connive any supplies, then let the GM deal with the pain. Hand over a loose attack of papers because no paper clips. Can’t print because no ink. When other people need your work product, tell them why you can’t and refer them to GM.

  205. Twisted Lion*

    I had to beg, borrow, and plead with other offices for some black toner for our copy machine. I was the CEO’s executive admin. Good times.

  206. Haven’t picked a user name yet*

    About 10 years ago I worked at a small (50 person) company that supported women’s health. Very focused on holistic solutions etc. the owner and CEO loved having perks in the office. So we had free coffee and tea, alkalized water and a few other things. At one point I counted over 25 different kinds of tea in the cupboard. Any time anyone mentioned they liked x flavor it would be added to the order. This wasn’t cheap tea either. So we had boxes and boxes of tea so individuals could have a cup a week? And the admin assistant had to look in every box every time it was time to re-order supplies to see what needed to be bought. When profits started to drop I mentioned this to the CEO (I was the Director of Finance) he said it wasn’t worth changing. While it was small beans it was indicative of bigger issues. Needless to say, after I went through managing two awful layoffs with him and the company I finally quit and moved on. At my new job (when we went to the office) I brought my own tea.

  207. They Call Me Patricia*

    I work at a law firm and my office is notoriously stingy with supplies. They, too, refused to buy paperclips (what is it with paperclips?!?) When we asked our office manager for some, she directed people to steal them from the desks of the courtroom clerks! My office also refuses to buy other basic supplies (pens, post-its, highlighters), so we purchase them for ourselves. When someone from another department asks our office manager for these items, she does not say, “We don’t supply them, you have to buy your own.” Instead, she directs them to look in our department. We are constantly explaining to people that no, you can’t take XYZ supplies, because we spent our own money on them and they’re not office property.

  208. Not Australian*

    Naturally I’ve got a couple of these!

    1. Working for a very small company where I was often holding the fort alone for at least half of the day, which included being in charge of a modest petty cash float. On one occasion I needed a pencil and could only find a couple of half-chewed ones in the drawer, so when I took my brief lunch break I bought a new pencil for the office and submitted a petty cash slip for 35p. Got *royally* chewed-out by my bosses for daring to buy office supplies without getting permission in advance. One. Lousy. Pencil.

    2. At a large and prestigious hospital, we had a staff reorganisation and I got a new colleague to share my office. She came fully equipped with a computer, desk, chair, etc., and 4000 envelopes. It transpired that she had been in charge of ordering stationery in her old department, and instead of ordering what was needed she had ordered exactly the same list of items in the same quantities every time. Most of it got used eventually, but the envelopes had accumulated at the rate of 100 a month until they were taking up all the available space – and only *then* did someone actually ask the question why.

    3. And then there were the 500 leather-bound Filofaxes at £37.50 each which were given away to junior doctors and paid for out of the Patients’ Comfort Fund. In present-day money that would be £39,500/$53,000, enough for a new colour TV for every ward in the hospital. At the same time, an £1,100 glass fruit bowl was ordered for the Board Room. (Modern equivalent, $3,000.)

    1. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

      Raiding tbe Patient Comfort Fund is horrific. I wish I was an auditor there.

  209. sometimeswhy*

    We have a place that we order most office supplies from. They’re plentiful, accessible, and decent quality (except the pens; the pens are terrible) but if you want anything other than what’s typically ordered from that office supplies store you have to go through the Administrative Group to order from that place. Only they have log ins for it.

    Some of the other places my group orders stuff from also have office supplies so I will sometimes tack on the pens we like or a postits in other sizes and colors or whatnot to an order and caused a minor scandal when one of the admin folks thought I’d made an illicit SupplyStore account because we had supplies *they* didn’t order.

  210. Buffalo Tuna*

    Before WFH, we had five, yes five, different types of water in the office.
    But Buffalo Tuna, water is water, I hear you saying.
    NAY, according to my officemates:
    1. I had to order cases of bottled water for one executive, who liked to leave half-consumed bottles all over the office (and would loudly squeeze and crush them if they were irritated/in a tense meeting). I died a little each time they chucked the plastic bottles into the trash can.
    2. We had the basic office water cooler with big bottles in the breakroom.
    3. There was a separate water+ice machine underneath the sink for folks who wanted cold water.
    3.1 Oh yeah, we also had a sink where people could just…get water from the tap, but another executive complained that the water tasted nasty and we needed the machine.*
    4. We ordered cans of sparkling water and seltzer and Lord, the requests for specific brands/flavors were ENDLESS. Look, I too enjoy a refreshing Key Lime LaCroix, but some folks were pounding five or six per DAY (again, I died inside as I watched people toss empty aluminum cans into the trash on their way out the door).
    5. There was also a standard-issue water fountain in the hall just inside the office entrance.
    6. Bonus round: One employee would email me once a month asking if I could order branded water bottles for the entire office to cut down on the plastic and aluminum waste. I once tried explaining everything I mentioned above, and they insisted if I only “laid down the law” and “educated people about the amount of waste our office was generating” then people would surely see the error of their H2O ways and get on board.

    I don’t miss being an office manager.

    *No, the water cooler wouldn’t work for them because in theirropinion the water tasted, “artificial.”

    1. JustaTech*

      I would be shocked by the 6 la Croix a day, except for the experience of a friend. When he worked at Big Software, they had free soda. And my friend had, as he described, a Coke problem. How bad a Coke problem he did not realize until the day his officemate was out. On leaving the office at the end of the day he happened to glance in the recycling bin and was shocked to see 6 Coke cans. He only remembered getting up and walking down the hallway to get two of them.

      Free soda can be dangerous.

  211. Sales Geek*

    Boy, howdy does this bring back memories. Early in my career I worked in a large (65 people+) branch office. Part of my job was representing the company at national user groups. At the time we didn’t have Powerpoint and used the old-school transparent slides via a projector. I had to get the blank transparencies from the locked supply cabinet which was under the guard of our office manager

    When I asked why it was locked, the office manager said that it was because people were stealing tape around Christmas to wrap presents at home. I could not make that up,

    When we went to the new age of personal computers I went to the office manager and asked once again that the supply cabinet would be unlocked. When she gave me the stock answer I pointed out that our office had north of $300,000 worth of personal computers (this was the early 1990’s) that were left out on the desks in our office that was brightly lit 24/7. None of them had any kind of lock. Anyone that wanted a personal computer could just break a window to relieve us of this valuable technology. And yet we weren’t trusted with the care of $300 worth of paper, pens, tape and transparencies.

    The cabinet went unlocked after that…

  212. FrenchCusser*

    When I first graduated from college, I did a lot of temping. One place I temped, the person I was replacing had EVERYTHING in her office labeled with her name on it: the chair, the stapler, every single pen and pencil.

    It was totally weird.

  213. Student*

    Screwdrivers! I worked in a lab at the time. We needed them constantly, but we also broke them pretty regularly. The process to navigate to buy new screwdrivers was onerous, but not impossible – we’d do it occasionally but… Not. Often. Enough.

    So, we would hoard screwdrivers that were in the right sizes for the most common screws in the lab. We each had a small stash hidden somewhere in or near the lab.

    Then I discovered that, if I painted a tool pink, or got them to buy ones with the “womanly” designs (floral and paisley designs marketed specifically at women), then none of the men in my lab would touch them. Presumably, they all had a deadly cooties allergy. So, with a little help from some pink nail polish, I could resume storing my precious screwdrivers in the communal tool box without fear of them getting destroyed or stolen.

    1. Dragon_Dreamer*

      I kept a stash of actual screws behind the tech bench at the bent metal fastener. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who tried to fix their own laptops. Often, they’d have lost some of the screws! I mostly salvaged them from recycled laptops, and over time they accumulated. We had more than just laptop screws, since desktop screws are normal sized, and even a few wood screws snuck in there. Our LP guy actually approved, because he used to borrow a few to fix things in our copy center. That collection was left behind when I left, and the LP guy would not let them get rid of it. :P

      The other thing I collected was laptop chargers, because NO ONE ever brought theirs. (And co-irkers would often tell customers they didn’t have to, even before I started keeping spares.) However, there was a STRICT rule that customer chargers should be labelled with the customer’s name and given back, while chargers in the collection were labeled *by me* as for store use. They also came in useful for setting up display laptops. I kept 3 of every brand/connector type.

      This worked, mostly, however one little jerk of a coworker would label customer chargers as belonging to the tech desk. He even did that to one of MY laptops that he saw in the break room! I learned to hide the silver and gold sharpies I used for labelling them, AND how to get the stuff off plastic. I also, every few weeks, went through and recycled any chargers he’d added from recycled machines. That collection WAS disposed of after I left, and that lack was one of the excuses they used to shut down the tech desk entirely.

  214. Cute Li'l UFO*

    I started a contract with a company that is apparently well-known for constantly showing up on the “best places to work” lists, high employee satisfaction, etc… you can see where this is going.

    I started work there with a malfunctioning monitor and a gaming mouse–the kind with a bunch of buttons on one side. I’m not used to using one and no matter how much my supervisor and PM assured me how fast and wonderful it was and how I could be super efficient with it, I wasn’t. I was simply not used to using it and asked to get a regular Mac mouse since that is a method of input I’m proficient with. My god, if that mouse was so special then let me just get rid of it! For a company that was bringing us on with promises of happiness and always having the tools we needed I shouldn’t have been surprised. I didn’t care if the last designer used it. I wanted what I was used to. And finally they gave in like it was a huge inconvenience.

    And the monitor. “But if you turn the brightness up, you can work, right?”

    It got replaced. I was livid. It was very difficult to see and work, since I’m a graphic designer. I had no idea that bringing up this fact was going to cause so much dang friction.

    I had less trouble working in an inbound call center getting my workstation repaired or knowing where the supplies were or even having stock of supplies and meds. Yeesh!

  215. LCH*

    I used work in a space that was rented from a larger company. sometimes people from this company had to walk through our space for business or facilities reasons. sometimes the walkthroughs happened after hours. I started noticing stuff going missing (pens, rulers, scissors), but the thing that really made me say something is when our stepladder disappeared. a whole stepladder. anyway, after a search by my contact at the larger company, it was found it in a locked area outside of our workspace, and I had to lay down the law about people not from my organization “borrowing” our supplies. so I guess I was the nutty supplies hawk.

    2. kicking-k*

      We had to label a trolley because it looked the same as a trolley belonging to the other archive that shared a reading room with us, and sometimes their staff would move it to their repository, with our archive materials on it. We didn’t have access to their repository, so we could have a bit of a wait till someone brought it back.

      Our other trolleys were so old and grotty there was no danger of this happening.

  216. Helix*

    NASA office furniture story from the 90’s: maintenance staff were called in to move a seminar table from one room to another. They took one look and said, “We can’t move that!” Why? “Because it’s made of wood.” Why? Because that makes it Executive Furniture and you have to have special approval to move it.”

    1. Film Industry Escapee*

      I used to work on film sets. On my first one, I was watching a scene get filmed where there was a really fragile prop that one of the actors ended up kicking and almost stepping on. So when they called cut, since I was standing two feet away, I picked it up and then looked around for the prop guy, who wasn’t on set at the moment.

      I got in trouble and was told never to touch any props ever again because it could start a union dispute. It wasn’t a union set. Also the prop guy didn’t care, it was a producer freaking out about it and trying to teach me a lesson.

      Another set, I went to move a chair, it was my chair that was on set for me to sit in, and somebody stopped me and told me that I had to call one of the people from the right department to pick up my chair and move it to where I needed to go. It became a running joke between me and the guy in charge of it, but I’ll be honest, not having to move my own chair wasn’t the worst thing.

      1. James*

        “I got in trouble and was told never to touch any props ever again because it could start a union dispute.”

        Reminds me of a construction site. There were union workers doing some building for a power plant. The power plant had a forklift somewhere that needed to be moved. Bear in mind, the power plant owned the forklift, and I’m not sure it was involved in the work the union was doing. Anyway, a guy from the power plant with the necessary certs gets in and moves it 20 feet, so it’s out of the way.

        The union shut the job down for three days. Apparently no one is allowed to drive fork lifts other than union people, regardless of who owns it, why it’s being driven, whatever.

        This same union board also voted to raise their pay substantially, and to pay for it by increasing dues for all members, the same week that they shut down the site.

        And people wonder why there’s so much anti-union sentiment in the country…

  217. Red 5*

    Once, I worked in an office that basically was constantly in a state of “we might be auditioning for Hoarders any minute now.”

    So one day after a stack of folders cascaded out of a cabinet at my head, I said “I am at least going to organize and streamline this one cabinet, I can’t work like this.” I got the okay from the boss. I spent DAYS making sure that I did everything right. The only things that got thrown away were dried up markers or broken staplers, things that were not useful to anyone in any way. Otherwise, I just actually organized it by doing something crazy – putting like things together and using boxes to contain things that didn’t stack well.

    Anything I was on the fence with, I walked around and asked everyone in that part of the office if it was something that they needed. If everyone said no, I boxed it up neatly and took it to the main supply closet on the next floor up. I also took anything that was severe excess (like more pens than we could use in a year) and did the same. The most basic of any organizational skills.

    I left work that day and an hour later got an angry call from somebody about how I had hidden something they needed. I told them exactly where to find it (behind the label that said staples). The next day, somebody yelled at me for throwing away something they needed to use. I pointed out that I had asked them point blank the day before if they used that type of folder and they said no, so it was in the other supply closet. This continued for a week, multiple times a day, calls after I’d left for the day, etc.

    Eventually my boss took me aside and said that people had complained that I had thrown away and wasted tons of supplies that they needed. I told her that all of it still existed, it just was stacked better so it looked more empty. She didn’t believe me and told me that I was not to clean or throw away anything ever again.

    I quit not long after that.

  218. Heather*

    I was the department admin of a massive research university department for seven years. We were FINE for money (you have to house the students – can’t cut that department!) But OH, the crazy shit I have seen!

    Our department director treated all office supplies as precious gold, and that replacing any supplies or equipment was equal to stealing. You must not buy more office supplies or office equipment at any costs. Even though these things were not part of the department budget. Equipment and office supplies were just part of the overall university and considered that you should buy what you need as you needed, and the central administration would supply it.

    This director once took out all pencils, pens, white out, post-it notes, and notepads from the supply closet because our busy office of 10 was “going through it too much”. She got mad that people kept asking for her pens and put them back after a week but would write angry notes (on post-its) and stick them to the pen bin if she felt we were going through them “too fast”.

    When I went to buy more white out once, she snatched the phone from my hand and slammed it down as I was ordering as “we can just use pencils!! you don’t need white out!!” I just waited until she left the office to order supplies from then on. She still used the white out I ordered!

    We had a copy machine that was 8 years old and would overheat, make ominous noises, then stop working for the day until it cooled down. But we weren’t allowed to call for repairs or ask for a new one BECAUSE. I never knew why, but WE WEREN’T. I want to highlight again: repairs or replacement costs did not come out of our department budget. This was considered part of essential work business and the university as a whole had a 24/7 repair contract with the company. If you called, they would arrive within the hour.

    I was in my twenties and it was my first office job, so I would just go “oh, X is broken” and would do what HR told me to do and call the repair service immediately. The repair men came, got it up and running and put in a request for a new one for us as the copier was very old and out dated and a security risk. I said in passing in the next staff meeting, oh, this will be delivered X day, and IT will come later that day to make sure everyone can access the new copier.

    My department director went BALLISTIC. How dare I do that? She NEEDED the old copier. She cancelled all her appointments the day the new copier was to arrive, sat next to my desk all morning, and sent the repair and install team away, giving them a stern talking to. They explained this had to be done, this was a security issue as someone could technically break into the network through this unprotected wireless connection between copier and our department computers.

    IT appeared moments later as the copier guys called them to explain the situation. The junior IT staff (there were two) explained that this had to be done, this was a security issue, and the copier guys are just waiting outside. They will explain how the copier works, etc. My director dug in her heels: NO. NEW. COPIER. All of us were in our twenties and very confused with what to do with this situation. But it’s an awesome new thing? That is not broken? Hurrah new tech?

    IT left, copier guys stayed outside as they were required to replace this copier. 10 mins later, the director of IT comes in. He explains the same thing, this is going to happen. My department director says NO, walks away, and locks herself in her office. I deer in headlights at the IT Director because what am I supposed to do here?

    So my boss stays in her office as the copier is replaced, the IT director stays and does all the setup on everyone’s computers except our boss’, knocks multiple times on her door to get her to come out and witness training/installs/etc. Nothing, silence. Process finishes, IT Director and I had chatted gaming and Mass Effect (to date this whole thing: Mass Effect 2 had just come out and we were both having complex story feelings!), and then IT Director heads out with repair guys. Within moments, my boss storms out, screams at me for betrayal, unplugs my phone and says I am done working for the day, that I will be written up for my unprofessional behavior, and forces me out of the office. I had already turned in my hourly time sheet and knew I would be paid any way for the day as she had no idea how to do payroll, and this was the millionth time I was told I would be written up and never was, so I just shrugged and headed out. This was Friday afternoon.

    When we returned to the office on Monday, the new copier is sitting outside the office, like physically outside the building. It has been rained on and was destroyed. Inside, the old copier (unplugged and slightly burnt as if there had been an electrical fire) was in its previous place. Our department director was no where to be found. I shrugged because this was not abnormal things for my boss to do, and called the IT Director and dean of our section of the university (my boss’ boss) to explain this was what I found when I came in, what should I do?

    IT Director, Dean, Assistant Dean, and another university Dean came down and looked at everything themselves. I was given the day off while they fixed the issue, got us a new copier, and made sure there wasn’t another fire issue else where in our old 1890s aged building. Sure, whatever, its Boston in the early 2010s: I went day drinking at the Hong Kong with friends, this was not a ME problem.

    We discovered later that our department director had called the repair company, demanded they bring back the old copier, which for some reason they did. But they would not remove the new one. So she hired movers out of her personal money that Saturday to remove the new copier, put back in the old one. However, some sort of fire happened inside the old copier when she plugged it back in. So she just unplugged it and left.

    Tuesday rolls around, and I go into work with my other coworkers like normal. We have a new copier, all pre-set, IT Director comes by to explain to me how it works. My department director is there, working, acting like nothing is amiss. That nothing strange happened last week. My other coworkers and I looked at each other, shrugged, and just went with it because what else could we do? The next week, our department director gushed about how wonderful our new copier was, how great it was that we could afford it, etc.

    She kept her job for 4 more years. She “survived” our department, including me, getting laid off in 2017 and crowed about it. I was offered another job at the university, but I declined.

    She did not think it was strange or suspicious that her entire staff was laid off and not her. She was let go without fanfare and no option for unemployment as she was let go for cause for theft: she had been embezzling for years. I spoke in a variety of depositions against her filed at a civil, state, and federal level. She was required to pay back her entire retirement (over two million dollars) plus restitution to the university in order to stay out of jail.

    And they never put me under a NDA. :D

      1. Heather*

        I was in my twenties and thought I would live forever!! Also: I loved the scorpion bowls with little plastic animals floating in them.

    6. Heather*

      I’m waiting on a video to process, so have another one.

      When I first started at my university job in the early 2010s, I legit had to use a typerwriter to fill out 3 carbon copy forms as a large part of my job, to give you an impression of tech we were using until my boss was slowly forced to semi-modernize.

      Our main print out to do our daily jobs for my first two years (yes, print out) came from a program that was built in the 1980s and could only print out on a bubble jet print with continuous stationery paper. You know the computer paper that had the perforations edges. The computer to run the program and only printer left that could print this existed in a far building that was run by a tenured staffer in their late 60s, and I think making these updates to this report and bringing me the weekly update of said report was their only job. Damn, lucky bastard! The office worker dream!

      Being a twenty something millennial, I had no idea how to search through this like 4 inch stack of paper to find the info I needed, so I’d take the report from that staffer, then feed it into the ancient copier, and produce a PDF. That I would then have on my computer and do FIND to find the info I needed. I eventually got an extension for adobe (again this was years ago) that helped me export the pdf into an excel that I could then alter and update between report print outs.

      When other coworkers and departments found this out, they were beside themselves. They could either call me to get the info they needed in 5 mins instead waiting weeks for my boss to bring around the print out or I’d just send them the file they could search themselves, if they were cleared to have the info. This became one of the main parts of my job, even after we switched to a new system that involved NO PRINT OUTS and you know, a normal database setup.

      But you see, my boss LOVED the print outs. Loved them. Kept demanding to receive them even after we switched to a new system until that staffer retired and there was no one to do it. Complained for years afterward it was hard to do her job without the print outs after that staffer left.

      But the cake was when it was explained to her that our department needed to keep student information for at least 5 years after graduation for archive and legal purposes. What she heard was “we must keep every print out in case we need to look at them five years from now”. So our storage space in our building, which was a massive basement room, was floor to ceiling filled with these weekly, 4 inch tall reports kept for at least a year before I started, so about 4 years of weekly print outs were in there when it was discovered she was doing this.

      It was discovered when there was a water leak that flooded the basement, soaking the mountains of paper. The repair crew discovered it and reported it to the fire marshal. The fire marshal demanded it needed to be cleaned out that week. My boss heard: she needed to open up all the doors and windows to air out the paper so it could dry, and we should have our work study students throw out non-salvageable paper & move the savable paper to another room that the fire marshal didn’t know she had the keys to. I am making NONE OF THIS UP.

      I got a bio hazard crew in to toss what they deemed unsafe, which was most of the paper, but there was safe to human touch things left, which surprised me! so our work study students worked a few hours every day for a few weeks to migrate the paper remaining from one room to the other, at my boss’ orders. If the student felt uncomfortable, nope, don’t worry, no need to do it, I would tell them, since I knew this plan was not going to last long. Mostly, the kids took a few hours to listen to their phones or study in a quiet room, which good for them!

      The fire marshal returned for a surprise visit one day while my boss was out! And my student and I looked at each other when he asked to see the room. So, pretending to be the dumbest office worker in the world, I sweetly showed him all of our downstairs storage that I had keys to with the help of my student, showing all the hard work we had done! Never seen a man turn that red before!

      The next day, the doors were taken off all the storage rooms downstairs and the bio hazard team had returned to remove everything. My boss was frantically trying to save reports to keep in her office. I went and got a fancy dunkins coffee and donuts on the company card for the workers, and my coworkers and I sat outside to escape the yelling matches between my boss, the fire marshal, two deans, and I think the director of IT again since he was overseeing the install of new wifi routers in the building at the time.

      Until all of us were laid off, she kept a person tall stack of those reports in her office right by the door. And I’d find her look at them at random sometimes. No idea why! But she did think I was an idiot because I “kept” doing things like that for years, “accidentally” telling visitors “private office information”.

      Yes. I’m the dumbest office worker. We have dunkins here.

      1. Heather*

        I don’t know if I can explain how the embezzlement happened, since I do want to give myself at least the image of being anon. Tho, anyone at my uni at the time in question will know who I am talking about and have a laugh. My boss was infamous.

    9. La Triviata*

      At a previous job, one of our copiers caught fire. Literally fire. A man who was standing nearby grabbed the fire extinguisher, flipped it, did whatever necessary to use it … and stopped. When he was asked why he didn’t use the fire extinguisher on the fire, he said he didn’t want to damage the copier. Which was on fire.

      1. Dragon_Dreamer*

        Reminds me of when I worked for the brown shipping company’s tech support. Back then, the label making software COULD NOT pause batch jobs. If you were printing out a thousand shipping labels and something went wrong, you’d have to start over. The printers involved were thermal, and sometimes blew fuses. I’m sure you can guess what happened.

        There were MULTIPLE panicked calls from customers over the years, with their printers ON FIRE. They screamed at us to help them because they were in the middle of a batch job and didn’t want to unplug or otherwise stop the printing. SOP in those cases was to tell him to unplug the printer, hang up and call 911. If they DIDN’T, we were to use their shipper information to call 911 FOR them. It was common enough that there was actually an entry for this occurrence in the ticketing software.

  219. Nora*

    At my last agency, the policy was ONLY the CEO was authorized to open mail or packages. They were frequently absent for days at time. So mail and supplies would just sit there. Once things like paper were open, they were kept under lock and key, and the only key holder was part time. So if you ran out of paper, the odds were good you wouldn’t get any more for a week or longer. There was also a policy of NEVER buying cleaning supplies or TP. If it wasn’t donated, we didn’t have any. I kept my own stash in my filing cabinet.

  220. Nisie*

    At the time, I worked for the state. We were moving into a new building with another department. It…. did not go pretty. Because the building was new, they didn’t have trash cans ordered. I brought my old one over from the old office. I figured it was better to have a grey trashcan and not get up every time I needed to throw away something thing. I got wrote up because I was to have a black trash can.

  221. Red*

    My OldJob had a supply graveyard to house all the supplies from vacant desks. After one especially brutal round of layoffs, they just piled fully loaded desk drawer trays in there will-nilly. We scavenged for “good” leftovers like wild animals. Some teams regularly used thumbtacks. There were injuries.

  222. Heffalump*

    I don’t know if weirdness around supplies always traces back to dysfunction at the top, but here are a couple of data points.

    40-odd years ago I was working for an abusive bitch of a sole proprietor, a real “The Devil Wears Prada” sitch. At one point when I’d been with the company for a few weeks, I needed to get paper clips. I was told to get them from the accountant. I came back with a box of paper clips. The reaction from my peers was, “Wow, he gave you a whole box! He must like you!”

    At another company I was told that the previous CEO had decreed that the company wouldn’t buy Post-It Notes and people should cut up scratch paper instead. The head of sales told me that he used to come out of meetings with the CEO with no clear idea what the CEO wanted. He also said, “One minute he was your best buddy, and the next minute he was tearing you a new asshole.” It made me very glad the guy was before my time!

    1. PostIts for the Win!*

      I worked at a place where Post-Its were too expensive except for anyone on the C-suite floor.

      And all scrap paper – particularly older letterhead – was chopped in half and repurposed as scratch pads. No one had a proper notebook. The Post-its only for executives irked me. But the recycled paper pads didn’t.

  223. Spurrs*

    I was working as an intern at a car dealership and the place was as dysfunctional as could be. I started in early December, so for my entire first month they kept hyping up how amazing our Christmas presents were going to be.
    I mean, we’re talking every day someone is gushing about how awesome it would be when we finally got to open all the presents under the tree.
    Meanwhile, I’m having to bring in my own pens and pads of paper because we were so short on supplies. I actually had to keep my stuff in a bag that I would take with me everywhere because my fellow interns would raid my desk for supplies the second I stepped away and then try to gaslight me that no one was stealing my stuff and they had ALWAYS had pens from my family’s business that was located two states away. It was madness.

    Anyway, it’s time for our holiday party and the big bosses have their cameras at the ready to capture us opening our holiday presents. We all had piles of boxes to open, and it was pretty exciting….until we actually opened them.

    They had gift wrapped office supplies.

    My holiday presents were pens, paperclips, post-it notes. All individually gift wrapped.

    My fellow internships were losing their minds, they were so excited. No one would believe me when I told them that it was REALLY WEIRD to gift wrap office supplies.

    I left there in February. What a strange place.

    1. Heffalump*

      I wouldn’t want to have my car serviced there.

      Office supplies as Xmas gifts for employees are the equivalent of clothes as Xmas gifts for children. My feeling is that if employers don’t give employees Xmas gifts it’s OK, and if they do, it’s above and beyond. I’d rather just have the office supplies and not have them framed as Xmas gifts.

      Some years ago the small company I worked for had gone from terrific to extremely dysfunctional. One Xmas the owner said, “We can’t afford Xmas bonuses [which was probably true], but I have something for you,” and gave us company sweatshirts. I don’t believe in identifying with my employer too closely on general principles, and the owner had brought in this sociopathic bitch of a manager, to whom we reported, so I was pretty well alienated at that point. She once said she’d like to get up a company baseball team. I immediately thought of the expression “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Within the next week I gave my sweatshirt to a program that collected clothes for the homeless. It would have been a hoot if the manager had been out and about and seen it on a homeless person.

    2. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

      I am trying to figure out why a car dealership has an intership program. Multiple intetns. Did they pay you or was this a scam to get free labor? at work and training did they give you?

        1. Spurrs*

          It was for an accounting internship, and I think they started it with good intentions, but it was the worst and weirdest “job” I’ve ever had.
          They lied about everything.
          I didn’t make as much as they said I would (because they based their salary on us working overtime every week, which never happened).
          They said that I’d learn every part of the controller job, but it turns out that their plan was to wait for an employee to go on maternity leave, and then stick an intern in their spot to learn their job. So not only would I be waiting for employees to have extended leave (most of the office staff was well past child bearing years, FYI), I was also fifth in line to be placed.
          They also withheld work from me and would steal anything I left unattended. The other interns were snarky, mean and crazy. One followed me and my kid around the mall one weekend, and then bragged about how she was following me and I didn’t even know. When I told her she could just have said hi, she scoffed, and then said, “We’re NOT friends. Why would I say hi to you?” I mean, WTF is that?
          Anyway, I was only there from December-February and spent most of my time filling in for the receptionist at a dealership. Which gave me ample time to browse Ask A Manager and perfect my resume. It was the only job I didn’t give notice. I just came in and left. But I had great timing because I left towards the end of February 2020 and Covid definitely killed that internship program.
          It still feels like a fever dream when I think about it, it was so dysfunctional!

  224. The Teacher's Wife*

    My husband is a teacher. He got a new room this year and was shocked to find the closet bursting at the seams with office supplies. Like, 5 bundles of post-its that each contain 50 packs; 20 boxes of blue pens, etc. Apparently the former teacher who had the room (now retired) was a hoarder. There were more supplies in there than anyone could ever use over a career, especially now when everything is digital. He started bringing things down to the office whenever he went down there, a few items at a time, so that he could use the closet. The school secretary was not impressed. On the upside, like many schools their budget has been slashed, so if there is anything in there that’s still useful they won’t have to buy any for a long, long time.

    Also, schools in our district are provided with a set amount of copier paper each year. Again it’s not such a big deal anymore with most things being digital, but the schools all used to run out around February. After that, you were on your own. If you wanted to print handouts you had to buy your own paper to put in the photocopier.

  225. Nobby Nobbs*

    I work in landscaping, where the equivalent of pens or staplers is probably the pins you use to secure a trailer to your truck. You have to hoard them, because if you leave one in the trailer (one pin, in the trailer hookup it’s used for! That just makes too much sense, right?) someone will take it and lose it. I joke that my coworkers eat pins, but once or twice I’ve been guilty of setting one on my tailgate “for a second,” forgetting about it, and driving off…

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      Are they not on some sort of tether? I don’t have much trailer experience, but I vaguely remember my grandpa’s trailer pin being on a short cable that was attached to a stray bit of the hitch so he didn’t lose it.

  226. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

    I was the support person for a manager in a publishing company. There were some organizational changes, and we took on a new product line. The day that we disclosed that we did not limit people to the standard items from the mail room, and they could order whatever post-its and flags the editors wanted was like a visitation from the gods themselves. I still cannot look at white-out tape without feeling the wonder and joy that the editors expressed when we told them they didn’t need to paint everything with the liquid kind. Miracles!

  227. PostIts for the Win!*

    I’ve worked in places where the office supply closet was locked because it’s true: People hoard them.

    In many past jobs, I had the task of clearing out desks of those who had left the job and wow, so WOW, do you end up with an overflowing supply closet when you’ve cleared several desks in a row. The biggest thing hoarded, I found, was Post-its. The supply closet then also gets filled up with all manner of promotional pens after you clear out a desk.

    Oddly enough, at my current job, where our office supplies for my own department and most other departments are not locked up, there’s much less hoarding and our stuff suddenly doesn’t disappear. My exec secretary suspected other people from other departments would come pilfer our supplies so she hoarded the ones she thought the project managers preferred in her office.

    She’s been gone for two years and I can tell you, no one was pilfering from our supplies.

    Another fellow got very irate over supplies again hoarded at his desk. I was using his desk because he was seconded elsewhere. I had drawers full of office supplies and nowhere for me to store my stuff, files or to feel at home in any way. So, we moved out the office supplies to be put in our common area, because, it’s, you know, office supplies. He found out and had a fit. We had to put them all back. Thing was, they weren’t his; it was a case of wanting to feel needed and important because *he* had the supplies that the managers preferred and they would have to come to him to get them. I sat at his desk for 16 months and he took another position elsewhere and never returned to that desk. And those managers? They didn’t care and I think I got asked only once for his specially hoarded supplies.

  228. Daisy-dog*

    I was an office manager in a mental health facility. There was not a great process for requesting supplies other than just emailing me. For some reason, lots of employees thought that if we didn’t have something (or they didn’t know where it was) that they were never going to get it and to just deal without it. Some therapists went for *months* without tissues in their office! Someone finally told me and I immediately went to every therapist and gave them 20 boxes each and asked them to tell me when they had 5 boxes left.

    The culture of this place wasn’t great. It was a very expensive facility for the patients, but our leadership guidance was to be as cheap as possible (not frugal or thrifty – flat out cheap!). However, that did not mean that patients were supposed to cry into their own shirts.

  229. Fabulous*

    I used to keep a large box of oatmeal packets or grits under my desk for breakfast in the mornings. I was pregnant at the time and NEEDED my oatmeal in the morning. After a week or so, it disappeared! After reporting it to the office manager, one of my co-workers ended up finding it in the kitchen cupboard. This happened like 3 times before I finally put a not-nicely worded note on top of my box. I got a talking-to from the manager, but like, don’t mess with the pregnant lady’s oatmeal! LOL

    1. Nicotena*

      I bet this was facilities or the cleaning staff moving it due to risk of insects / rodents – ours are very hot on keeping all food items in the kitchen, and they send emails about no cereal bars in desk drawers etc every quarter. Seems a bit over the top but I guess I’m not the one dealing with mice.

      1. Fabulous*

        Hadn’t thought about that, but literally no communication was ever put out about it. The building we were in was fairly new and I’d never seen any indication of insects/rodents, though I know that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Would have been nice if they’d left me a note that they’d moved it! Kitchen cabinets are generally deemed “communal” so over half of my nearly-brand-new box was gone by the time I’d gotten it back.

      2. TiffIf*

        I am pretty sure I had at least a granola bar or some cereal in one of the drawers of my desk before everyone was put on WFH for COVID…a year and a half ago. I have no idea what cleaning may or may not have been done.

  230. awesome3*

    We are currently undergoing the biggest drama with carts. Plain, black carts with wheels that are used to carry and push things. Multiple departments have experienced carts they’ve bought with their own departments’ budget disappearing, and campus-wide hunts for these carts, all-staff emails, and clearly labeled “we used X budget to pay for this cart” are all proving fruitless. They aren’t easy to hide, so I have no idea where they would go off to. A colleague from another department and I had our longest ever conversation (and we work together frequently) trying to play missing cart detective. Our new plan is to get the kind we can fold up and keep in our offices so that we don’t have them rolling off anymore.

      1. awesome3*

        If you somehow solve it let us know! I do not have superhuman strength or extra arms and rely on the carts to move stuff!

      1. awesome3*

        You’d think that we were at a university with the fact that somehow carts can go missing, but alas, it’s just a regular high school. There really isn’t that much space for them to run off to

  231. pants!ontherunway*

    I worked at a law firm as a receptionist, and one of my tasks was ordering office supplies. While this was generally okay and an extremely menial task, when the firm hired a new office manager he decided he would take it on as one of his responsibilities. (Just for context: this was an older man and my first Big Girl job out of college.)

    On top of like classic Terrible Boss behavior (tidying my desk how he liked after I left for the day, policing my choice of shoes during a literal Nor’Easter, not allowing me to keep a box of tissues on my desk, etc.**) he was also terrible at stock maintenance and wouldn’t listen to me because of my title (and I’m not being hyperbolic here, he told me as much- he had an MBA and knew how to run offices, I was just a receptionist. and no even though this was a law firm the attorneys were of No Help).

    The breaking point, really, was the lack of communication on his end. For example: after I had taken it upon myself to organize the whole dang stock room (because he was just delegating and making our co-op do it while he dicked around on facebook all day), he ordered like 5 or 6 boxes of manilla folders because he couldn’t be bothered to get up and check that we had any in- which we did because it was a law firm and they go through folders like no one’s business. He flat out told me that he was “too busy” to go and check to see if there were any or ASK if we had any, and then yelled at me when I suggest those options to him.

    He also ordered a new desk for himself, and a mini-fridge, and didn’t tell me and they came on the same day. I had no idea where they were supposed to go, and it was the beginning of the day so everyone else in the office saw these deliverymen just waiting in the lobby with a huge desk waiting to be directed.

    I resigned with less than a week’s notice, and have been at a wonderful new job for the past couple of years and I was told he was fired not long after I left.

    **[And just a side note: Instead of doing this job that he independently decided to take on, he would delegate it to our co-op- a student from a local university who was working at the firm presumably because they had interest in becoming a lawyer and wanting to get experience with that type of work. These students ended up taking inventory and telling me what had to be ordered, running errands for him, and not having any first hand experience with what presumably they wanted to do as their future profession. Past co-ops had sat in on depositions and got to go watch oral arguments, but the two co-ops that were there under his reign had no such opportunities.]

    tl;dr: Bad boss taking on task he ended up delegating anyway and was bad at communication, spent money instead of checking if we had something, didn’t tell me about orders he placed, and I’m so happy to be out of there.

  232. anonymous73*

    Not an office, but in HS and part of college, I worked at a card store for a boss who was extremely cheap. He started asking us to flip over the register tape spool when it had run out, which was nearly impossible because once it was unraveled it wasn’t as tightly wound as a new one and didn’t really fit. He also asked us to hang up paper towels that we had used to dry our hands in the bathroom so they could be re-used. I refused to do either, so we had a confrontation one night and he told me if I didn’t like it, I could leave. So I did.

    1. awesome3*

      “He also asked us to hang up paper towels that we had used to dry our hands in the bathroom so they could be re-used.”

      OMG I hope Alison sees this one.

  233. Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii*

    “After that, paperclips became like some sort of prison currency”

    So did that paperclip in MS Word become a mocking reminder of reality?

  234. SentientAmoeba*

    Am I the only weirdo who just buys their own basic supplies? Not like printer paper, but pens, highlighters, staples etc. Stuff that is cheap and not worth the drama to get them from general supply, especially if it requires a hassle. Then again, if the gas pump says see cashier, I’d rather leave than do that.

  235. Jessie*

    I previously worked with two women who always butted heads. Both were passive aggressive and stubborn. At some point, one woman needed a tape dispenser, so she ordered one off of Amazon. It was orange (allegedly her favorite color) and probably less than $10. Not a big deal. Well, the other woman was livid, saying that it was a waste of our nonprofit organization’s budget to buy this particular tape dispenser. The drama was unbelievable! At the time, I was a 24-year-old new hire and just kept my mouth shut as it all unfolded.

    I no longer work with these women (and luckily, they don’t work with each other anymore either) but they taught me a lesson in just…letting stuff go!

  236. The Smiling Pug*

    When I first started at my current position, someone kept stealing all my pens. They were in a drawer, in my cubicle, but someone was grabbing them. I finally learned to put a box on the table in the break room. They disappeared, and there haven’t been any problems so far.

  237. Custom Folders*

    I used to order supplies for my department. One secretary was really attached to a certain type of file folder, which I had to order even though they were like $100 a box (20 years ago). Then the company stopped making them as a standard item. She wanted me to order them custom made from the company, which was possible, but I told her that was ridiculous and her folder needs couldn’t be that different from everybody else’s that she couldn’t use a standard folder. She coped.

  238. Susie Q*

    I’m the one who orders office supplies. I could write you a George RR Martin length novel about the office supply wars.

    The one that sticks out most is the person who wanted me order their employee a pen that cost $19 (for 1 pen!) because “it’s the only pen that they can write with that we can read what they write”. I asked my director. He laughed and told me to tell them we will pay for a penmanship class, but we are not ordering a $19 pen.

    We are a well-funded non profit, but $19 for a single pen was never going to fly.

    1. Donkey Hotey*

      *I could write you a George RR Martin length novel*

      But will you?
      Sorry, I know digging on GRRM isn’t cool but it was just too good of a punchline to pass up.

      1. Susie Q*

        Well, I could, but I might have all these great side projects that will prevent me from completing it for 10-15 years. :)

  239. Watry*

    A minor one, but we had to lock our supply room door because other units would take our things, which came out of our unit budget. We’d also frequently run out of more specialized and less-used supplies, like the bubble mailers we use to mail discs.

    Unlike some of the other stories here, though, everyone in the unit has access to the key, and it’s just hanging in a room only we have access to.

  240. e271828*

    I worked for a division of a large organization in a building apart from the main group that had its own little supply office in the basement. (The organization had leased floors from another business, to house the growing division I was hired in.) The guy who ran the supply office was a local type, a grouch, always chewing a stub of cigar, gruff and a bit of a bully. None of the support staff liked going down to be given a hard time about needing yet more pens and post-its to supply themselves and everyone around them. Anything we requisitioned was billed off against a general supply fund, so we were careful only to take what we needed. Getting new furniture was the most difficult; although there were chairs and desks visible in the supply room, it was really hard to shake loose funding to get anything.

    Awhile after I left, I heard that the supply room grouch had been fired and charged for running a side hustle: using the organization’s accounts to buy those untouchable furnishings and supplies and selling them on again from the convenient loading dock.

  241. frida*

    At an old job we hired an office manager who was super young new grad, and as we hadn’t had an office manager for over a year at that point, they kind of just gave her the job and told her to run with it with no real guidance. A few days after she started, I opened up the supply cupboard to see every. single. item. labeled. Like she had found a label maker somewhere in the office and just thought “this is what office managers do.” So the whole time I worked there we were using stuff labeled in all caps– “STAPLER”, “HIGHLIGHTER”, “PHONE” et al. She grew into the role and was great at her job, but the sight of the over-labeled cabinet is equal parts insane and wholesome.

  242. Krabby*

    In my current workplace there is this thing about yellow post-its. Our CEO is obsessed with our contracts being corner tabbed with these and they HAVE to be in this specific shade of yellow, in this specific size (apparently it’s a common thing in legal environments, which is where she comes from, but I am suspect of this reasoning). Anyway, you cannot buy these very specific post-its unless they are in a three pack with pink and blue post-its as well. So we now have HUNDREDS of pink and blue post-its overflowing from our supply closet (there is basically no room for anything else in there), and the yellow ones are being hoarded all over my department because of the shit fit the CEO threw the last time we tried using a slightly different shade of yellow.

    One time, another department got to the supply delivery before our office manager did and just grabbed a bunch of the post-it packs to keep on their floor, and the office manager went up there and threw a full hissy fit about them taking those instead of the pink and blue ones already in the supply cabinet.

    1. Jamie Starr*

      If you know a special events manager I bet they would love the pink and blue Post-Its. (Especially if they are the smaller sized ones.) They use those to do seating charts for seated dinners.

      1. Krabby*

        I may have to suggest that to my office manager. I think she’s at her breaking point dealing with them, haha.

  243. Cricket*

    I worked on a fish processing barge in Alaska last summer. Ordering office supplies was a headache. The nearest town, pop. 2000, was a few hours away by boat; everything else had to be flown in. At various points, sharpies, pens, and zip ties were treated like gold.

    We went through thermometers like mad until I ordered some waterproof ones, which lasted the whole season! Write in the Rain notebooks were amazing, too.

    We never found a way to prevent the Microsoft chargers from corroding to heck while subjected to saltwater spray 24/7.

  244. Vendelle*

    In my previous job I worked with children and was forever cutting things and drawing and colouring. I literally needed them every sessios, and I had 16 to 18 sessions in a day. The pair of scissors we had was more than 15 years old and one day, when I was trying to cut one sheet of paper it literally fell apart in my hands. That same week my coloured pencils were so short that even the 4 year olds at work complained that they couldn’t hold them anymore.

    Before, I would just have bought these supplies and get them reimbursed, but we had just had a charge in management and they had decided we needed to ask before buying anything.

    So, I asked, thinking it was only a formality. To my shock, my requisitoir was denied. They would not let me buy a 10 dollar pair of scissors and a 8 dollar packet of coloured pencils! And the real kicker? Earlier that month they had spent hundreds on changing a room into a meeting room even though the old meeting room was still perfectly fine….

  245. ZK*

    I’m a well known pen hoarder. At a previous job, it drove my co-workers nuts. I’d have every pen at my desk, while everyone else struggled to find a single one. I finally resorted to labeling all of my pens with my name, so I could tell at a glance when I picked up someone else’s pen and carried it away. I could then scatter them back around before anyone else started looking, haha. Ironically, it was an office supply company!

    When I quit, I took a lot of my pens with me (about 30 or so, we got new Pens of the Month from pen companies to try, and I was responsible for the UPS deliveries, so I got first choice), but still left a massive pile of less favored pens in my drawer.

  246. OneBean TwoBean*

    I worked for a company where one of the administrative assistants decided people were using too many paper towels in the bathroom. She kept sending out increasingly unhinged all-company emails (“IF PEOPLE DON’T STOP USING MORE THAN TWO PAPER TOWELS EACH THERE WILL BE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES!!!”)

    She must have eventually gotten talked to about that, but then started going through people’s trash cans to see if they were throwing out any “perfectly good” rubber bands or paperclips.

  247. Meep Morp*

    About five years ago I was working for a company where the executive assistant was in charge of supplies. When she left, a new EA came in who decided she was going to single-handedly save the company (which was doing fine) by guarding all the office supplies like they were rare jewels. If you needed a couple pens, you had to ask her in person for them and she would give you one pen. She kept the supplies locked in her desk drawer so no one could get at them if she was away from her desk or out for the day.

    When it came time to re-order business cards because we had moved, she decided I was the only person who had previously had business cards who did not deserve to have new ones. She told other people that she decided I didn’t need them and so she ordered everyone else’s except mine. I then had to go to a meeting two weeks later and write my contact info on the papers that had been handed out since I didn’t have cards anymore.

    The company has continued to survive even during the pandemic, so I’m sure that their financial stability can be credited to one EA who saved the company dozens of dollars by restricting pens and not ordering one set of business cards.

  248. C27390*

    Office supply police here….had to restrict and lock up supplies because employees were using/ordering their kid’s school supplies from our stock! One lady decided our stock could be used to create backpacks of supplies for an entire classroom.

    1. PostIts for the Win!*

      I’ve heard of this too. Or an uptick in supply orders in August. This was flagged and I know they probably are still on the lookout for that kind of stuff.

  249. Condoms from a satchel*

    I’m on a crusade against post-it notes at my office. No it’s not that strange. I work in a medical office and I’m trying to get people to stop using post-it when they should be using something else like email.
    Don’t put a post-it on my door (where anyone can read it) with a patient name (such a HIPPA violation) when you can send an email through our encrypted system, accomplish the same thing and be sure I got it.

    Also dividers for binders, I have one colleague who insists on cutting Manila folders in half and hole punching to create dividers in 3 ring binders so now we have 100’s of Manila folder halves sitting around and I’m just like “they make an actual product for that and our admin keeps them in stock because we need them so often for records!”

  250. Part-Timer*

    I don’t know if this necessarily counts, but it’s insane how people hoard the free k-cups from our main break room! We have a decently sized basket that they fill up with k-cups, sometimes hot chocolate packets, and it’s always empty before lunch. I’m talking at least 100 k-cups, gone. It’s enough for every employee to have at least one cup, but one of my coworkers (who’s been here for two years) didn’t even know it was a thing. And they only refill the basket once a month, sometimes less.

    One of my coworker friends has taken to snagging enough for our lower level group since she gets in really early; she keeps them locked in the cabinet in the other breakroom for us. I know most of us don’t have the budget to buy our own, but the worst of the hoarders definitely do, so I don’t feel too bad!

    1. JustaTech*

      At one of our sites it was decided that they were going through too many K-cups, so management took away the coffee machine and replaced it with one where you have to pay to get coffee.

      In a plant where 80% of people work the night shift, and is in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not like you could go out and get coffee.

      I feel like, if it’s really an issue that a couple of people are taking whole cases of K-cups home, then management should *talk to them* rather than just punishing everyone.

      When our building was renovated they got rid of the K-cup machines and replaced them with new machines that have proprietary pouches (not possible to use in home machines) *and* are too small for standard coffee cups.

      Way to tell us that you don’t trust us, even though we’ve never had a coffee issue.

  251. school of hard knowcs*

    Co-worker walked out with TP (seriously cheap kind) and then threatened me if I told anyone… so 10 years later here I am telling.
    Other co-worker kept walking off with my pens. I bought these crappy pens with rough cloth covers and left those on my desk. Pen theft – nil.For unexplainable reasons the purchasing manger kept all the pens in a her office. Three purchasing managers later and that is still the only office supply kept locked up.
    I admit to office supply issues(it’s a family trait). I used to line up my paperclips by type, small and large. I FB them.
    I have been cleaning out my parents garage. Any and every type of office supply is available. I threw away around 40 pens that didn’t work. I found a pen from where my Dad worked in 1973… kept that one, it still works.

    1. Cute Li'l UFO*

      Oh lord, I’m picturing someone toting out one of those mega-rolls of 1-ply paper worse than trying to, uh, use a receipt roll. Those don’t fit a roller at home, I got to witness a date interrogate a roommate on why he provided the kinds of rolls at restaurants and schools and not, say, charmin!

      When my first job (family property office) laid me off my grandmother stole some office supplies for me because she noticed I didn’t take anything and “come on, you deserve a couple pens!”

  252. HailRobonia*

    Our office always had a box of rubber gloves and facemasks. Right when COVID hit our office “locked them up” and we all think she just took them.

  253. CaptainMouse*

    I worked at a company that had been bigger and more successful but now ….. wasn’t. There were many dark and empty offices. On my first day, a colleague showing me around explained that how you got office supplies was by going into empty offices and searching surfaces and drawers until you found what you needed. (It was a great job, really! I only left to go to graduate school.)

  254. Mbarr*

    Back in 2012’ish, my company’s (1000+ employees) supply of tissue boxes suddenly disappeared.

    I was on the company’s Environmental Committee during that time. Suddenly we started getting spammed with complaints. Employees were accusing us of taking away the tissues! It wasn’t our decision!

    I don’t know what exactly happened, but eventually the tissue boxes re-appeared… (They were 1 ply garbage, so I always brought in my own supply instead.)

  255. CN*

    During the pandemic, only a few people in my office were in daily. One of my staff apparently did not like the office toilet paper, and brought in their own. They conveniently labeled the two sides of the dispenser “Office supplied TP” and “X’s personal TP”. I noticed it about a month before they were going to retire and decided to ignore it. However, other staff apparently noticed and brought it up to their supervisors (I don’t know why. Were they mad? Did they also want to bring in their own toilet paper?) Those managers took it to our facilities management team. Fortunately facilities was willing to let it go given the retirement scenario. Thank goodness. I was not sure how I was going to have the conversation about it being inappropriate to load your own supplies into the TP dispenser. (And I still wonder how in the world the staff managed that – I have no idea how those things work.)

  256. QCAnalystofDoom*

    Way back when I was a field caseworker, for about three-six months, we weren’t given any new supplies: pens, folders, staples, which were kind of necessary for our job and eventually, our individual hoards ran out and so did our raids of people who retired/left. To this day, it was surreal; we were a field office in a major city, but we got nothing but printer paper (useful) and post-it notes (variable).

    My solution: my mom worked in a different department but same agency. So when I’d visit her wherever she was, I’d raid the state level supply closets for boxes of folders and pens (as much as I could get in a box), bring them back, and put them in the supply closet. It was state supplies, everyone saw me do it and looked sympathetic, so I figured it was no biggie (and their supply room was HUGE and had everything, so). However, this was rare as the two locations she was usually at were fairly far away in the city….then she got assigned to work with our contractors one building over. Separated by one (1) fence. That I could either climb or slide a board and go through. Both solutions were used depending on if I was wearing hose or if it happened before or after the dress code change or whether I was Example Worker for The Legislative Aide to Observe that day and my skirt caused climbing issues.

    So after my first appointment in the morning, I’d wander over, supposedly to say hi to my mom, and the contractors would offer me coffee and deliberately pay no attention while I happily got a supply of pens, folders, and at this point, note pads (I cannot emphasize enough these were not optional for our jobs). This was in retrospect probably sketchier since contractor supplies aren’t necessarily state supplies (and later, even coffee was considered a questionable item), but I was in my late twenties with an entire office of caseworkers with NO WORKING PENS OR FOLDERS FOR OUR CASES; even if I’d considered the ethics, I would not have cared.

    To be fair, it wasn’t a bad deal for them; I was actively working in the program they were writing as our office was a beta test site and some of my coworkers I’d never met because they’d been assigned to my mom’s group and the contractors as testers before I was hired. But I was the only caseworker actively working in the program live that they had access to and so could report any issues I’d found to them either right after or even before help desk would get them from me (because I would report to my mom who wrote the actual business rules for it), and they could also have me verify if workarounds they developed were actually working in the field and get a live report as soon as I got a case that needed it. Also, who on earth says no when their mom asks them to do something?

    (All of that was ethical and aboveboard, btw; they’d get the same written information, but I could do an extempore breakdown since help desk sometimes didn’t entirely understand the problem so it would be unclear, and my supervisor knew (I was a paranoid late twenties when it didn’t come to office supply hijinks) and the contractors had access to the same system and data; I was just the one that could demo live usage as a field worker did it and not like a tester who’d never done field work did it. Also, after work, they could direct me to a computer and have me show them something or test something with live data since I’d been a clerk before a worker and had received special permissions in the system so I could demo several different user roles, so that was worth me maybe-pilfering folders and pens of unknown budget group and affiliation for having a pet field worker.)

  257. Juniantara*

    What really gets me about office supplies is that they are often *barely even a whole drop* in the bucket of operating costs – we are literally talking less than 1% of operating costs, but because they are visible and easy to control, it seems to be the first thing incompetent managers reach for to manage and institute austerity measures around. Spending tens of person-hours controlling $450 worth of pens (or post-its or whatever) is one of my red flags that the manager is in over their head and doesn’t know what they need to focus on.

  258. Delta Delta*

    This is a lawyer-specific office supply crisis (lawyers you will know what I mean by this).

    Assistant has to print a pleading and puts pleading paper in the printer. Walks back to desk. In the meantime, someone else prints to that printer, thus using the pleading paper. Assistant hits print, prints on regular paper. Repeat. Assistant then puts extra pleading paper in the printer to cover this possible mistake. Hits print, picks up job, but does not remove excess pleading paper from the tray. Someone prints something else, half on pleading paper and has to do it again. Assistant gets yelled at for wasting pleading paper because it’s, like, $30/ream.

    Repeat ad nauseam until someone figures out how to make a pleading paper template. (Me. I was the one who figured that out. I demanded a parade for this triumph of technological wizardry. It was not forthcoming.)

    1. SimplytheBest*

      We have this issue – not pleading paper, but other kinds of special paper. Our admin just tends to yell “Special paper in the printer!” so everyone will hold their printing for a minute.

      1. Sara without an H*

        We did this with an email. “I have yellow paper in the office printer. Please use the other printer for your job.” Mostly, it worked.

    2. Anonymous Koala*

      We had this issue when we had to print index cards. The printer was behind a locked door that needed card key access because our lab manager was paranoid that someone from another department might use it, so the delay from pressing print on your computer to actually getting your print out was 5-10 min. Whenever we printed index cards we would have to pull all the regular paper out of the printer so jobs wouldn’t automatically print, go back to our desks, add a throw away-cover page to the top of the index card file, and then go back to the printer and hand-feed in paper one sheet at a time until we found our ‘test page’, at which point we’d insert the index card sheets and let things print normally. Nightmare.

      1. kicking-k*

        I remember doing this with labels about 15 years ago! And I had two sizes of labels, so it was imperative to feed the right ones through at the right time.

  259. HR Girl*

    I worked in a trucking facility that had about 200 employees that had positions ranging from Director level to hourly truck drivers and forklift operators. We had a fairly large lunch room but it was an old facility and really needed a facelift. The company awarded us a budget to re-do the break room and it got a very nice facelift. We even installed fancy plastic utensil dispensers for employee to grab plastic forks, knives, spoons, etc. Surprisingly, these were the most talked about addition! We had a lot of truck drivers who would come into the facility to drop and pickup that were not our employees. It was a 24/7 operation so people would come and go all night. I was in very early one morning, like before 5:00am, when I heard a commotion in the break room. I rushed in to see what happened. One of these outside truck drivers had decided to load up on all our plastic utensils to take back to his truck with him. Two employees saw what was happening and yelled at him to stop and drop the utensils. The thief was so startled and shocked that he yelped, dropped all the utensils, and ran out the door. The two employees collected all the utensils and washed them so they could be re-stocked.

  260. ScissorGate*

    Bummed I’m late to this, but I hope people see this! I used to work at a non-profit that had about 150 staff. A few times a month we’d get an all staff email saying, “Whoever took my scissors, can you return them? I need them to do my job.” Those emails always came from one of two people. Those two people shared an office, and were the only two people who worked out of that office. They were taking the same pair of scissors back and forth and passive aggressively emailing all staff about it. Eventually after about a year of this nonsense, our COO got so fed up with those emails that he put a bulk order on Amazon for more scissors, which finally put an end to ScissorGate.

    1. Goodbye Toby*

      Hahaha! This reminds me of when we had a stapler at the radio station (so casualish work environment) that had a label on it that said “if you move this [name] will punch you in the throat.” It was effective!

  261. Coffee makers and microwaves*

    I work for the government. Things like a microwave or fridge or coffee maker in the kitchen were not allowable purchases. So directors in the unit I work in pitched in and bought these things. But not for the whole agency because…they weren’t directors for the whole agency and they don’t make that much money. Now this was a very quiet thing. One day the stuff shows up and it’s there and everyone’s woohoo! Couple years later, unit moves into a building with other units and brings the appliances. Now the fancy new building had fridges as a part of the lease so everyone had those. But it did not have coffee makers or microwaves.

    These coffee makers and microwaves didn’t have a big ole sticker that said “brought to you by Unit Directors” so people in other units started getting angry about them. There were union grievances brought. There were angry meetings with very (confused) top officials.

    The end result was that all coffee makers and microwaves had to be removed because if I can’t have a nice thing then no one can have nice things. (Someone yelled about how Unit Directors should buy them for the whole agency at some point. They politely declined to spend something like $20K personally on other units.)

    Happy ending, since the pandemic all other units are basically exclusively wfh and some how microwaves and coffee makers have reappeared in Unit breakrooms.

    (This is a story of legend throughout the agency, but I’ve never heard in the many many retellings of this anyone other than Unit staff/managers suggest that other agency directors pay for their own unit’s stuff despite other unit’s directors being both more plentiful and usually more highly paid.)

    1. JustaTech*

      At my office (not government) people had decided to bring in an old toaster or George Forman grill to use to improve our lunch options. None of these appliances were nice, but they worked just find and being able to pannini-press your sandwich just really improves a sad packed lunch.

      Then one day I go into the lunch room and the toaster oven and George Forman are gone! No! My lunch is now a sad, sad cheese sandwich rather than a delicious melty chess sandwich.

      So I pop back to the desks “hey, what happened to the toaster?” “Something’s happened to the toaster? But my breakfast!” It was a bit of a to-do (morale was low).

      So I stick my head in the facilities office “hey, do you know what happened to the toaster?” “Health and Safety said we can’t have them.” “Uh, you know those belong to people so you at least have to give them back.” “Yeah, Sure.”

      But I know the Health and Safety officer, so I email her, “Hey, why no heads up on taking the toasters?” “What are you talking about, the toasters are fine.”
      I go back to facilities. “EHS says the toasters are fine.”
      “Uh, it’s the fire marshal. Not allowed in the city.”

      Readers, it was a slow day in the office and I’d gotten my back up about this. So I check the city regulations (my unusual superpower: I’m really fast at skimming regulations/technical documents for the relevant bits). After a moderate amount of poking I discover that, no, the city doesn’t ban toasters.

      However. The building management of the fancy downtown high rise that half our company just moved out of (and in with us in a poky building in an inconvenient spot) *did* ban toasters because toasters are often the cause of the smoke alarm going off, which is a serious issue in a 50 story building.

      I email the relevant city ordnance to the head of Facilities (cc’ing EHS) and make sure to tell all my coworkers.

      I never heard back from facilities, but the next day the toaster and George Forman were back.

  262. English Rose*

    Just want to say I adore those passive-aggressive notes people put up that are always headed “POLITE NOTICE” before they launch into a misspelled, grammatically incorrect tirade at people eating their biscuits or whatever. They are SO fun! (I wonder if this is a UK thing or if Polite Notices proliferate everywhere.)

    1. Buni*

      There used to be a whole website, passiveaggressivenotes.com that I was absolutely addicted to; I miss it so…

  263. Becca Rosselin-Metadi*

    I worked for a privately owned company and there was all the drama about supplies.
    1) 4 different kinds of notepads (White/yellow/legal/regular) because each VIP at the place had a different preference
    2) so many different kinds of pens because, same.
    3) Every person at a certain level had their own printer-I had to have a spreadsheet that kept track of the printers, who they belonged to and how many cartridges were on hand for them.
    4) Spent a whole day trying to find round pencils and not octagonal, which was all they had at Staples and OD.
    5) Don’t even start on the peanut M&Ms, kept in a dispenser at my desk. I had to hide the bags because people would just take a bag to keep at their desk, instead of sharing with all employees
    6) Paper! All the kinds of paper you can imagine, because preferences
    I’m sure more will come to mind, but these people (who I genuinely liked) had no problem asking for a box of pens that cost $30.00. I mean, I love my uni-balls, but they aren’t that expensive.

  264. TANSTAAFL*

    Back in the early 90’s I worked at the NYC headquarters for a large multinational corporation. I reported directly to the department VP, who loved loved loved luxury items. We had a closet full of luxury leather goods, clocks, portfolios, etc for VIP visitor gifts. And the most unique office supplies. Every now and then he would hand me cabfare, his corporate AMEX card and send me to the “sandbox”, a specialty paper and office supply company on W. 17th St (Paper Source?). It was more of a “candy store” for me and I indulged myself in the loveliest papers, fasteners, tape dispensers, etc. When our dept was disbanded we both emptied the gift and supply closets!

    1. TANSTAAFL*

      And all these years later, I still have a supply of those papers, fasteners, stainless steel pushpins, etc.

  265. ConcreteBlondie*

    I once got in a screaming match (no exaggeration – I was told later that people could hear me in the parking lot) with the head of OPERATIONS at CurrentJob over the lack of working office supplies: it isn’t anyone’s job to make sure we have tools to do our jobs, so unless individuals buy things on their own, there is nothing. I made some headway in clarifying why exactly this is a shit business strategy, but in the end I just sort of gave up. I have enough energy to maintain my will to live, or donate to their profit margins – so I use my own pens now, and hide my stapler.

  266. Suzy Q*

    I still remember the asshole attorney I worked for in the 1990s who thought one of the three support staff, or possibly all of us, were stealing scotch tape. He then decided to keep it in his desk drawer so he could dole it out. Such a jerk in so many other ways, too.

  267. Becca Rosselin-Metadi*

    Oh, and when we consolidated during the pandemic, I had to deal with person who hoarded supplies. She had staples from the early 90’s, staplers that looked like mid-century modern work of art staplers, supplies that I last used in late 90’s, because technology bypassed them (floppy disks! Really! and those were old in the 90’s!) She owned up to the hoarding, but I had to recycle it all myself, because I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to throw anything away-but that was just the tip of it.

    1. JustaTech*

      Today, now, in 2021, there is a box of blank floppy disks in my office supply cabinet. And not a box from the 90’s, either.

      (I will admit that I have one scientific instrument that still uses a floppy to get the monthly control data, but that’s the instrument manufacturer’s choice, not mine. And I have hoarded those floppies, because I’ve heard they don’t make them anymore, and maybe there’s a grey market for them?)

  268. Pigeon*

    We theoretically always had plenty of supplies anyone could just take– but somehow the pens never quite worked right, the highlighters were always out of ink fresh out of the box, nobody ever reordered sharpies or dry erase markers for some reason, and really cheap off brand post-its (adhesive barely worked the first time, opened accordion style, etc). That kind of thing.

    So I ended up just bringing in all my own stuff. Pens, notebooks, staplers, you name it. My own keyboard because they wouldn’t replace an old, crusty, malfunctioning one I’d inherited from someone else. (Should also add their solution to a pest control problem was to introduce trash bins with fastening lids!)

    Honestly I have so many stories about how weird this place was. I had a dead cockroach “friend” I walked past daily in my way to my desk out of morbid curiosity about how long it would take for it to get cleaned up from a main thorougfare… It was still there years later when they tore that part of the building down. I kind of miss the shitty coffee sometimes though.

  269. Jo March*

    I order for our department of 4 people total, including my supervisor. And by order, I just let our purchasing department know what supplies are needed and they send to our department from the stock room. My supervisor goes through almost a box of Kleenex a week. They changed the size of the boxes to be travel sized for reasons that I don’t know. I know I’ll have to order more frequently and don’t really see what difference it makes. But she is insisting they switch back to stocking the full size boxes. She called the director of purchasing to complain. It’s the same brand, just smaller.

  270. Ruby*

    One former workplace declared that regular metal paperclips had some sort of hazardous material in them, and banned them. We were given plastic paperclips but there was a clandestine trade in metal ones for a while.

    I also had an IT guy who would hover by the printer and ask if that print really needed to be in color? And a supervisor (not mine) who would only accept printouts in pastel colors (not bold colors), again, to save ink.

  271. delta-cat*

    Our office supplies coffee to staff.

    This isn’t about coffee-stealers, though (although at one of our locations they did have to lock up the coffee because someone was making off with entire boxes of k-cups). This is a story about cups.

    We started having an issue where people would make themselves a coffee, using one of the cheap mugs supplied, and not finish it. But they wouldn’t dump out the half-full mug, oh no. They’d just leave it out on a desk. Our consultation rooms are shared, and most of our staff are in and out (either because they’re part-time or because they do a lot of work off-site). So it was a frequent occurrence that someone would come in, go into the consultation room they’d booked for the day, and find a cup of someone else’s two-day old coffee sitting on the desk. It was pretty gross. So the few of us who were in the office regularly got approval from the big boss to just … take the mugs away. No more mugs. Bring your own. If you leave it out, it’ll be tossed.

    We didn’t have disposable coffee cups. But we did have disposable cups for our water cooler for some reason. So a small group of people who didn’t want to bring their own mugs started using the water cooler cups to make coffee in. The cups were not designed for that, so they had to wrap them in layers upon layers of paper towel so as to not burn their hands when they drank from them.

    They also started telling new hires that the water cooler cups were for coffee. Which… I’m not sure why anyone believed them, but that’s neither here nor there.

    Then one day, our admin ordered a different brand of water cooler cups for some reason.

    These ones melted when they came into contact with hot liquid. Which my poor new hire, who had been told that those were coffee cups, learned the hard way. Oh, the mess.

    When I told my boss about this, she told me that she had never authorized the admin to buy disposable cups for the water cooler, so… now we don’t have those either.

    1. JustaTech*

      One day, several years ago, an email went out to all staff. No one may, under any circumstances, walk around with a cup of hot beverage without a lid. Henceforth we would all be expected to use the paper cups and plastic lids. Not using a lidded cup was a safety hazard.

      To which everyone on my floor went “huh? No.” and continued to use our perfectly functional and re-usable ceramic cups. Like adults. (Part of the reason for this is that our building runs cold, and if you put your coffee in a paper cup chances are that it will be cold before you get back to your desk.)

      Now, if this really was a problem, and someone had gotten seriously hurt, a more effective method would have been to get everyone a re-usable lidded coffee cup.

      1. Zelda*

        Did we work at the same major international corporation? Because I am a Good Girl, I went out and bought ceramic mugs that had lids, so that I would not be in violation of the safety rules about hot tea. Nevermind all the concentrated acids and lachrymators and suspect carcinogens and flammables and whatnot that I was using in the lab, for which the company provided zero training. Fortunately this was far from my first lab job; in fact at previous places I’d been the one doing the safety training. But Major Corporation was *much* more concerned that I was holding the handrail on the stairs and keeping a lid on my tea.

  272. Goat Herder*

    Our company had these really delicious, luxurious hot chocolate packets that were available seasonally. One girl would smuggle some to her desk every time she went to the kitchen. During one of our potlucks, she raffled off her packets in exchange for snacks that had run out. She opened up one of her drawers and I swear there were like 30 packets in there. Then, on her last day, she revealed she had a whole other drawer and everyone on the team got like 3 or 4 packets!

  273. Carlie*

    Lab supplies. We had a great deal of money to set up labs in the late 70s, so the lab manager went to town. We are still using up that stock of glassware and corks and parafilm.

    1. JustaTech*

      When we cleaned out our labs I got to take a whole double-wide package of parafilm home (great for making sure bottles are really, really closed before you move).

  274. PizzaCatsRUs*

    I’m a school secretary, which means I do the ordering for our school. I try to make sure everyone gets what they need but there are certain things that we keep “hidden” because they disappear too quickly. I’m always happy to let people use things, but they go missing way too quickly if I just stock them in the cabinets. Here are a few items that always seem to disappear instantly:
    – 3M command strips
    – Double-sided tape
    – Post-it flags
    – Poster putty
    – Bottled water
    – Glue dots
    – Batteries
    – Ibuprofen/acetaminophen

  275. Becca Rosselin-Metadi*

    Oh, and there was the time i ordered some bubble wrap-no big deal, right? I’ve ordered it a million times before. But THIS time I ordered a roll of bubble wrap that was the size of a small bed. It was enormous and slightly horrifying. Luckily all my colleagues thought it was hilarious, but the day it was finally small enough to fit under a table in the copy room-well, that was a good day.

    1. kicking-k*

      I interned at a small publishing house as a student and they had a roll like that! It was sort of awesome. Their warehouse had nowhere to sit in it, which was awkward if you were trying to do a sitting-down task through there, but you could perch on the giant roll like a big sofa. You’d need to jump up a little to get on in the first place, but I was 19.

  276. hendrix, as in jimi*

    I used to work for a foreign gov’t at one of their consulates in the US. When I first started I was given the role of supply orderer. I got in knock-down, drag-out email fights with the finance woman who was so rigid about ordering in a way that made no sense. To save money, they would order the cheapest, most bare-minimum product of whatever it is you wanted. Our political officer went to a lot of meetings where he took notes. He liked small journalist-style notepads because they easily fit into his dress shirt pocket. The finance woman refused to buy them because they were not on the approved list, presumably ‘too fancy.’ Instead, she ordered those very large yellow notepads that WERE on the approved list, however were MORE expensive than the notepads we actually wanted, and of such a large size it made no sense to drag them along to external meetings because there was no way you could discreetly bring it out and make a note without disrupting a sensitive conversation. So they just sat in a drawer unused for the 8 years I worked there. Talk about ‘value for money’. Also, my boss preferred more high-quality, inky pens for work but they would only buy us the cheapest ballpoint ones. I had to organize a full-court offensive to get them by saying we would only use them for signing important documents (with the argument a ballpoint signature to a Prime Minister or Ambassador looked cheap). This worked until we tried to order them again as part of a subsequent supply order. The finance woman recalled that we’d ordered them fairly recently and said there was no way we’d have been able to get through a box of the pens in a few months if we were only using them for signing documents. She said one box should have lasted for several years. I mean, she was right, we just liked the pens. But seriously. How much money are you saving? $20 over the course of the year? Meanwhile we had diplomats flying business class back and forth to the home country several times a year for no discernable reason.

  277. Donna Noble*

    I work in government also. At a previous agency, we didn’t have too many rules about what was allowed to be ordered as long as it was available with the government contracted supplier. But you better be nice to the person who actually makes the order. “Why does she need more post-its? I juts ordered her some {six months ago}.” “I didn’t order the printer toner because I assumed you didn’t actually need it.” We definitely hoarded the “good” pens.

  278. MissMaple*

    This is my own story of pettiness :)

    My husband and I worked at the same company, though different departments in different buildings of the same complex. For some reason, his building got much better supplies, so I’d always make it a point to visit him at the end of the day to say hi and snag better pens, particularly green ones which I used for drawing checking and that my building stopped buying (should have seen the writing on the wall). I rationalized it to myself that we were all one company and I’d leave them if I changed companies. Turns out not buying the supplies was the first cost cutting measure that was eventually followed by layoffs. I’m not proud, but it’s been 8 years and I’m still working through my stash of green pens, 3 jobs and no more layoffs later :)

  279. Librarian in the South*

    At my last job (higher ed, public university), the office supplies were kept in a closet behind the admin’s desk, so you had to pass right by her work area to get to it. When I was hired, I was told, oh the office supplies are behind Admin’s desk, so go grab anything you need. Except when I went to get some folders and staples, she gave me an absolute death glare. And then proceeded to scold me for not asking her for what I needed. She apparently considered the supply closet part of her office space and got extremely offended whenever anyone went in without permission.

    This is the same job where I just started buying my own office supplies because budgets were always bad and requesting anything meant immediate pushback. When I started my current job (at a public, but much better funded, university), I couldn’t believe that I could just…ask to have office supplies ordered. And they would be ordered.

  280. Goodbye Toby*

    At my old job, my boss was so particular about office supplies I had to give new hires the lowdown as part of training: no paperclips because he hated them, there is only 1 good hole punch that we can use (the others, while perfectly fine, were “not good!” according to him), you have to wait until the office admin is gone to go steal binders (for work projects!), he will take your pen, use it to stir his coffee, and then lick it clean. So basically never use a pen he used. Oh and there is a difference between “fluffy” and “sleek” paper (it was the same paper).

  281. LibraryIT*

    One of the libraries I worked at had separate supply cabinets for Technical Services and Public Services, with all the same supplies. The two departments were extremely protective of their respective supplies, to the point of having to ask to take something as small as a pad of post-it notes from the other cabinet. Which would make sense if they were separate budgets; they were not. All supplies got ordered at the same time and used the same budget line.
    I eventually petitioned the director to combine the two cabinets into one cabinet, which caused other chaos.
    Apparently at some point they used to order the same supply order every month, regardless of if that supply was needed. So we had an overwhelming amount of tape refills and hanging file folders that no one needed. When I recommended giving some of the extras to an office supply swap you would have thought I recommended setting a desk on fire.
    And in libraries, office supplies are nothing compared to how protective people get over book carts!

    1. Sara without an H*

      And in libraries, office supplies are nothing compared to how protective people get over book carts!

      Don’t start me on library book carts. No matter how many you order, you will always be one short. So people put a couple of books on them and park them offices in perpetuity, just to make sure they have one.

  282. Van Wilder*

    At my first job out of college, staff could not get supplies. The official way to order them was through one of the office admins. But the admins (correctly or incorrectly) believed that they only reported to the partners, so declined to order supplies for lowly staff. So the options were basically (a) beg and bribe the admins, or (b) wait for someone to quit and raid their desk immediately.

  283. Rebekah*

    My husband worked at an office where they spent most of the day on the road doing in home appointments. Each morning he would stick a couple branded company pens in his pocket, and each night he would come home and take them out as he got undressed. Being the chronically absent minded type he never remembered to put them back in his pocket in the morning so rinse and repeat. When he left the company (on not the best terms) he decided to return all their pens that he had lying around our (small!) apartment. We managed to collect two grocery bags full! He was so embarrassed he snuck them back into the building after hours.

    I was really regretful because they were actually nice pens, and we’ve never had enough pens around the house ever since.

  284. BlackberryC*

    My workplace, a kitchen, had the uniform jackets in the storage room along with the plastic wrap and gloves and cleaning supplies and so forth. It was locked down for years because so many people would throw away their old jackets and get a new one everyday instead of washing them.

  285. Veryanon*

    I once worked for a company where the lady who ordered all the office supplies would always order extra stuff (on the company’s account, of course) because she was providing all her grandchildren with their school supplies for the year. Yes, this was theft, and yes, she ended up getting fired. Because of that, they put this byzantine approval process in place whenever you needed so much as a pad of paper or a pen. I ended up buying my own office supplies because I just did not have the patience for 16 layers of scrutiny/approval over my requests for Post-it notes.

    1. irene adler*

      We’ve got a manager here who orders office supplies that are actually school supplies for his kids (pencils? Can’t use pencils for any writing in this company. Yet many were ordered.). The woman tasked with ordering office supplies knew this was the case but didn’t feel it was her place to question this manager (who was quite the bully).

      One day, upper management decided to do the office supply ordering themselves. A cost cutting measure. And suddenly there was a whole lot less being ordered. Naturally management felt this was due to their savvy ordering/shopping skills. And we’ll continue to let them believe that. No one wants to squeal and endure the wrath of the bully manager.

  286. OtterB*

    My husband spent a year as a high school science teacher some years ago. (He was trying out a career change and decided both he and his students would be happier if he went back to engineering, but I digress.) He always had students needing to borrow a pencil for an exam that required a #2 pencil and then not returning them. For Christmas that year I gave him a box of customized pencils that said “This belongs to Mr. OtterB” and the rate of return became much higher. From reading the rest of this thread it sounds like I should have bought bright pink pencils (it was a boys’ school).

    1. Ahdez*

      One of my colleagues did this. I admit that more than once I have found myself writing with her pen and returned it to her!

    3. Cards fan*

      I would loan pencils/pens out for that class period, in exchange for one of the student’s shoe. I always got them back. And I couldn’t do that now.

  287. Quiznakit*

    Those of you who are grumbling over cheap Bic and Papermate pens… my friends, you don’t know how good you have it, because you’re not stuck using Skilcraft pens. I grab three or four at a time because it’s almost guaranteed that the first couple won’t actually write.

    Well, I don’t grab them. I use my own pens and give the hairy eyeball to anyone who wants to borrow my fountain pen to write with. It may be a cheap Lamy Safari but that doesn’t mean I want them to destroy it by treating it like a ballpoint. And the bonus is that I can use what ever fancy-pants ink I like in it, too!

  288. Dancing With Eurydice*

    Does coffee count as an office supply? If so, I worked as a receptionist fresh out of college. The accounting clerk had nothing…I repeat nothing…better to do than count coffee filters in the coffee machine. If they stuck together and I accidently made coffee with two filters, wheeeeeeew boy, was I in for an onslaught of petty comments the whole entire day. One day, she tried to giggle to one of the upper managers that I was trying to make them drink weak coffee that day. I rolled my eyes and said that didn’t make sense because two filters would keep the water in the grounds longer, making the coffee steep longer. When she attempted to get me to order her a $10 pen in the monthly office supplies, man it felt good to reject her order. Muhahahahahaha!

  289. Midwest Manager*

    I work at a university in a department where chalkboards are the norm. My faculty are extremely particular about their chalk, and refuse to use the $.35/box chalk that is readily available through our office supply vendor. We have to make up business justifications to buy a specific type of chalk through a non-contract vendor to keep these folks happy. The most recent justification is that one piece of this amazing chalk (at $.305/piece) lasts longer than an entire box of the other stuff. I only hope we don’t get audited by campus for this….

    1. PlantProf*

      Math? I learned a while ago that the math department are usually the people to ask about decent brands of colored chalk, if I get stuck in a room with a chalkboard.

  290. Anon because this is identifying*

    We were a group of editors. We marked up hard copies. We needed fine-tip red pens. We weren’t allowed to order them. Our purchasing officer ordered them for himself, “because I need to make notes on documents,” but refused to believe that actual editors had that same need.

  291. Astrid*

    Nothing like working for a bunch of anal-retentive lawyers. I just found out that our mailroom keeps two separate brands of exhibit tabs because the two name partners each have their own preferred font. Apparently it’s a very big deal.

  292. XF1013*

    I used to work for a company that made web sites for clients. We hired a new account director who the higher-ups kept praising because she dazzled them in her interviews, but those of us in the trenches noticed that she kept dodging questions and didn’t seem to know what she was doing. The higher-ups shrugged it off when we tried to tell them.

    According to the story I heard, the CEO found her poking around in the supply closet and asked if he could help her find anything.

    “Where do we keep the URLs?” she asked. When he asked what she meant, she said, “I’m meeting with a prospective client in ten minutes who doesn’t know our work. They asked me to bring some URLs to the meeting.”

    She was gone about a week later.

  293. NomAnon*

    At my last job we had moved into a new building. The old building we were in used to have the facilities staff come around several times a day and check the bathrooms to replenish supplies, wipe things down, etc. Apparently at our new building having the facilities staff come more than once a day cost extra. An extra cost that our company did not want to pay for.
    By the time lunchtime rolled around there was no toilet paper in any of the ladies bathrooms. And no paper towels either. The stalls had locking TP dispensers, so even if we wanted to steal a roll from the mens bathroom, we couldn’t. We had to start bringing in our own toilet paper to work. One of my coworkers remarked that she felt like she was in Orange is the New Black since like the prisoners in the show we had to bring our own toilet paper to the bathroom.

    After an employee in threatened to carry her roll of toilet paper right past the reception desk in front of the glass doors and guest seating area (we would often have high profile guests visiting), our company finally caved and spent the extra money to have the bathrooms replenished during the middle of the day.

  294. Aiani*

    I think this is supply related enough. I used to work in an area where there are always people working, 24/7 so the chairs got kind of smelly (actually very smelly). It was so bad that the smell from the chairs would cling to your pants. I personally started using my own seat cushion during my shift which I would put away in our locker when I went home.

    But one guy would put a giant trash bag over the seat whenever he was there which fine, you do you, but he would tape the trash bag to the seat in a super difficult to remove way. The rest of us didn’t want to sit on his trash bag, it would make your butt sweaty to sit on the plastic. We kept asking him not to tape the plastic down and he kept doing it. He was a jerk in many, many ways.

    I started throwing away any and all tape I found in the room. He would bring in more tape on his shift and I would throw it all away. No one else cared that I threw out the tape, we didn’t use it for anything. It was just this guy taping trash bags to the chairs. He finally stopped taping his trash bags to chairs and I felt very victorious.

  295. Lilly76*

    I work for a local government and a few years back was housed in a building that included several other teams. Think 3 managers all on the same level and their associated staff. There was a shared supply closet, that over the 10 plus years had managed to amass quite a bit of stock. One of said managers, after being there for less than a year, decided to purge the supply room. And without consulting anyone else ~proceeded to throw away 3 DUMPSTERS worth of supplies because she personally had no need for them. Tens of thousands of dollars. All in the garbage

  296. Liz T*

    Do snacks count?

    I was the new office manager when there hadn’t really been one before. Mondays were snack delivery day, and the most coveted was the dried mango–a plastic shopping bag full of it just got plopped on the table, a feeding frenzy ensued, and it would be gone by the end of the day.

    My two mistakes were a) believing the hirers when they said I had ownership over kitchen decisions and b) letting my Psych Major brain take over. I figured everyone’s scarcity mindset was ruling them, and they were eating more mango than they wanted because they knew it would be gone soon. So I rationed it out to make it last a few days–put some in a bowl, and the rest in a tupperware in the cupboard.

    Not. Popular. People went and raided the secret stash. (I had to start locking it in my desk.) People also, like…hated me. It was a terrible introduction to the office. None of my supervisors had my back and literally no one appreciated the fact that now there was mango on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

    Did I learn from this? Not really. I did the same thing with the cold brew concentrate that no one was diluting. (We got permission to order two weekly boxes instead of one and I forbade anyone from opening the second box until Wednesday every week, regardless of when the first one ran out.)

  297. Marian Paroo*

    I have a bizarre one. I was working in a creative space where it was customary for all of us to make coffee and breakfast (toast, yogurt, nothing insane) at work and eat it as we started our conference (we all sat together in a big room because it was highly collaborative) and inevitably at some point in the year all of us ran out of our caffeine of choice at the same time. So that week when the office assistant did her run, she had like ten different kinds of teas, coffees, and sodas to buy. Now, our office assistant was 7th Day Adventist or something like that. She never talked about it, and I don’t think most people in the office even knew (although at one point she had to leave at 5 every Friday for the sabbath so idk what they thought was going on there). Stick with me.

    I get in the following morning, and I’m delighted to see she had no trouble finding my tea of choice! I pull down the box and get to brewing… and then I notice that it’s decaf. Annoying, but oh well. I’ll just have her get it next time she’s out and drink another tea in the meantime. So I go back into the cupboard to select another tea… and I see that all of the beverage choices she’d replaced the previous day are now decaf. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. I was a higher-level assistant at the time and I immediately took her aside and told her that that would NOT fly with the creatives and there would absolutely be a riot. Sure enough, people were (rightfully) pissed and perplexed. Pretty sure she replaced them all within a few days, but I still wonder whether she did it as a reflex because she herself can’t drink caffeine or if she was trying to lure us toward the righteous path of the Lord! Moral of the story: don’t deprive heathens of their caffeine.

    1. Donkey Hotey*

      Interesting. I’d thought it was only Mor… members of the Church of JC of LDS who avoided caffeine. I learned something new today.

  298. mc*

    I work in higher ed. All office supplies in our dept were under the control of one secretary who had been around for (not kidding) 40 years. I recall asking her once for a box of staples to refill the staplers since all the staplers in the building were empty. She refused, telling me “I used to give people staples, but they just kept asking for more”. She also refused to provide anyone with paper, pens, or any office supplies ever. As a young faculty member, I just gave up and used my own money to pay for office supplies for myself and my entire lab.

    Later in my career, I found out that our department did, in fact, have an annual supply budget given to us, but we were UNDERSPENDING it every year and thus we lost all the money we had for supplies at the end of each budget period because we hadn’t spent it. When I proposed in a faculty meeting that we actually start using the funds to provide office supplies for faculty and graduate students my proposal was voted down because “they never needed it before” and “the grad students will just take the supplies home”. *sigh*

  299. Slovenly Braid Cultist*

    I’ll admit to being the tyrant, but those large binder clips are nearly 50 cents apiece, and there is NO reason they’re not reusable. I hated nothing more than watching someone throw out 3 canisters’ worth and turn around to demand I order more because they’re out.

    Aside from that you SHOULD be taking them off before the paper goes to recycling! Come on! It’s not unreasonable to reuse things!!

    Thank goodness it’s not my problem anymore.

  300. Malfoy*

    Scissors! Pre-covid, my desk was right next to the supplies/printing room. When supplies were replenished, I’d see one by one someone would print a single piece of paper as a front and walk away with a brand new set of scissors. Some people would actually do this multiple times per day. Then after all scissors were taken, people would leave the supply room in a huff and ask to borrow my pair. Since covid, I’ve started working from home. I went into the office a few weeks ago and guess what I did not find in my desk? Scissors.

    1. MissMaple*

      I have so many questions! Where do you work that you regularly need scissors? A school is the only thing I can think of. I have a pair of scissors at work and I think I’ve used them 4 times in 5 years, mostly to cut tags off of my clothes when they get annoying and maybe to open a box once?

      1. Malfoy*

        It’s a regular 9-5 type office in a niche industry. There are rare instances where you might need scissors for a one off project but I suspect the scissors are walking right home with theives.

  301. Drago Cucina*

    The paper towel story reminds me of a director I worked for. We were only allowed to buy one brand of copy paper and could not take advantage of any sales. When I asked about it she denied that it was true. So, we took care of back to school sales and stocked-up on copy paper from different brands.
    The next week the director came in with two different pieces of white copy paper and asked why they weren’t the same shade of white. We explained what happened. She insisted that we only use one brand for any print job we gave her. That was nothing compared to the three week discussion about toilet paper.

    1. Rainy*

      I worked for a small business that always ordered the cheapest of anything they could get away with, so we had that industrial single ply TP that had the texture of petal paper for Homecoming floats and basically disintegrated if the humidity was over 40%. We went through vast, vast swaths of the stuff every month, because if you didn’t use an absurd amount, you were basically wiping with your hand.

      Once, the manager accidentally ordered the good stuff instead. It was only about half again the price, and the carton lasted four times as long, but the second it ran out we were back to wiping our bums with a giant handful of packing tissue.

  302. missing things anon*

    I work in a K-5 elementary school library and am the only library staff. I order a lot of my own supplies using book fair profit–it’s credit with the company, not cash. I keep an electric pencil sharpener in the library in case kids or staff need to use. It’s a larger one, costs $70 before taxes, and is something you’re not going to accidentally pick up and take.

    About, oh, three or four years ago, on the first day of school we’re having the staff meeting in my library and someone asks to sharpen a pencil. I start to point to where the sharpener is and it’s gone. Later I checked the rooms closest to me (including the Principal and VPs offices) and nothing. I sent out an email to all staff asking who had borrowed it–could they let me know and/or return it. I even included a picture of it. Nothing. I gave it a couple weeks then decided to order a new one as the sharpener did get regular use. I came in one Monday morning to find not only the box with my brand new sharpener in it, but my old one sitting on my desk beside each other. Pretty sure it wasn’t the secretary who delivered the box who returned the other one (she’d’ve asked and/or said something when I sent the email around).

    To this day, I still have NO idea who took my sharpener. Needless to say, the new one has labels on it indicating it belongs to the library. I’ve always property marked my stuff but felt I really didn’t need to with a larger appliance. I was wrong.

    This year when I came back to work, it was my tape dispenser that was gone. It WAS labelled. I let our custodian know and double checked that I hadn’t set it on book shelf somewhere (I hadn’t). Later that day, one of the preprimary instructors, new to the school, walked in holding my dispenser. She’d found it in her room and figured she should return it as it was labelled belonging to the library. They have their own supplies down there, so I have no earthly idea how it got there.

  303. Stephanie*

    I worked for a national department store in the 80’s. We had a floor manager who thought that we were going through pens way too fast, and decided that she would not order any more for us. In December. When we needed at least one pen at each register so customers could sign the credit card slips when they bought something. During our absolute busiest time of the year.
    It got so bad that people were getting to their register area early (there were several people assigned to each department) just to grab the single pen to be had. One of my coworkers hid the pen in her hair, behind her ear. I just made sure I had a couple of pens from home. (I hid them, so they wouldn’t walk off.) It wasn’t unusual to hear “Hey, do you know where the pen is?” called across from another register. It was so ridiculous.

  304. A Genuine Scientician*

    In the lab in which I did my PhD, my standard experiments involved counting huge numbers of bacterial colonies. To do so, I’d grow them in a Petri dish, and then on the plastic side of the dish I’d mark each colony with a sharpie as I used a tally counter. I need to distinguish between two types of bacteria, so I used two different colors of sharpie, as a way to essentially quality control check myself — if I noticed a mark of the wrong color, I could fix it. Because of the size, it was much, much easier to use the Ultra Fine Tip sharpies than anything thicker.

    My desk was right next to the space where we set up the counting station, because my work required doing this counting more often than anyone else in the lab. Likely because of that proximity, people took the sharpies from my desk, and then…wouldn’t return them. One particular coworker would frequently have 10-15 of these sharpies in their desk drawer. If I ever tried to take some back, they would yell at me. When I asked the lab manager if we could buy more of that particular size, I’d most often be told that we had just done so some short period of time before — because we had! — but I still didn’t have any available to use. Or I’d be told that other people in the lab preferred the thicker ones. Which: OK, but there are 6 unopened boxes of Extra Fine Tip and 5 of the Fine Tip, but 0 of the Ultra Fine Tip, so the evidence seems to suggest that the Ultra Fine Tip are the ones in highest demand…

    I eventually started buying my own out of pocket, and labeling them as mine. People would still walk off with them. When the hoarder would yell at me for going through their desk, I would reply that I would stop doing that if they would stop taking the clearly labeled sharpies that I bought myself from my desk, showing them the labeled sharpies that I was taking out of their desk. In response, I started finding my labels on my desk, taken off the sharpies in my drawer, with the sharpies missing.

    Eventually, I just started keeping a pair of these sharpies in my bag at all times, taking them out only to do the counting and putting them back immediately, and taking my bag with my whenever I left the lab. That stopped the constant theft.

  305. Joan Holloway*

    I used to work in admin in a traditionally male-dominated industry, at a company whose CEO was a megalomaniac control freak – like, to the point where he personally had to sign off (pen on a paper form, email *was not* acceptable) on all PTO requests for every single one of our 150+ employees. I was asked by another senior employee to order a small supply of menstrual products to be stored in the bathroom in case they were needed (there were no dispensers in the restrooms). One small pack of tampons and one pack of pads went into the restroom, costing under $20 total. The CEO somehow found out about this and called me into his office to scream at me about it – loud enough that the everyone who worked on the floor could hear him – but was too embarrassed to use the word “tampon.” I got out of there very soon after that incident.

  306. Ahdez*

    I work at a nonprofit organization. We went through a really tough financial period and each department was told to find places to cut costs. My former boss was very enthusiastic about proposing new cost cutting measures. He instated a policy that the air conditioning could only be turned on one hour AFTER arrival in the morning, and had to be turned off one hour before we left – even though we live in a very hot climate year round. He wouldn’t let us buy purified water or coffee and all supplies had to be the cheapest ones available. For example, he had us buy bars of soap for the bathrooms instead of filling the liquid soap dispensers because it was “cheaper and lasted longer.” Even when the organization started doing better financially, none of those “luxuries” came back until he left, and it sort of instated culture of always buying the cheapest stuff — even though sometimes we spend more in the long run. We do turn on the A/C right away in the morning, though… I will say that he was right about one thing – what someone said upthread is sadly very true; many donors do not like when you use funds for things like office supplies or “luxuries” like coffee, which means that too often we have to rely on donated drying up pens, moldy furniture, and the like.

    1. Person from the Resume*

      Not just the donors – tax payers. Government offices can’t pay for holiday parties, going away meals, holiday/farewell gifts, food and drink for the employees, etc. Many things that Alison says the business should pay for is not allowed in the government.

      You can purchase drink or food for a conference or meeting (with visitors); you cannot purchase this just for government employees to be nice or thank them or celebrate something.

    2. TiffIf*

      He wouldn’t let us buy purified water or coffee and all supplies had to be the cheapest ones available.

      slightly tangential–early on in COVID our company blocked off water fountains and breakrooms (where there were water/ice machines). I pointed out to my supervisor that OSHA requires potable drinking water to be provided for employees and asked what the plan was. He wasn’t sure so he said he would ask. A few days later an email was sent around saying for those in the office would have access to bottled water.

  307. prismo*

    I have an opposite story: I LOVE how my office handles supplies! I started a job in January 2020 (lol) and on my tour was shown to the supply room, which is a full-size room with cabinets and a big counter. The cabinets are FILLED with every supply you could need, and best of all, there is a KEY to show you which supplies are in which cabinets, which works because the cabinets are NUMBERED. It’s beautiful. After 3.5 years in a toxic, stingy nonprofit, I nearly cried at the sight of it.

  308. Rainy*

    Oh, I have one!

    The only person in my entire office who can order supplies has a moral objection to batteries, so she won’t order them until our director stands over her and forces her to.

    Unfortunately, our office went in hard for dockable tablets a few years ago, so even though those dockable tablets died miserable, data-destroying deaths about a year after they were all purchased, everyone’s keyboards and mice (which are essentially indestructable) are wireless and they all run on batteries. This means that periodically everyone gets sick of buying their own batteries and the clamor is so loud that the director will go put the fear into the supply person and we’ll actually have batteries for a few months. But if you’ve been here long enough you know that you can’t rely on them staying, so people will take more than they need to hoard, and the cycle begins again.

    1. just passing through*

      I am not sure whether I even want to ask on what grounds someone could have a moral objection to batteries. Is it the environmental impact???

      1. Rainy*

        Yup. Mind you, we literally have a dead battery dropoff in the basement of our building, so we know that they’re being appropriately disposed of etc, but she objects to them comprehensively.

  309. Princess Diana*

    I am a pen snob, I since I write by hand a lot, I like to buy my own expensive (to me!) Uni-Ball Jetstreams for my own use as a school secretary. To protect them from pen-poaching, I have found that I need a 4-level deep pen organization scheme. A pen cup at the front of my desk for el-cheapo pens and pencils, easy for students and teachers to access. A cup behind the desk on the other side of my computer, for those who don’t find what they want in the pen cup at the front, where I only keep one Sharpie and a few old dried out highlighters because as many as I put out will disappear in a few days, never to be seen again, as well as red pens and some slightly nicer pens. Level 3 is the pen tray in the drawer below pen cup #2, where those who work in the office, the principal as well as some volunteers, know they will find a slightly nicer tier of pens than in the other two places. The precious Jetstreams are in a top-secret location, accessible from my seat but unknown to others, where I can grab them, and replace them. This is after 15 years of experience, and watching all of my stuff walk off. No one has bad intentions (I hope!) but who has the time to remember where they picked up that pen or Sharpie.
    For that reason I have also have very distinctive desk supplies. I have the only bright red Swingline stapler, just like Milton, and my tape dispenser is shaped like my favorite cartoon character. I have had them for years, because everyone knows they are mine.

  310. Anon for This*

    I worked for a department that was 100% grant funded, so we were always super frugal about purchasing because the grant budget didn’t always have a lot of wiggle room. Then, one day, our assistant comes back from a budget meeting with our larger division admin and found out that the organization required them to give us a basic overhead budget for supplies and stuff, beyond our grant funds. I believe we referred to it as the Magic Pile of Secret Money.

    She opened up the U-Line catalog and we went nuts ordering office supplies. It was like Oprah, except instead of “You get a car!” it was “You get a fancy new clipboard!” And “You get a fancy three-hole punch!” And “We all get every kind of post-it, pen, and binder clips that we can find!” It brought an unreasonably immense amount of joy.

  311. Corporate worker*

    My group moved to “mobile offices” several years ago which meant we didn’t have a permanent desk. At that time I’m more or less gave up on all office supplies except a pen and maybe a pad for some notes. Therefore when I move to work back home last year there’s no change for me. Basically don’t really use office supplies for anything all communication is electronic there’s no need for it at all. Think of all the money we are saving.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      Yep – I work remote and have done for seven years now, and since I work with medical records we’re paperless and no hard copy, like I’m not even allowed to hook my work computer up to a printer, so they don’t give us anything in the way of office supplies. I have a 11×14 whiteboard next to my chair and otherwise, I think I might be on my second pad of post-its in seven years. (And I went through most of those for non-work reasons, they were just handy.)

  312. A.*

    I once got pushback ordering tissues & hand sanitizer because they didn’t count as office supplies. I could never get approval for them from that person, except during flu season when I was able to bargain that I didn’t want everyone to be spreading germs everywhere, and I would order a ton more than we needed so they would last longer.

    This was pre-covid and they eventually quit and I was able to let people blow their noses & clean their hands at work even when it wasn’t flu season but I’d been an admin for 11 years at that point and had to deal with all kinds of wild office supplies drama and that was a new one to me. I see above that I wasn’t the only one, but geez.

    I’d also never had to lock up a supplies cabinet but did at this job, because of the way supplies were paid for: several departments on one floor, each department paid for their own supplies, no one knew which cabinet had their supplies in it and other departments were taking ours. It was get a key or start a stupid territory fight.

    At another job where we were more willing to spend money treating employees like human beings, I had to start locking up snacks because people would get into the refill stash when I wasn’t looking and I would run out without realizing it and then hear complaining (usually from the thieves themselves) that I didn’t refill what they wanted fast enough. Maybe if you hadn’t cleared out the drawer (in my desk!) without telling me? I was happy to feed everyone (and myself) but people got entitled over them so fast.

    I did consider it a win when people stopped feeling like they had to tiptoe around asking for supplies though. I was willing to have the stupid fights over tissues and teach them snack boundaries if they knew they could come to me when they needed something. I never wanted anyone to bring something from home if it was a real need and I could get the company to pay for it :)

  313. At this rate, I'd take an abacus*

    Our paper, paper clip, pens, scissors situation is fine.

    But our computers? They are 13 years old. Some days it takes half an hour to boot. Running more than two programs at a time is risky. I’ve been requesting a new computer for two years.

  314. ShadowShrugged*

    At my first job, I worked for a company that kept track of how many office supplies you were consuming. They didn’t stop you from getting more if you said you needed it, but it was a line in our annual review. “This year you used X rolls of paper and XX pens.” They didn’t account for prints or anything, just resources pulled from the supply closet. There was no stated reason for telling us this information, and they said it didn’t have bearing on raises or bonuses. “We just take it into account in a general way.” Maybe it was meant to cause us to pause before drawing more, in case we really were using too much?

    In a general way, it was just frustrating on its own. But the boss, who ran the branch office, was clearly subject to this treatment, too. His solution? “Borrow” pens from his staff to sign something, or off a meeting table, then walk away with the pen in his shirt pocket. Being quite far too outspoken, I tried calling him on it a couple times. Once he returned the pen. Once he just winked at me and kept walking. And then in my annual review, all those pens he “borrowed” would be listed on my review, not his!

    So I came up with a devious plan: I learned to chew on my pens. Rather than set pens down in meetings, I stuck the end in my mouth and held it with my teeth. At my desk, while I was thinking, the end of the pen went in my mouth, and chewed. All my pens had tooth marks on the caps and the ends of the pens. Once, and only once, he asked me for a pen after that. I pulled the one I had out of my mouth and said “sorry, it’s a bit damp, but you’re welcome to it.” He never, ever, asked me for a pen again, and I worked there 3 more years.

    Nasty habit, though, took me over 9 years to break myself of doing it constantly. Even 15 years later, I still find myself carrying pens in my mouth from time to time. But mostly they don’t have tooth marks on them any more.

  315. Tired Accountant*

    I work at a fairly large company and we are given NO office supplies. There’s a handful of pens in a random drawer and printer paper. Other than that, bring your own. I was uncomfortable that my manager had bought my own 1st day supplies of pens and a notebook until I realized we get nothing.

  316. kkt*

    So many of the office supplies my former organization bought were such cheap pieces of crap I bought my own out of pocket. Staplers that last for maybe two strips of staples before they start jamming all the time, pens that you have to “start” for 2 minutes before you’ll get any ink out of them, paper that would jam our copy machines. The only trouble with bringing your own is that people will notice and try to steal them.

  317. Milton*

    I worked for a Fortune 50 company that was “conserving” office supplies. We had a lot of printed paper at the time and I had to ask the department’s supply manager whenever I needed more staples. He would respond with a loud sigh and then proceed dig through a box of staples to hand me one row of staples. One row!!! This of course didn’t last long and I would have to see him again for a new row of staples. Multiply this by ten people in the department. Sadly, this went on for almost two years… until I switched departments and received an entire box of staples! It’s really the little things that can be discouraging.

  318. Essess*

    Our admin would make it difficult to request new pens, so when I had pens I watched them closely to keep people from taking them. However, my boss would frequently stop by my desk, pick up my pen while talking to me, then walk off with it in his hand. Then later when I would go get my pen, he would deny that it was mine.
    I finally went out and special ordered a bunch of pens that had my name imprinted on them. After about a week, I walked into his office and scooped up a handful of pens from his desk and showed him my name engraved on every one of them before I left with them.

  319. Lalaith*

    My brother-in-law, some years ago, had a job that involved lots of assembling of computer equipment, so he and his coworkers would order a bunch of CAT-5 (ethernet) cables. Someone in his department – I don’t even know if it was a manager or supply person, or just someone who got a bee in their bonnet – decided that they were spending too much money ordering cables that were already cut to specific lengths, and they could just buy a big spool of CAT-5 and cut it and add the connectors themselves. My BIL didn’t want to bother with that, so he actually calculated the time it would take and showed them that, at the rate all of these people were paid, it was more expensive to the company to have them spend their time making their own cables than to just buy the precut ones.

  320. Oh Behave!*

    We had an office manager who HATED to spend money on supplies. I would get so frustrated with her because she dragged her heels in replacing a printer cartridge. We finally got it through her head that this was an essential supply.

  322. Regular In Form And Authentic*

    The entirety of my spouse’s exit review from Evil Company You’ve Definitely Heard Of was about the decision when they moved into new corporate offices to stock the men’s restroom with cheap sandpaper toilet paper while the women’s restroom got the nice(r) stuff.

    He definitely had other valid complaints about the place, but didn’t mention them.

    1. Susan Ivanova*

      Wow. The upper floor, where the exec were, was said to have seriously nice toilet paper, but ours was perfectly fine.

      If I knew about a gender-based TP disparity, I would have cooperated in a stealth redistribution of the TP wealth.

  323. Annony*

    I brought in fancy push pins to use for the board at my desk to make it look nice (kinda a drab room) and people kept stealing them because for some reason no one ordered any pushpins. I finally decided to place an order myself through he procurement system and got 100 push pins for $1.00. I then swapped all of the stolen pushpins for the office ones and still had plenty to spare.

  324. Sorrento*

    I used to work for a company that had a very strict code which included forbidding all office supplies from a specific area where I did most of the work. When I say all supplies I mean it: no paper, pens, pencils, post-it notes, notebooks, nothing. We were only allowed to go in with the clothes we were wearing and our badge. People were fired because they went into the area (aptly named Clean Room) holding a piece of paper or a pen. In that case the drama was getting caught with office supplies inside the clean room!

  325. Donkey Hotey*

    I really hope this isn’t too late.
    So, when I started my current job, one of the few women in the company – Chrissy – processed teapot orders. Basically, she had to read the order, find and print the teapot drawing, paper clip the drawing to the order, and route the stacks to the appropriate teapot manufacturing departments. When the manufacturers finished, another person – Jack – delivered the teapots to shipping. There were several hundred orders a day, so Chrissy was perpetually using lots of paper clips and Jack was perpetually accumulating paper clips and delivering them to Chrissy. (Because reasons, there were two standard sizes of paper clips at our office.)
    I will pause to point out that Chrissy was very young and very attractive and that Jack was very middle aged and very thirsty. Moreover, Jack thought he was being subtle. (Narrators voice: He was not subtle.)
    Every day, I would walk past to see Jack leaning against Chrissy’s desk with all the annoying, “So, how’s your mother?” sort of chatting up that middle aged thirsty men love to use. Jack would be “sorting paper clips.”
    One day, the head of manufacturing walked in to see this and it was one of the few times I’ve heard “WTF” said in its entirety in a professional setting. “What are you doing?” “I’m sorting paper clips for Chrissy.” “GET BACK TO WORK.”
    About a week later, someone found one of those prop/gag foot-long paperclips. They hung it on a chain, assembled the ENTIRE company together, and gave the necklace to Jack.
    End note: about a month later, Chrissy left to finish her graduate degree in Economics and the teapot orders fell to me. I had that side job for about four years. For some reason, Jack never did come by to deliver paperclips.

  326. Raine*

    Back in the early 1990s, when I was an executive assistant, I temped at the IT department of a phone company. I was going through the department’s office supply cabinet – a six-foot-tall, four-feet-wide cabinet, and discovered it had not only been stocked to brimming, but it had a three-inch stack of punch cards, 40 desk staplers (for a department of 20), and enough binder clips and paper clips to supply the entire floor for years. When I tried to redistribute the supplies, dumping the items that either didn’t work, were damaged, or would not be used by our department, one of the senior programmers went through my stack and whined to me about how I needed to keep everything and how I didn’t appreciate a hoarding mentality. I asked him if he’d use the sugar-coated wire bins, the dead cockroaches, or the broken staplers. When he realized I wasn’t kidding about those things, he stomped off, muttering about how he hadn’t expected twenty-something me to have an understanding of “what needed disposal.”

  327. Christmas850*

    Back in college, I was pretty new at a data entry job and asked someone where the office supplies were. I went where they told me, an area which happened to be in an aisle behind it elderly woman‘s desk. As I started to pass behind her, she literally stood up to physically block me and started shouting “STOP!! WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK THEY CAN JUST WALK PAST ME AND TAKE WHATEVER THEY WANT?!? STOP IT! YOU DIDN’T EVEN ASK!!” etc. Everyone was staring at us. I backed up slowly with my hands in the air, because she freaked me out, but also to indicate how much she was overreacting. I loudly and calmly replied, “I’ll never do it again, trust me.“ I worked there for seven months and never again spoke to her or even looked her in the eye. There were a couple of times it seemed like she was trying to start a conversation with me but I just walked away. Crazy people make me super uncomfortable.

  328. Aunt Piddy*

    Oh man, my first job out of law school was SO STINGY. I’d worked in offices before, but I hadn’t lived in my chosen town for long, and I figured maybe it was regional? (It wasn’t).

    We had to fill out a form for any office supplies we needed and have it signed by one of the partners, then take it to the office manager. I requested six pens, to have some on hand. I got it signed by a partner. The office manager brought me back two pens because she didn’t think I needed that many.

    Once another attorney came into my office and saw half a ream of printer paper sitting next to my printer. She said, “Oh, you need to put that away before *partner* sees it!”

    I was confused and said, “But I filled out a form for it?”

    “I know, but he’ll be mad if he sees it. I’m just trying to keep you from getting in trouble.”

    Just the tip of the iceberg with that place. I lasted six months.

  329. mc*

    Another one from higher ed. I moved to another office location in a newer building, which meant it was 15 years old instead of 40. All of the furniture matched, but it was wearing out after 15 years. The office chairs were Aeron style chairs with mesh seats.

    First, they provided me with a chair in my office with it’s Aeron style mesh seat that had a huge rip in it, making it not useable. I put the damaged chair in the hallway with a sign saying “please dispose”, and I asked the office manager to order me a new chair. She said the chairs were “expensive” and thus they could not order any new ones under any circumstances. In addition, the ripped chair mysteriously re-appeared in my office. After several cycles of this, I physically threatened the facilities manager and he finally vanished the damaged chair and found me a “new” chair for my office.

    Except my “new” chair was actually old and very used, such that the mesh seat was very stretched out. Whenever anyone sat on this chair, they necessarily sat directly onto the metal swivel mechanism under the seat which was of course very uncomfortable. I showed this problem to the facilities manager and again, he said that chairs were very expensive and we could not buy any new ones. There were no extra chairs that were functional apparently anywhere on campus. It was also against policy for me to purchase and use my own chair.

    Fortunately for my butt, COVID happened and we all transitioned to working from home. I still haven’t gone back to my office….BTW, this is at one of the wealthiest Universities in the U.S.

  330. TheWho*

    Pre-Covid, I was on a consulting team that worked on the client site. This meant that we could use the client’s printers and standard size paper, but pens, staples, pencils, scotch tape, tissues, pushpins and A3 paper (in short supply for some reason) had to be purchased by our company. We chugged along for about a year but finally ran out of supplies and put in a large order at an office supply store. Since it was being delivered, we added a couple boxes of bottled water, sanitizing wipes and other sundry that the team admin kept in her office but all could use. It came up to $300 or so.
    Then the team admin got chewed out by the division admin for ordering unnecessary supplies, like slightly better pens that cost a dime more than the cheapest, and so forth. Water and cleaners were also deemed unnecessary, and OMG the A3 paper is so expensive! I should mention that our team was VERY profitable and the cost of supplies was literally a drop in the bucket considering the revenue division was getting from our contract.
    This happened just after the division leadership went on a retreat at a posh resort in the area, where they engaged in strategic planning and essential team-building exercises involving cigars, rare vintages and single malts.

    1. Raine*

      Oh, the hypocrisy of that kind of nitpicking on cost makes me so mad. Like, we wouldn’t be in this pickle if you hadn’t dropped over $100k on taking the leadership on a retreat that was likely only 1% focused on the company and 99% on the location.

  331. Changing my name to protect the innocent*

    Our big deal for the past two years has been whiteboards. We all had them in our old building (some had two or even three!) but when we built our shiny new campus a couple of years ago, there were none in the offices. Only common areas. There were a couple of rolling boards on each floor in addition to the common area whiteboards on the walls, which people immediately took into their offices and haven’t returned. The walls facing the hallway are glass, but we aren’t allowed to write on them. I also just found out that hanging whiteboards in offices is against policy (???). I found this out because someone at our org asked for a whiteboard for accommodation for their ADHD. It was approved by everyone necessary and then they were told that hanging whiteboards wasn’t allowed. (They are working on a different solution for this person, but the process has been silly.)

    We were told when we moved in in late 2019 that we’d be able to request whiteboards after a few months of being in the new offices. Then we were told “not yet”. Then COVID happened. And, recently, when I asked about them, I was told they JUST NOW got a sample in, but they hadn’t actually chosen which whiteboards to get yet, so it’ll still be awhile.

    I know COVID shut some things down, but…uh…no one at my company was furloughed. I really suspect they could have spent some part of the past eighteen months choosing whiteboards that they knew were in very high demand (they were brought up in all-hands meetings and were a subject on the FAQs document about the new building), but…what do I know? And why can’t they just use the same type of board that’s in the common areas?

    1. Raine*

      Because someone has decided the old, traditional whiteboards you had aren’t good enough and wants some super deluxe version?

      1. Changing my name to protect the innocent*

        The ones in the common areas are actually SUPER nice and brand new, like everything else. The entire building is new and designed specifically for us. That’s what’s so confounding. I think they thought they could save money by having them as by-request-only items, but it has only caused mounting frustration in most groups. Especially when we were told we could request them after two months, and then suddenly were told we had to wait…and that was nearly two years ago.

    2. Susan Ivanova*

      It almost sounds like the Mothership that I worked at, except nobody complained about us writing on the glass and there were hanging whiteboards in the rooms that had non-glass walls. Also I’m sure the whiteboards were decided on very early on, because the level of detail in the design process was intense. (Other than not realizing that maybe we should put some stickers up on the glass so people don’t walk into it. Yeah, if you think you know where this is, you’re probably right.)

  332. animaniactoo*

    In a former company, people were taking home the toilet paper from the supply closet. It was regular, it was noted, we got memos about it.

    Eventually the management decided they were tired of it, and installed the big industrial toilet paper holders in the bathroom – the kind you find in highway rest stops. And switched to using industrial sized rolls. Problem solved. It was not convenient to steal toilet paper that wouldn’t fit on your home roll holder.

    Within a month, somebody stole one of the rollholders out of a bathroom stall.

    As far as I know, they never figured out who it was.

  333. BlueKazoo*

    Multiple times I’ve worked places where batteries are currency that constantly get traded around amongst support staff. One time I was seriously frustrated because my wireless mouse stopped working and no batteries. They did track down a wired mouse and eventually the batteries. Literally the wireless setup itself was easier to get than replacement batteries. SMH.

  334. Gypsy, Acid Queen*

    In my office, we constantly reuse file folders to temporarily sort items. In the first few months of working here, I had the audacity to buck this system and ask to order at $3 pack of file folder label to stick over the already-written-over 5+ times labels. My manager pulled me into her office and gave me a 45 minute tutorial on how to use a pencil to cross out a label on a folder and then lectured me on unnecessary expenses ruining our budget. Needless to say, our budget’s downfall wasn’t in the office supply department and the minute she was let go I bought that dang pack of labels and now use them to my heart’s content.

    1. Raine*

      I don’t miss being an executive/department administrative assistant for the monthly lectures on how much was spent on “unnecessary” office supplies. Like it was my fault for ordering what people needed when it wasn’t in the cabinet to be used. Meanwhile, some VIP spent $$ on new, full-color posters advertising a short-term promotion for employees.

  335. kiwidg*

    If anyone gets this far in the comments:

    My company stopped buying most office supplies. No more file folders or pads of paper. We’re supposed to be going green and, shucks, you can do everything on your computer now, can’t you?

    We will however, buy you the calendar of your choice – even though everyone uses Outlook to track their calendars?

    1. Rainy*

      Our old finance person, who retired in a huff a few years ago (and not before time, she was a horrible bully), once made an assistant director cry because she had the office supply person order her a pre-dated appointment planner that cost $30 instead of using one of the little freebie branded ones that have tiny boxes for the days.

    2. Raine*

      Reminds me of an old story someone told me back in the early 1990s, not sure how much of it is urban legend. The story goes that UPS, being one of the first companies to embrace paperless technology, had a VP who demanded everyone go paperless. The breaking point was one day when he asked his admin assistant to take notes and she replied that she couldn’t because she didn’t have either pen or paper and wasn’t allowed to have either due to his policy.

  336. biblio*

    I worked in a school where we only ordered supplies once a year. There was much hoarding and horse-trading. A dozen binder clips for a package of post-it notes. Glue sticks were like gold. Library markers do NOT leave the library.

  337. Liz Lemon's Night Cheese*

    On the flip side of hoarding stories, when I started my academic research lab, my father started “donating” his annual collection of hotel pens as a Christmas gift. About four years in, he discovered that you can buy pounds of mis-printed, rather high-quality clicky pens on Amazon for cheap. (He knows that I like clicky-pens better than capped pens, because there are no caps to lose or to fall on the floor and become slip hazards). So now I get pounds of misprinted clicky pens for Christmas gifts, and that is my lab’s regular and unending supply of ballpoint pens for science.

    I also now find the mis-printed clicky pens ALL OVER our department, as they are carried away and re-distributed by students (much as birds redistribute seeds). Better pens, no spending government dollars on subpar pens, and no administrative bullhockey.

    1. Serin*

      I went up to Amazon to check this out, and the moment I typed “misp” in the search bar, five or six different searches on the theme of “misprinted pens” popped up. We may be manipulating the cheap pen market.

  338. Flamingal*

    In 2018, I asked my then office manager if I could get rid of the 500 floopy disks stored in our (overflowing) supply closet. She said yes. She just hadn’t had a chance to do it … in 15 years.

  339. Baffled Teacher*

    I have a slight *cough cough* office supply shopping problem so I never have to worry about what is or isn’t in the supply closet. Which is good, because I’m a teacher. I don’t buy paper, but I could probably give out gift bags of post its and sharpies at this point!

  340. Susan Ivanova*

    Our brand new building came with entire walls coated with whiteboard paint, and an open office supply station well stocked with blue canisters of whiteboard wet-wipes *and* yellow canisters of bleach wet-wipes that were the exact same size.

    Do you know what happens to whiteboard paint if you wipe it down with bleach? It ceases to be a whiteboard and has to be repainted. Now guess which of the two canisters someone had helpfully placed in every room. And even with signs put up in the supply station, people would still pick the bright yellow instead of the blue when replacing canisters. Those of us who read labels would replace any bleach canisters we spotted.

    1. Ginger Baker*

      Of course, because Ivanova is always right, and definitely things would go better if people just listened to Ivanova from the start!

  341. Janet*

    I had a strange experience at a previous employer. Everything, including pens and pencils, was locked up in a supply cabinet. When I first got there, I asked for a couple of pens. I put them in my desk.

    The next morning they were gone. It happened 3 or 4 more times. Then I put them in the side rather than the middle drawer and nobody was stealing them. I’m still stumped by this mystery.
    Who was going into my drawer and taking the pens out, and why?

  342. molls*

    I used to work in a primary care doctor’s office where we had to start locking up the URINE SAMPLE CUPS instead of just leaving a basketful in the bathroom because the patients would steal them! I have never been able to figure out why!

  343. Cute Li'l UFO*

    Oh my goodness. I just remembered the dysfunctional place where there were snacks. There was also a lot of waste. Bags of salami left out on the counter, fruit rotting in the fridge, etc etc.

    The CFO decided to berate us over lemons. Yes, let’s avoid the massive waste of everything else and focus on the fact that no one in the office is starting up an impromptu master cleanse, no one’s making lemonade, and no one is picking up a lemon for a refreshing bite à la the Shelbyville lemons. It was the only fruit currently moldering away in the breakroom and yet the CFO sent this long rambling email about how the company doesn’t care about the nice fresh fruit that get ordered (I had tried to bring it up that maybe we could look at quantity ordered and favorites, but no that was too logical and the solution was apparently just to stuff yourself with snacks all day?) and we should be grateful we have fruit (read: LEMONS). HUGE SACKS of COSTCO LEMONS. What the !#&$ were we supposed to do with them!?

    Well, I guess we could have kept scruvy away. The waste and carelessness drove me and my coworker (with a couple young kids) absolutely nuts too to the point where we’d been told to take cheese, little packs, anything fresh because the only foods that were getting depleted were things that had a far-off expiry date.

  344. Katherine*

    When I was working for local government (in Australia, and it’s a whole weird world of its own, but one of the major things is that firing someone is basically impossible), two awful people in the department were leaving to start their own business. One of the two was a bully and really aggressive, and the other was a sheep who ran bleating after his bully leader. When they announced they were leaving, and got to their final day, we had a tea party in the office (after they had gone out for a final celebratory lunch and decided they weren’t coming back for the last afternoon, so without them, and yes, we planned it that way).

    I was usually first in the office, and came in the day after they announced they were leaving, having given two weeks’ notice. They were at the stationery cupboard, picking things out of it. Okay, not too strange since people need stationery. Except they were emptying it into a box. Pens. Reams of paper. Printer cartridges. Staplers. Everything. The department secretary came in, saw the cupboard was basically empty, and ordered it all again. Next morning, same thing happened. I reported it to our department director, and was told not to do anything about it since they were leaving anyway. Each day, the stationery cupboard was emptied into boxes by these two every morning and replenished by the receptionist every day. Goodness knows what it cost!

    These guys got more brazen. They printed off reams and reams with their new business letterhead and hundreds of envelopes. People found things missing from their desks if they looked good (filing drawers, mugs, etc.) and still nothing happened. Everyone started to take their stuff home. Finally, on the last day, after the two guys left for their farewell lunch, a group of us went into the bully’s office. He had basically stripped the place. There was a desk, chair and computer. No phone books, no paperwork, no notes for their replacement, nothing. It’s still the most shocking thing I’ve seen, made worse by the fact that nobody would do anything about it.

  345. June*

    I have tendinitis in my wrists which makes prolonged keyboard typing painful. I purchased myself out of pocket a wrist foam keyboard pad. It really helped. Other people tried it and liked it. It was labeled in BIG BOLD LETTERS with my name. Lo and behold it was missing one day. In a very large department with private offices. I asked around and waited a week. Nothing. I then called SECURITY and made a report and made sure to tell many people to spread this news lol. Well a MIRACLE occurred. The thief returned it two nights later and stuffed it behind my computer (which had already been searched) lol. It was a $20 item, but mine, in a private office. Not the money but the principal.

  346. Anon for this*

    I was working for a company that had me outsourced to a hospital billing department. When we had the initial meeting with both my manager and the billing department manager and the asst. manager present, I was asked what kind of office supplies I would require. This took me aback because I was used to just talking to the office manager or going into a supply closet and getting whatever. I listed a few things off the top of my head: pens, legal pads, hanging file folders, Post-It notes, stapler, staples.

    My manager didn’t blink. The billing department manager looked as if I had said I would only write with Montblanc pens made of solid gold. He and the assistant manager exchanged glances. Finally he said, that there would be a phone and he thought they might be able to get me some pens and a pad (singular). My manager quickly said that they would supply me with the other items. The billing department manager was very relieved, but he said on no account could I bring Post-It notes into the office no matter who bought them.

    The logic ran that if I brought Post-It notes, everyone else would be jealous and would start demanding Post-It Notes of their own. Apparently there was a big philosophical objection to Post-It Notes.

    This was the job that prompted me to look into graduate school so I could get away from there.

  347. Silverose*

    In the government agency office I worked in for a while, people were always stealing each other’s pens because half of us brought in our own good ones to avoid the nasty cheap ones provided on the government’s dime. I watched mine like a hawk – I was the only one who used purple for note-taking most of the time I worked there, and they were the good Pilot G-2 gel ink pens. For official court documents, we could sign in either black or blue when I started, but a few months later there was kerfuffle and suddenly we could only sign documents in blue ink thereafter, causing a rush on blue pens office-wide. Apparently there was a mix up somewhere of someone not being able to tell if a court filing signed in black ink was original or the copy, hence the order to sign only in blue from them on.

    1. Donkey Hotey*

      And the devious part of me would want to find blue refill cartridges and put them in the purple G2 cases so people would steal them (less.)

  348. JustaTech*

    My story is less about office supplies than the space we were given to keep our office supplies.

    Back in 2019 we had a building renovation (that only one department was allowed input on, but anyway). And the new look is very “open” and “clean” and “modern” (ie, zero storage or privacy). The few cabinet we have all match nicely and have the most pointless tiny handles ever invented. The cabinets also go all the way to the ceiling, which is very high (like 15+ feet).

    So what did they choose to store in the very high cabinets by the printer, the ones that are so high you need not just a stepstool but a step ladder to reach?

    The reams of printer paper. You know, the heavy stuff. The cabinet on the floor is for other things, like the box of floppy disks (no I am not lying).

  349. singlemaltgirl*

    that idea that paper clips were traded for favours made me laugh.

    i’ve been in offices with locked cabinets/closets and i always found if you got in good with the gatekeeper and didn’t ask for much, you’d be fine. but i think those were the places that caused me to buy my own things. i don’t much care for the bog standard, utility pens – i’m left handed and tend to press down hard (for whatever reason) and the flex grips save my fingers. so i buy them in bulk and stash some in my purse/bag/drawers. i also don’t like liquid white out – i prefer that ‘tape’ stuff. i like colourful paperclips and binder clips and such. so i generally will buy myself a little set of things i want to use and keep it stashed in my drawers. and the habit has stuck even in places where i lead and we’re not militant about the supply cabinets. it’s all honour system but they’re mostly small offices and people are pretty respectful. it’s also non profit so people tend to be more conscientious about budget constraints and all that.

    people are weird about toilet paper, though. we had to find a brand that everyone was ok with at the last place i was at. the previous place was an environmental org so ALL procurement went through a rigorous checklist. for those items we couldn’t procure reasonably and sustainably, we recorded it and what we’d done to source local/sustainable. it cost us more but we lived our values. i still try to be environmental elsewhere and my learning from that place helped me procure more locally sourced things that i knew were comparable in cost (or not that far off) from the cheaper overseas/non local alternatives.

  350. No paper towels for you!*

    For the paper towel war, I would be so tempted to buy brand 4 and declare that’s the single brand we’re using now! (no idea how well this will work, have never been in charge of ordering supplies)

  351. whiteboards are fun*

    Luckily we don’t have office supply gatekeepers. However, during the (what feels like) yearly office migration, whiteboard markers and erasers become scarce resources. For some reason, nobody takes their existing supplies with them, and there never seems to be any left by the previous owner in the new space you’re moving into. People will go to different floors or come in early to grab a set from the supply closet for their space the day after the move!

  352. Snuck*

    Two different jobs:

    One there was a self styled ‘business cost reduction’ person who was universally disliked. We all were in the ‘business’ of cost reduction, so why this person thought locking up the stationary was beyond us – we spent about $2,000 a year total on pens and notebooks and post its (copy paper was another issue and had it’s own budget line, but still it wasn’t in the tens of thousands!) – but they had to be locked up so ‘people can’t take them home for school students’. She presented every month on the ‘savings on excessive stationary use’ for months, until I pointed out that the amount of time we spent talking about it this year alone exceeded the savings given we were all being paid $100k+ a year to sit around and discuss stationary. She had us trade in pens when out of ink (and we were given a cheap BIC refill to put back in the pen carcass – no new pen for you!), she locked down copy paper so we’d be running around other floors late into the night stealing their copy paper so we could do early morning presentations (but it wasn’t her job to check the four copiers on our floor were full of course before she left for the day!), you had to show her your full notebook before she’d give you a new one. We all just shopped elsewhere so her savings looked ‘good’ hahahah.

    Another job I was responsible for a national bank’s stationary contract – hundreds of branches, one primary supplier, that had just kicked over to online catalogues. You can imagine the fury of hundreds of admin staff not getting their hands on the big fat stationary catalogues anymore?! It was intense! We negotiated some pretty serious price reductions on getting rid of literally thousands of catalogues that the supplier had to courier all over hte country on a whim, but people were Not Impressed.

  353. nozenfordaddy*

    My company decided to stop buying a specific size/type of sticky note that I love. I didn’t have a fit though – I just ordered a massive stack of the things from Amazon. But then the supply we had ran out and suddenly people were asking me where I got my elusive lined stickies. Some seemed surprised that you can just purchase these things yourself if you don’t want to se what the company is providing. Most of them just started using a different kind of sticky note. I also buy my own pens because I loathe the ones they buy for the office.

  354. elleanor*

    I used to be in charge of buying tea and coffee for our department. This was not my main job, more like a side job that all the junior members got (e.g., someone else did catering for infrequent events).

    When I first started, I asked what kind of coffee I should buy, and was told whole bean. I then got a *very* angry email from the admin about how “grinding the coffee disturbed our big boss.” (There was a coffee grinder for communal use). The admin retired a few months later and her parting gift was a large, very quiet coffee grinder.

    (As a side note, this was in the government, so we had to have a fund of personal money to stock this coffee and tea. I had to ask for contributions, and kept an envelope of hundreds of dollars in cash in a drawer, to reimburse myself from every time I made a purchase).

  355. Robot devices*

    This is very Silicone Valley, but my company got a device vending machine where you could get a new mouse the same way you could a bag of chips: one letter, 2 numbers, and it dropped down. However, you had to scan your card and that automatically tied the device back to you. I was shocked at how many people thought it was just free range for whatever and “bought” 3 pairs of AirPods (one for home, one for work, and an extra just in case) and were shocked and upset when IT immediately contacted them and told them to return 2 of the pairs. It took IT one day to put lock down controls on the machine so that you could only get 1 of everything. Then, people started getting things they didn’t even need, and would keep them wrapped and new in their desks until they needed to trade them or whatever. One guy scanned for a single device every day and got caught trying to return them (without a receipt) to a store at the mall nearby. It was so wild and I could not believe how entitled everyone was. I sat right in front of the machine and would hear the most bonkers comments.

    Pro tip from the IT team: when someone puts in their notice, immediately cut off their supply card access because that is when they go on a spree.

  356. Angie*

    I have a pop up post it note dispenser. Office decided the pop up notes were too expensive vs. standard post it notes, so now I have to buy my own pop up notes for my dispenser.

  357. buggs*

    I requested a can of bug spray and I was given an empty one from 1986 and the admin assistant tried to gaslight me about whether it was empty or not (it was). I asked if the departmental budget couldn’t support a new can of bug spray and she answered “I’m sure I could find another if I looked. But that one’s fine”

    1. Toasted Coconut*

      Oh lordy… I kept asking and begging and pleading for a can of air freshener or any odour neutralizing contraption for the office (I work at an organisation that sometimes involves smelly clients). Staff were forbidden to bring air fresheners, reed diffusers, scented candles or anything that wasn’t approved by the office health guidelines, but management would refuse to provide anything for the office, let alone allow us to open windows !

  358. essie*

    I once worked in a Christian company where Christian values were valued. Most of that was a good thing, but occasionally the toxic idea that “you’re a Christian so you can’t complain about valid issues because complaining is not biblical” would surface. Not everyone was like that, but the person who ordered office supplies was. I was told that the office receptionist would order any office supplies we needed, so once I asked if she could order us a new scissors or just a scissors sharpener for the office because the scissors we had were decades old and so dull. I was told scissors were too expensive and didn’t fit in the budget. I reiterated that I was asking because there was a real need – I was struggling to cut things and wasting too much time trying to get the dull scissors to cut just a piece of paper. She told me in a cheery voice that I work at a Christian company and am expected to display Christian values, which includes not complaining. No scissors were ever ordered or sharpened. Many papers were mangled.

    1. essie*

      Forgot to add that I then took matters into my own hands and brought my own knife sharpener from home and tried my best to sharpen the scissors. Later a coworker yelled at me because apparently knife sharpeners are different than scissors sharpeners and according to him, I ruined the scissors by using the wrong sharpener that time. Oops. I hadn’t known that, but I was only trying to sharpen them because they were so dull to begin with. The scissors were still unusable after I attempted to fix it, but I don’t think I made it any worse. He still holds it over my head that I ruined the scissors. Funny that. I thought the problem was that our company is too cheap to by a scissors or a sharpener, but I guess not.

    2. Serin*

      > “you’re a Christian so you can’t complain about valid issues because complaining is not biblical”

      The Bible is at least 10% complaints.

      1. Nerdo*

        Jesus even gripes to God while he’s hanging on the cross … even though according to doctrine, he *is* God.

    3. just passing through*

      “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Prov. 27:17). This verse teaches us that keeping tools sharp is a Christian value; therefore, you are entitled to a pair of working scissors.
      (I started this as a joke, but I think I might be right. Maybe I should run it by my friend who is a theologian.)

  359. That's MY pen*

    I like a certain brand and color of pens, and the place I work only buys the really cheap pens, so I just buy my own. However I’m very bad at not leaving my pens wherever I may be working. If my entire workplace wanted to use those pens they could, I leave so many around.

    However some people know those are MY pens, and will even come to my desk to give me back “my” pens.

  360. iglwif*

    In ExJob, the CEO was weirdly resistant to ever buying new chairs. Like, I’m not talking about an intern demanding a brand-new $800 Aeron chair! I’m talking about people having to keep using chairs with broken hydraulics, fraying upholstery, and flattened padding because we couldn’t get permission to order a $150 chair from Staples.

    At one point my spouse’s office was renovating one of their locations and throwing away chairs that didn’t match the new colour scheme, and he and I literally drove down there and collected half a dozen chairs and drove them to my office, because although they weren’t new, they were so much better than what my office had. It was BANANAS.

    1. Irishgirl*

      This makes me laugh as my company replaced everyone’s chairs with those $800 chairs over a few years so now even the lowly interns get one…. But our office supplies are locked up and they don’t pay for tissues

  361. Ainuvande*

    O.M.G. I listened to a solid 5 minute whine the other day because the person who orders supplies got regular post-its instead of the accordion ones. Whiner didn’t ask orderer to get the right ones next time, and expressly didn’t want me to bring it up even though I manage both of them. She didn’t even want reimbursement for picking up the”right” post-its on her own dime. *Headdesk*

    I eventually cut her off to go back to work, and quietly asked that accordion post-its be on the next order without naming names. Why, dear universe, why? And can I get that 5 minutes back,please?

  362. Jojo*

    I was at a job interview, and in the middle someone abruptly swung open my interviewer’s office door and announced, panicked and slightly out of breath, “now he’s stealing reams of paper!”

    My interviewer was like, “excuse me, I have to deal with this.” And stepped out. A minute later, returned like nothing happened, and picked up where we left off.

    Weeks later, I relay to my friend in the industry that I interviewed there, and she said “I assume [named partner] wasn’t there, bc of the restraining order.”

    Apparently the named partners had a not so amicable business breakup, which I found myself in the middle of during my ill fated interview.

  363. kimberly*

    I’m a nurse. At the time this happened I was working weekends in a hospital and had a bunch of extra time during the week so I decided to see if I liked working in Home Health. I ended up taking a casual job with my local branch of the State’s HH agency. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a “casual” job in nursing means that you don’t really have a set schedule and have a lot of input in what hours you work and when you work them.

    So since I was casual, I wasn’t in the office a lot. But they gave me a key and a desk so I could go in and grab supplies whenever I needed to and I had a place to sit and chart if I didn’t want to chart at home. I’d never had my own desk before and in a fit of — I don’t really know what — excitement? — I went to Office Depot and got myself some nice office supplies. Since this was a state agency there weren’t any company provided fancy office supplies. I was OK with that — I didn’t mind buying my own nice stuff. I went a little nuts with the post-its and must have bought five different kinds in different colors, different sizes, different styles. I stopped in the office one night to refill my nursing bag and drop off my charting and while I was there I stocked my desk with my newly purchased supplies.

    I went back later in the week and my post-its were no longer in my desk. Instead, someone had taken all of the fancy colorful multi-sized post-its I had purchased with my own money and put them in the office supply closet. WTH?

    I was so shocked I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. But its been over 15 years and when I see large lined post-its I remember and it pisses me off all over again.

  364. Sleeping Late Every Day*

    Oh, office supply nightmares! The Prison Matron of Supplies at my longest job drove everyone crazy. If you wanted paper clips, you couldn’t just get a small box of them. Oh, no. PMS would ask how many you needed and count them out into an envelope and hand that to you, snapping “Don’t waste them!” Need a pen? You could get ONE cheapo Bic. I had to take extensive notes during client calls, and needed new notebooks. I preferred steno pads because of the flip top. Not good enough. PMS wanted me to photocopy my used notebook so SHE could determine what I needed, although nothing in our jobs overlapped, nor was I in an admin position like she was. Luckily, I was on good terms with the head admin person, so I’d just email her in the other building, telling her that PMS was holding the supplies hostage, and things would improve for a few months.

  365. anonymilk*

    Not office supplies exactly, but where I work we had an ongoing situation of someone putting water in the supplied milk. People would go to make a hot drink and when they tried to put milk in the milk would be watery.

    We checked the milk when we opened the carton. It was fine. We made a laminated sign that said DO NOT PUT WATER IN THE MILK and stuck it on the fridge. When that didn’t work we put the sign in front of the milk in the fridge door. It kept happening sporadically. There is a rule that the milk is only for hot drinks, so we assumed some graduate student was misusing the milk for cereal or something and attempting to cover their tracks. That didn’t really make sense but neither did any other theory.

    This went on for years. Eventually several of us realised it had been enough years that it couldn’t be a graduate student and there were also a limited number of staff who’d been around long enough. At that point the person restocking the milk each day started dating the bottom of the carton. And that was how we found out that no one was putting water in the milk, they were *stealing the full carton, taking yesterday’s empty carton out of the recycling, putting water in it, and putting it in the fridge*.

    A few days later we identified the culprit. Thankfully the person no longer works here and the milk finally stays milky!

  366. Phil*

    I don’t have drama, but I’m still amused about when I found a box of unused mint condition 3.5″ floppy disks in the supply cupboard… in 2015.

  367. judyjudyjudy*

    If I may admit my own foibles, I really hate it when people take my scissors — I don’t like combing the laboratory for them! So my scissors have my name on them like a crazy person. I won’t yell at you for taking my scissors, but I’ll think dark thoughts :)

  369. Jasmine Tea*

    My friend worked in a small office where the toilet paper was kept on a shelf outside the restroom. In this country the toilet paper is most often sheets like facial tissue, just thinner. As my friend went into the restroom she took two sheets of paper. Her boss asked, “Why do you need TWO?” The next day she brought her own but quit before the week was out.

  370. Heather*

    We moved from ordering office supplies by department to one person ordering for the whole company. We can take whatever we wanted (no lock or guardian on the new centralized supply closet), but were sternly warned not to “hoard” supplies in our own departments. My department is the largest and, honestly, the most rebellious, and we have people who would take 5 boxes of Kleenex or a couple boxes of pens whenever they went since, honestly, what is the sense in all of us constantly trotting to the other end of the building for supplies. The woman who had been put in charge of the centralized supply ordering actually CAME AND TOOK PICTURES of our supply closet so she could rat us out for hoarding. We also now regularly have to justify to her our requests for simple things like batteries or dry erase markers. I have yet to figure out what frivolous, non-work related uses she thinks we have for dry erase markers.

  371. fluffy*

    I once interviewed at a company that was incredibly regimented in terms of its procurement processes. So much so that during the interview they gave me a tour of the office, and spent a ridiculous amount of time showing off their supply closet to me and the checkout procedure in order to take a pen. And they were extremely PROUD of this process!

  372. jesicka309*

    I worked for an office supply company head office where we didn’t have office supplies. Nothing, zilch.
    If you wanted office supplies you had to go into our retail store and purchase, them submit a reimbursement form. Or order it online through our website and reimburse.
    You could see the light die in every new hire’s face when they were walked to their desk and were confronted with a mishmash of left over keyboards/stationery etc and the 70s desk set up. Not the beautiful stationery/office equipment we advertised.
    The rumour was that once upon a time they had a beautiful cupboard of stock that got ransacked regularly so they did away with it.

  373. Robyn*

    I work in an office full of software developers and we keep a fairly well stocked kitchen of breakfast and lunch items. One of the things we stock is porridge/oatmeal,

    Well, as the grocery orderer, I never thought the brand of porridge was an issue until the time I couldn’t get our ‘regular’ brand, so I ordered a different one.

    I was so so so wrong!

    I sent out some sort of all office email about something completely different and one of the staff took that as an opportunity to reply all to complain about the porridge brand. For the next hour, it was reply all chaos. The brand I bought wasn’t thick enough. No, it was too thick, we must have our original brand. But I hate our original brand, I was happy with the new brand, too bad, blah blah blah on and on. I was losing my mind. Finally our big boss for that office, who had been in a meeting and missed it until he got back to his desk and saw his inbox sent an email saying ‘cut it the f*** out. It’s porridge. Get back to work!’ (Being in the UK the use of the F word is completely normal at an office.)

    I went out of my way to get the ‘correct’ brand after that.

    Then there was a similar series of emails a few weeks later about butter. The early birds were mad that sometimes all the butter was used up by the late finishers on Friday so there was none left on Monday morning. Yes, I then started a running tally of how much butter was in the kitchen so there’d be enough for Monday morning.

  374. Shorts shorts shorts*

    I once worked in an architectural firm (I’m not an architect) which only had one box of coloured pencils for the entire office of 60-odd staff. Being architects they were in frequent demand, so once or twice every week someone sent an email around to all staff asking where the pencils were. Apparently no-one had stopped to think about getting another box, despite the lost productivity from everyone stopping what they were doing to read an email. They weren’t even particularly fancy pencils!

  375. Tired Teach*

    I’m teaching at a low socioeconomic status school – so I knew I’d have to buy a lot of supplies this year. I’ve spent about 300 out of pocket on pencils, paper, and notebooks that they’re required to use.

    This is also the year that stealing from teachers is cool because of TikTok. My scissors were stolen while a sub was running my room and my doorbell was stolen (I don’t hear well so I got a doorbell for kids to use to let me know when they’re outside.) I’m so over it.

  376. LondonLady*

    Wow this takes me back to my first job (in the last century) in what in the UK is called a QUANGO (quasi autonmous non-governmental organisation) ie a publicly funded agency. We had a budget crisis in quarter 3 of the year and it was announced that no new stationery would be purchased until the next financial year, at least 4 months away. This was the era before most work was online, so paper and pens were core tools. It was amazing in some ways how well people adapted, eg using the blank side of old printouts for rough notes in meetings, recycling old index cards as reminder notes, not printing any surplus copies, etc. and some of those efficiency practices stuck. My office jotter remained made up of reused one-sided papers until I left years later.

    1. kitryan*

      I habitually make up little folios of misprinted/used printouts for jotting down notes. I save up a batch of single sided printouts that outlived their initial usefulness and when I have a decent stack, I take it up to the paper cutter and cut it into 4ths. Then each stack gets topped with a binder clip and I use it for jotting things down, to-do lists, action items from a meeting, anything that doesn’t warrant any long term storage. It may not do very much for the environment on its ownbut it makes me feel a bit more… resourceful, I guess? And I always have lots of scratch paper pads whenever I need them.

  377. PlantProf*

    Field plant biologists tend to accumulate large collections of seeds that we harvested from various wild plants and want to use for experiments later. For most plants, the best way to store these is in the small brown key or change envelopes that you can get at almost any office supply store for about $20 for five hundred. Easy enough. However. Most of us are funded by NIH or NSF grants, which explicitly do not allow money to be spent on office supplies. So there’s often a scramble to see if we have enough money from another source to buy our envelopes, or if we have to buy specialty “seed envelopes” from a lab supply company, which are at a minimum 2-3x as expensive as the regular ones, and don’t work any better.

  378. LondonLady*

    I later worked in an office where the staplers kept going missing. We ended up putting one stapler for each block of 4 desks on a string, anchored through one of the IT cable holes AND a label saying which team it belonged to, which worked. Scissors continued to vanish!

  379. K.Tate*

    Not me but my husband. He works for a large company and about 10 years ago the company started stocking red, notebooks in the supply closet. He lost his mind! These are bigger notebooks babe! They are so much better! Think of how many notes I can take! It started slowly, bringing home two or so a week. Then he escalated. They were not stocked for awhile but BOY when they were back… 10-15 a week. Not kidding here. They changed from one color to another. He doubled up. Sadly the site where we lived stopped carrying these notebooks (I can not imagine why…) He went to the main campus like does several times a year. BABE THE NOTEBOOKS ARE HERE!! He stuck at least 30 of those notebooks in all parts of his carry on and backpack. After awhile the main campus stopped carrying the notebooks. So no more coming in. Thank goodness. Fast forward a few years and we move to where main campus is located. The very first day he comes home from work, he comes home without the dinner I asked him to pick up but: OHMYGOD BABE they got the notebooks back!!

  380. PeteyKat*

    About 25 years ago, the person I supported was complaining that people kept stealing her pens (she like the Bic clear crystal barreled pens – not sure what they’re called – blue ink only). So for her birthday, I got her a box of 24 pens and applied labels with her name printed in tiny font. But I had to cut the labels to fit the pen. And then I applied tape over it for additional staying power. She loved it and no one stole her pens again. I’m still friends with her today and I know that she used those pens for like more than 4 years.

  381. Orange Capybara*

    Our office admin has a strange belief: If you put less than a full ream of paper into the copier or printer paper supply will last longer. As if I were to check before printing for the paper status and then adjust my printing behavior accordingly. No, I print stuff because I need stuff printed regardless of the amount of paper left in the device. Well, she is known to be a penny pincher we sometimes have to workaround.

  382. Capt. Dunkirk*

    Two stories:
    1) I worked in a retail bookstore where the staff always needed Sharpies for things, but there were never enough to go around. There were some times where Sharpies were lent out for favors, and sometimes grudges were held over non-returned Sharpies, or even worse, lost ones.
    I was in college at the time working on an art related degree, so I had amassed dozens of Sharpies for various projects. I decided to bring them in to work one day and it completely crashed the Sharpie economy.

    2) I work in a type of production now and the nature of it means people are always moving product and paperwork to each other’s areas and often leaving notes, all of which requires pens. I never liked the pens they provided at work, so I bought a box of my own and just keep one on my person at all times. Because people here have a habit of walking off with a pen after using it, my area has eventually become completely devoid of “work” pens. It doesn’t bother me because I always have one on me, but it’s a source of endless frustration for others when they come to my area and need to leave a note but can’t find a pen anywhere.

  383. Jessie*

    Not quite an office supply, but still funny. When I worked at a music school, the students (mostly kids) would often request glasses of water. Once our disposable cups ran out, I decided to order reusable plastic ones–you know, for the environment. Within a week, all twenty cups I had ordered were missing. I sent out an all-staff email, baffled as to where the cups could have gone. Were people taking them home? Finally, one of the teachers discovered the answer: the kids were throwing them away! They were so used to the disposable ones that it never occurred to them to do anything different. I stuck to disposable after that.

  384. Loremipsum*

    A previous job was at a nonprofit publisher, which stocked the most basic of office supplies: notebooks, pencils, pens, Post-It notes. Yet when December rolled around the catalog came around to select which At-A-Glance calendar to get for the following year. During the 2008 financial crisis, they significantly cut back on supplies and amenities, and the water coolers went away and they put a filter on the faucet. Then that disappeared. Next the entire shipping department was eliminated and replaced with those mailing machines and stacks of USPS boxes and FedEx envelopes, and we had to process all of our own postage. This was not a small task when you were sending out multiple, heavy boxes of books and magazines. I am now working at a government agency where our annual office supplies budget is so meager it is almost totally gone by purchasing toner and paper. As many who work in the public sector know, buying your own pens, tissues, coffee etc is fairly standard. They don’t even provide water, lest someone come through and see flagrant waste of tax dollars on Poland Spring bottles or water coolers. (Although someone likes to order us those At-A-Glance two ring refillable calendars on the plastic bases each year…)

  385. LMM*

    I am a journalist. When I worked for a large national newspaper, at some point in the early 2010s, as we were getting back on our feet post-recession, we were asked to limit our consumption of reporter’s notebooks to one at a time, and stock was limited in supply closets as well. And try taking notes on our laptops or our phones.

    WELL.

    That went over like a lead balloon. You have never met a group of people so possessive of their analog writing tools as old journalists. The notebooks became contraband. People would talk about unguarded supply closets on far-flung floors. And then once, when I was pumping milk in our lactation room, I discovered a stash of reporters’ notebooks hidden in a cabinet in there.

  386. Ashley*

    I worked in a place you had to return your sharpie to get a new one. They also bought the cheap pens which meant you used way more pens because they cheap ones quit working so quickly and hoarding free pens from every tradeshow and hotel. I also personally love the folks that spend an hour online to save $2.50 on the office supply order.

  387. TSNYC*

    I was asked to go to Staples to purchase some supplies. While I was in the checkout line I saw a special color of pens on sale for only $1 and remembered my coworker saying that she really needed that particular color but that we were out of them. So while I was purchasing $300 worth of merchandise, I threw in that $1 of the pens she wanted. I thought I was being nice but that backfired on me because she actually criticized me for making an unauthorized purchase because it wasn’t actually on the shopping list given to me. She told my boss and my boss came over to me and criticized me and embarrassed me in front of the whole office and warned to never make an unauthorized purchase again! From that day forward I never requested any office supplies whatsoever and bought my own supplies cause I never wanted to deal with them again. The $1 pens weren’t even for me! I thought I was going to make my coworker happy. No good deed goes unpunished!

  388. Robin Ellacott*

    I briefly was the Supply Order person, and learned REALLY fast how passionate people are about specifics, often colour. We were new and had a small budget so as instructed I bought decent pens and such, but didn’t spend more for prettiness.

    Once I ordered a bunch of purple ball point pens because they were on sale for the same price as the black/blue ones, so why not have something fun. Biggest mistake of my year. I explained about the one-time sale price and that we didn’t have a budget to spend 5x more for a pretty colour, but those pens haunted me for months.

    People hoarded them. People complained that someone else had two and they didn’t have any. People checked the supplies daily in case more pens had appeared. One person cried about not having one and feeling ‘so excluded’. Another said it made her feel unappreciated that we didn’t keep ordering them. People wrote PURPLE PENS!!!!! on the supplies needed list every week for months. People came to tell me they were so disappointed after each new order came in with no purple pens. Finally they stopped carrying them, thankfully, so no more people saying “I checked the office supply website and they HAVE the purple pens”.

    10 years later I still occasionally see one floating around the office and it all comes flooding back, though now I can laugh about it with the only other person who remembers all the purple pen passions. Of course now, we could just order them, but our current bunch of staffers don’t seem to care much as long as the pens write well.

  389. lizzay*

    At one point when my (large, multinational) firm was preparing for an IPO, they started radically cutting expenses, to the point that they stopped stocking napkins in the kitchen. I started making a petty little point of using more paper towels than necessary (b/c they kept stocking those). When we’d order pizza, everyone hoarded the napkins the pizza place brought with.

    1. lizzay*

      I think during this same era we ran out of paper for the printer & had some items that had to go out that afternoon. Mind you, this was a large office – like 150 people! My boss ended up going across the street to the Office Depot & buying a ream of paper. I think they gave him shit about submitting it for his expense report, too.

  390. lizzay*

    You know those post-it stick tabs? Not the paper ones for writing, the plastic ones to be used for bookmarks or to highlight a specific point on a page? My company was not buying them, so people would get obsessive about removing them from stacks of paper when we were done, and stacking them all up for re-use later. I mean, no judgment, I did it too, b/c nothing worse when you need one & you’re out, but it was really ticky-tacky.

    Oh, my division would also buy those nicer roller ball pens & keep them hidden in a drawer so other divisions couldn’t steal them. The ones the company fills the supply closet with are those terrible cheap ballpoint ones that come like 20 to a box for probably $2 a box. They dry up in like a day & a half. Ugh.

    1. lizzay*

      I just remembered, we would have low-level thievery around those pens, too! Someone would come to your desk & borrow one to write something out they wanted to show you AND THEN WALK OUT OF YOUR CUBE WITH IT!!! When I realized, I would get so mad that sometimes later I would sneak into their office & steal a couple off their desk (these were usually the people that had a whole pen-cup worth of them, so I’m not even sure they knew they were stealing them or that I’d stolen back my pen!). Petty? Damn, right.

  391. Misty Cardworthy*

    We had a staff member who wielded her limited power through the requirement that a frequently used form she processed had to be printed on a particular shade of pink paper, which we cleverly called the “Pink Form”. If it wasn’t on pink paper, she would refuse to process it. Her boss let her get away with this, arguing that it helped her keep the forms separated from other documents. However, this was still going on in 2018, when we shouldn’t have been processing these transactions on printed paper that was then routed through interoffice mail at all! We had all lost the will to argue, and accepted this absurdity, until our new finance director started and was asking about some processes during a meeting, and someone said, “Well, the Pink Form…” “Wait, what – the pink form???” That was the end of the pink form. We still have reams of pink paper, which perplexes new staff. The staff member is still here and still furous.

  392. lizzay*

    Ooh, another one: Kind of the opposite of what was asked. My office used to have actual plates and silverware. Mostly they used them if they had a catered lunch (it was the 90s), but several of us would use them in place of plasticware (and would put them in the dishwasher after we were done). At some point our lease was up & at the new building they had gotten rid of all the plates & silverware & replaced with paper & plastic. Now (in yet another building) they’re talking about all the ways we can be greener & I keep thinking if they brought back the plates & silverware we could reduce all that waste! But we don’t have a dishwasher anymore (we could put one in if we wanted! We have space for it!) & I imagine nobody wants ’empty dishwasher’ added to their responsibilities (can’t say I blame them).

    1. Rainy*

      My office had a mono outbreak 2 years ago, and we’re pretty sure it was the people who were using the silverware and then not washing it properly. So it might be for the best.

  393. lizzay*

    One time my company gave out post-it dispensers branded with the company name. To refill, you needed the type that was sticky accordion-style (sticky side top, next one had sticky side bottom, etc), as opposed to the normal ones where all the sticky sides are at the top of the pad. They refused to re-stock that style of post-its, so after you ran out, you had this big UFO-looking shiny silver thing sitting our your desk with our company logo & no post-its.

  394. Kathryn*

    I order the supplies for our little office and can order pretty much anything I want. Which is great. That said, the office space we just left we were “subletting” from another company and that company supplied all of the paper for the copier and printer in our section. No big deal, we just asked for paper when needed and they delivered it. HOWEVER, I was the only person (woman) on our floor who ever asked for it – the men just seemed incapable, regardless of how many times the process was explained. A few Christmasses ago I noted that were were down to our last package of paper and, knowing I was going away for the next 2 weeks, I purposely did not order any. When I came back SURPRISE! no paper in the copy room. When asked, the gents said they simply didn’t do any printing and were waiting for me to get back. FFS

  395. Momzie-Me*

    Well, here’s some drama: The person in charge of office supplies added her personal air miles card to the corporate credit card at Staples. She was eventually caught, and fired, when Staples sent her a free suitcase in appreciation of all of the purchases during the previous year. I have post-its, staples, at least 25 boxes of highlighters, pens, and every possible size and color of binder clips that will last us well into the next decade. Paper clips, batteries, you name it. If it had a relatively high dollar value, it was ordered. Boxes and boxes of file folders in legal and letter size, in every color. It’s spread out among 4 different huge cabinets, all unlocked. I think they’re hoping someone will steal at least some of it. What’s really stupid? I had to order a stapler when I started. Out of all the things in the cupboards, there wasn’t a single stapler to spare. (I went top of the line, the red swing-line one from Office Space.)

  396. Just an autistic redhead*

    Pens. I tend to get attached to items, and at a job where I’d been for a few weeks, it seemed apparent that if a pen was left in the middle of a surface in a cube, and the cube didn’t have a particular owner (or appear to), the pen would be one well-traveled around the office.
    I was very careful to leave my three pens (one of each color, blue, black, red, these were super-standard pens from the supply closet, which was not empty) nicely lined up with my other limited things on the desk (like the desk phone), at the back end near the cube wall, evidently convenient only if one was seated in the cube.
    One day the black pen was missing. I didn’t see it around, and I felt so sad that on my lunch break I took the remaining pens and drew a recognizable picture of each (using the other) on my oblong post-it pad, put a message using one for one line and the other for the next that basically had the pens saying hi and that they lived at this desk, and pleading not to take them away, as they’d already lost one. From then on, the pens were lined up next to that message.
    Still have these pens! No one ever so much as budged them : )

  397. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

    I declare a national movement whereby:
    When a company refuses to order or disperse supplies, or
    When supplies are consistently stolen from people’s desk,
    Said employees either:
    Do not do the work that require said supplies, or
    Do the work utilizing a workaround in a manner that causes the most pain to superiors
    Extra points will be awarded for:
    Pettiness, any kind
    Utilizing maximum staff time of self or higher paid employees due to the lack of supply
    Spending maximum amount of company money to solve the problem. Company won’t buy toner or ink cartridges? Order a new printer that includes the fiber or ink cartridges
    If paid hourly, use costly overtime to do job in a different, more time consuming way because of the lack of supply.

  398. historyteacher*

    My first year teaching in NYC, I didn’t know that if I wanted whiteboard markers, I needed to grab enough for the whole year the first week of school, because once they were gone, they would not be restocked. Ended up sneaking into the biggest academic building at my old university to steal markers from any unlocked lecture hall. Then in April we ran out of letter sized paper. For a week we cut down ledger paper to be the right size, then we started running notebook paper through the copy machine (after cutting the fringe off). Then, my roommate saw some of my bizarre looking copies, and mentioned it to her boss, who was generous enough to donate a box of copy paper to me, and that got me through the year.

  399. Alcoholic Candles*

    I work in an academic lab that uses ethanol lamps for a specific task. Most labs use Bunsen burner type set ups – you know the gas columns that you use flint & steel to light? Yeah, we use those too, but ethanol lamps are the only thing that works for a given task. Now, you can’t use flint & steel on those things; they are basically candles made of alcohol. You need just a standard lighter.

    As you can guess, we ran out of lighters this year (previously had an 8 pack that lasted almost 10 years). And our suppliers are refusing to let us order any more. It’s been back & forth over months. “You don’t need them, use the flint & steel.” That’s not how they work. “Well, use the Bunsen burners.” But they don’t work for this. “So why didn’t you have a bigger supply?” Well a 10 year supply seemed big enough as a start. “So really, you shouldn’t need them.” What?

    My boss is probably going to cave & just buy them out of pocket. But, seriously, why have them in the catalogue if we can’t buy them?

  400. Tisiphone*

    When I was on jury duty, the jury room included a whiteboard and the exhibits. Nothing to write with or on, other than the verdict forms. We ended up electing our foreperson in front of the bailiff in about ten seconds over office supplies.

    If we needed something, we needed to knock on the door and tell the bailiff.

    The bailiff couldn’t just give us whiteboard markers. He needed a note to take to the judge. Fortunately one of us – me – had paper and a pen. I started writing the note, stopped and told my fellow jurors that if I write the note, that means I’m foreperson. I asked if that was OK with everyone. It was.

    Several minutes later. the lawyers, the defendant, anyone else connected with the trial all filed into the courtroom to hear the judge rule that we could have whiteboard markers.

  401. Thornus*

    At a previous job, one of the co-owners decided we were using too many paper towels to dry our hands in the bathroom. So one day she told us if we didn’t stop using so many paper towels, she would stop buying them and we would be forced to bring our own from home.

    How she thought clients would dry their hands when they used our bathrooms, I do not know…

  402. PublicSectorPrinting*

    The IT department implemented printing budgets for everyone at my institution a few years ago. Every time you print something, you watch your budget shrink. Color is more expensive than black-and-white, and single-sided is more expensive than double-sided. The budgets are pretty generous in my opinion, and I think if I ran out of money I could just ask for more. But people are now SO STINGY about printing. Everyone marvels anytime they see anything printed in color. But here is the worst/funniest outcome: We have electronic access to our end-of-year tax forms. The payroll office encourages everyone to use the electronic versions (and print them themselves if they need a paper copy) so payroll doesn’t have to print the forms on special expensive paper and mail them out to everyone. Apparently some people refuse because they don’t want to use money from their printing budgets. Apparently they don’t realize that the institution spends WAY MORE money for payroll to print the forms and mail them to their house. Or they just don’t care if it’s not their department’s budget.

  403. Hydrangea McDuff*

    I worked in a satellite office for a company based in another region of the U.S. Our office was very quickly shut down one day due to the discovery of toxic mold in the air vents. They said, “take home what you need to work and we’ll figure out next steps.” This was before high-speed home internet was common, and my computer was a 50 lb behemoth. I hauled it plus a work table, office chair, file cabinet (I lived in a small apt), the contents of my desk and some other supplies home, thinking in a month or so we would be in a new office space.

    Lo and behold, the parent company decided to close the satellite office entirely and move it to another part of the region, and my colleagues and I were laid off. Not wanting to commit theft, I asked about returning the not inconsiderable amount of tech and furniture I had at home and was told it was easier for everyone if I just kept everything because they wouldn’t have to get rid of them or ship them to the new office. 20 years later, I still use the table as my sewing table, although the computer long since became obsolete.

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