Tag Archives: pencil

“Prismacolor Verithin Colored Pencils” Breakdown

This entry is part 12 of 13 in the series Dave's Breakdown

The back of my box of Prismacolor Verithin Colored Pencils had the following to say:

A Definite Strong Point

Prismacolor Verithin Pencils have harder, more durable leads that complement the soft thick leads of the Prismacolor Art Pencils.  Specially formulated leads won’t shatter when sharp-ended.  These last longer under heavy marking and writing pressure.  The thing leads and precision points create the finest details. Verithin pencils are flexible color tools for outlining and lettering.  All 36 color match Prismacolor Art Pencils.  Available in open stock and sets.

Precision Tools of Color

  • Thin leads for small details and multiple uses
  • Hard and strong to resist breaking
  • Made form the finest pigments for bold color laydown
  • Consistent Prismacolor standards of quality
  • Available in 3 Art Sets
    • 12 colors 02476 (796)
    • 24 colors 02427 (731)
    • 36 colors 02428 (732)

And this is what davepoobond had to say about it:

Anyone that picks up a box of pencils and reads this shit on the back and believes any of that bullshit, making the colored pencils sound like Godly items, is a dumbass.  Who writes all this shit?  Do they even believe the crap they’re trying to jam down our throats?  I doubt it.

And what’s with the numbers?  Its not like we’d actually use them, like to ask for them.  Here’s an example of how that would play out:

(a man is looking at a box of the 12 colored pencils, when a store employee comes up to him)

Store Employee:  Hello, sir.  Can I help you with something?

Customer: Ah, yes, I see you have the 02476 (796), but I can’t seem to find the 02427 (731) or 02428 (732) anywhere!

(Store Employee blinks a couple of times)

Store Employee:  Sorry I couldn’t help you with anything, have a nice day.

(Store Employee runs away)

(End)

You see how ridiculous that is?  Another thing that pisses me off is that they keep repeating the same bullshit.  I can summarize the whole thing they had into this:

These colored pencils are good for small detailing and have resistance to breaking.  Comes in packs of 12, 24, or 36.

They give us unuseful information:

Multiple uses — as opposed to only one use?

Hard and Strong — they’re the same thing.  Drop a word you bastards!

Made from the finest pigments for bold color laydown — What the hell does bold color laydown mean?  They expect everyone to know that?  How about I boldly lay down my color into your face!!!!

Consistent Prismacolor standards of quality — this means absolutely shit to me.  What would it matter to me about their “standards?”  Their standards could be shitty for all we know.

They also advertise their art pencils about 3 times in the same thing, making you have to think that you absolutely need their art pencils.

What the hell is with their “flexible color tools” phrase?  Do these pencils bend?  Can I tighten a screw with these pencils?  Or maybe get around that sharp corner so I could tighten the yellow on the paper?  Great, thanks assholes!

And their paragraph just looks like a bunch of unrelated sentences tossed together.  The only relating factor to any other sentence is just the amount of bullshit that emanates from the box.

Bull shit.  All crap I tell ye!  Crap!  Crap, I say!  I tell you its pure crap!  Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap shit shit shit shit shit shit!  Good color pencils, though.  =) =) =) =)

Quote #22183

::Test day for Comm 233.  During the test, the moderately attractive girl smacks her gum in the quiet room fairly loudly.  During which, she also writes very hard on the paper and you can hear every single stroke of the pencil and pen she used.  Afterwards, at work… ::

davepoobond: Geez, I did kinda bad on the test.  I didn’t even know we had a test until I turned and asked the guy sitting next to me.

Ely Munaz:  hahaha!

davepoobond: And this girl next to me was chewing her gum really loudly the whole time.  As much as I liked hearing the noises coming from her mouth for about 10 seconds, it got annoying real fast.

::Ely Munaz laughs again::

davepoobond: And she wrote really hard on the paper, too.  It was like a flamethrower under her pencil.  FWOOOOSH FWOOOOSH FWWOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!

– at davepobond’s job, 6/10/07

Who Found the Staplers’ Hats?

A conspiracy was afoot.

In The Pencil Box, a coup was forming.  The Staplers, a sect of the Stationeries, have been the prevalent political party and their merciful political power is regulated only by their hats.  Without their hats, they are naked — exposed.

The Staplers use a valuable resource known as staples.  In the staple mines of Swingline Town, the ever-important node of the staple commodity, a nuclear bomb was set off by a renegade faction of pens called the Terrorist Pens.  This had effectively wiped out 34% of the total staple industry in The Pencil Box, resulting in a diminished power in the Staplers.  A staple drought was declared as Staplers went through the dredges of the Office Desk Canyons of The Pencil Box trying to find new suitable mines to replace what had been lost.

It was during this strategic opportunity in which the Stapler population was spread thin that the Terrorist Pens struck again — this time with a large wind burst that blew off all of the Stapler’s hats.  The Stapler’s hats is the prominent difference that Staplers have from one another.  Now they are all the same, and equal.  But that’s not how society works, so in one fell swoop the Staplers started to kill each other for no reason other than the fact that they all looked the same and it freaked each other out.

One spiritual Stapler by the name of John Stapler found himself in lonely cave, away from the ones he loved.  He yearned back for the days (sometime last week) where there was order in The Pencil Box, and it hadn’t been shaken up due to terrible design of its compartments.  It was then that John Stapler had realized he was not actually in a lonely cave, but the holiest and most important of locations to the Staplers in all of The Pencil Box, rediscovered only by John Stapler in a time of need.  John Stapler went deeper into the cave and found a monument that had the following words inscribed:

“In a time of need

You shall see

Not what is important, such as individuality

But what isn’t important, such as unique hats that set a fashion trend no one cares about”

The words meant something, I’m not exactly sure what since I’m not a Stapler, to John Stapler.  As he read the inscription on the monument, it began to glow, and time was reset to before the nuclear bomb in Swingline Town.

John Stapler had been given a chance to set things right before they go wrong!  Not only that, but he had a cool new hat that made him ultra-powerful.  Don’t ask me how, but Swingline Town was saved!  The Terrorist Pens had their nuclear bomb blow up in their faces, if you can call them faces, and the Terrorist Pens were no more, as their base of operations, a chemical plant in the Ink Hills, turned into a crater.

Anarchy would avoid The Pencil Box…

at least for now.

Cashier Lesson – Ways to Torture Cashiers

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Cashier Lessons

Let’s say you are in a supervisory position over cashiers.  Typically supervising is a boring and monotonous exploit.  Babysitting other people to make sure they’re doing their job correctly can bring out the worst in people, especially when you do it day in and day out.

Why not put a little sadistic fun into your life by torturing the people you are supervising?  Here’s a few suggestions:

1. Funneling customers to one cashier’s register (or just away from you).

Nothing says “I’m lazy” more than rejecting any customer that comes your way.  But there’s a reasoning behind that.  It’s because you want that stupid cashier with the tacky blonde highlights or that other cashier with the excessively form-revealing biking shirt (can anyone say man boobs?) to have pleasure of taking another customer after the one they’re already ringing up.  Who says you need to endure the crappy money jokes customer’s always seem to think are funny when you can just deflect them to the next guy?

2. Musical registers.

Nothing wipes the hopeful look on a about-to-close-out cashier’s face than to make them close-out later by switching them to a register that closes later.  The best part about it, is that its all random and “pre-ordained to fate” because they chose a bad number.  To set up a game of musical registers, write the names of the registers on a piece of paper and cut them out.  Fold them up and then toss them into a small box or cup or something like that and have the cashiers draw a piece of paper.  These papers will tell them where to go for their registers, and if you’re lucky you’ll have a situation where a cashier who was happy they were about to close closes last and an overzealous cashier cheers that they get to close first instead of last.  Then you can revel in the pain of the cashier who just had the power play to being put into the penalty box.

3. Inventory.

Nothing is more sadistic than forcing people to count millions of Scantrons, pens, pencils, sweaters, or large amounts of random shit for hours on end.  If you get a chance, make sure they count the roundabout fixture full of dusty stickers that look alike.

4. Stare at them.

Nothing will make a cashier more uncomfortable than getting every move they make scrutinized upon by their superior.  When they mess up, you can stare at them even harder and make grunting noises and tell them they’re doing something wrong with little to no explanation.  You’re doing your job, after all.

5. Leave them with no change.

Oh, the cashier just called for pennies?  I think you should wait another twenty minutes and let them sweat a little.  Especially since they called for change five minutes ago and conveniently didn’t tell you they are about to run out of pennies.  Leave it to them to explain to customers why they don’t have three pennies to give back for change.

6. Mindless policies.

Making up policies that do not make any sense is a subtle way to make life hard for a cashier.  Nothing pains the soul more than to have needless red tape and hurdles to jump over to do even the simplest of things.  Need some more ones?  How about you fill out a cash request form which you will evaluate the reasoning for before getting the money?  How about requiring extraneous, useless information on checks to make the transaction take longer, and if they forget something, then you can punish them for doing so.

This requires some creativity, obviously.  Just think up the most ass backwards ways to frustrate your employees and execute.

7. Hidden supplies.

If a cashier is able to easily get the pens, pencils, staplers, or whatever they need easily, then you fail at torturing them.  You need to make sure that any of the office supplies they may require to finish transactions are in hard to reach or practically inaccessible areas.  Make sure these supplies are always a few steps away and limit the amount of efficiency they can possibly have by maximizing the annoyance factor.  Make sure the stapler is on the other side of the room from the pens and pencils.  Why would you ever want them to be in the same place?  It’s not like you want anything to be convenient for anyone.

The Curse of the Halloween Pencil

The Curse of the Halloween Pencil – n. all Halloween pencils have a curse. If someone breaks a Halloween pencil in half, they instantly become a wussy pansie for the rest of their life. Be careful out there, if you break a Halloween pencil, you’ll never get laid again! (by a girl, if you’re a guy, or a guy if you’re a girl, unless money is involved).

Let It Go For 9 Cents

This entry is part 13 of 26 in the series The Retail Report

Yesterday some douchebag wanted to buy a pencil and he only had like 95 cents.  I told him the pencil he was interested in buying was 1.08 with tax.  And he was all, “can’t I just bring the rest of the money later?”

I told him, “No, you’re about 9 cents short and I can’t let things out of the store without it being paid for.”

“Really?  9 Cents?  You won’t let it go for 9 cents?”

At first I thought he was being sarcastic/joking but then it became apparent he was actually pissed as he started shaking his head and cursing under his breath.

Like, what the fuck do you want me to do, asshole?  Short my register for your sorry “can’t afford 9 more cents” ass?  Or pull money out of my pocket for you?

Fuck you!  Fuckin’ asshole!