Take Care Of Your Tools

I hate sharing office space with people. I hate it for a lot of reasons, but one major one is that nobody takes care of their supplies. Nobody puts on pen caps or unclicks them. They also put them in up side down, which makes the ink run away from the tip. People put pencils away tip down, which ruins the point. They don't empty pencil sharpeners, and then complain that they don't work right anymore.

For anyone who thinks I'm being prissy about this, let me put it this way. A coworker was cleaning out her space and found 4 very old pens.  Of them, 3 had no cap, and 1 had a cap. The ones with no cap were completely dead, but the one with the cap was still usable. The point is that if you take care of your tools, they last longer and they remain at the height of their effectiveness longer.

As frustrating as it is when amateurs think they need professional tools, it is significantly more frustrating when people have high quality tools, and then treat them like crap. No, you should not expect that any tool will last forever, but get as much longevity as you can from what you have. That's the whole point of getting nice things, and they come with the responsibility of taking care of them.