Business travel can be a real hassle sometimes. You get to
your hotel late. Then your room key doesn’t work. Then you have a lonely,
jet-lagged dinner. Then you toss and turn on a strange bed. However, these
conventions become a real nightmare when they start skimping on the free pens.
I’ve been going to the same conference for many years and
boy, has it changed. In the good old days, they would have an ocean of free
pens. All lined up on the lecture hall tables you would see the Disneyland
Hotel pens, one for each attendee. I used to take one pen everytime I sat down in
a new spot so by the end of the day, I’d have enough ink for the next year.
This year? Barely a free pen to be found. The long white
tables are hauntingly stark for a lack of writing implements. I did find a few
sad pens at a table in the back and coveted them, so that was a victory.
It was a far cry from the salad days of the mid-‘00s, with
enough pens to copy the whole oeuvre of Dame Barbara Cartland. We held paradise
in our hands and didn’t even know it.
I wish I knew why this conference felt it could cut back on
pens. Maybe California is having an ink shortage as well as a water shortage.
Maybe it’s just another way America is becoming a no-frills country, where all
the perks are disappearing for people like us as the rich just get greedier.
I’ve been to so many of these conventions and taken so many
free pens that I don’t think I’ve had to buy pens since before 9/11. They’re
all over my house, scattered in drawers and backpacks, each bearing the name of
some hotel: Marriott Marquis, Gaylord Palms, Palazzo. Once in awhile, I’ll find
an old Disneyland Hotel pen — back when they were circus peanut yellow and
classroom wall green — and feel a momentary pang of memory.
Sometimes it’s nice to reminisce.
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