Empty biro

Kichote

When I was a young lad the local shop used to have a tranparent biro tied to the counter with a piece of string and sellotape. I think it was used for people who used to have an account there and paid at the end of every month. All the items they would buy would be wrote into a copybook on a page with their name on it so the shopkeeper could keep track of what they owed.

It had been there many years I would say it was put there before my time. It had less than 1" of ink left inside in it. A few years later the shop was sold and modernised and the biro was gone but that must have been the emptiest {if that is even a word} biro I have ever seen.

Now with most ordinary (careless) people like myself I'd be lucky to have the same biro for longer than a month before it goes missing and plenty of biros stop working long before they run out of ink.

Have you ever seen one that was used until it ran out of ink?

I can just imagine some very particular accounting guy who took a job in 1984 and begrudgingly bought a biro out of his own pocket when he started the job and minded it for about 30 years and proudly announced "right lads thats it, my biro's empty, I'm going into retirement now, I'm not buying a second one"

Cortina_MK_IV

Only ones I remember running out of ink was back in school circa 1979.

jca

I have a clear biro on a board I use in work that has run to empty. When the new one is empty I'll put up a pic.

Peregrine

No, I always lost them well before they ran out of ink.

sbsquarepants

I had run out of ink on me the other day in work. wasn't mine mind, I must have robbed it off someone who takes better care of theirs than I do. They usually last me about 15 years

EDIT - That should 15 words!:D

Cortina_MK_IV

jca wrote: »

I have a clear biro on a board I use in work that has run to empty. When the new one is empty I'll put up a pic.

A pic of the BIC?

crosstownk

Biro? Surely you mean a pen.

Kichote

crosstownk wrote: »

Biro? Surely you mean a pen.

Ball-point biro to be exact

clintondaly

It should last about 2KM if you drew a line with it

jca

Kichote wrote: »

Ball-point biro to be exact

Tungsten tipped ball point to be exact, exact...

uch

Them BIC Biro's are great stuff alright, Green is my favourite colour

R.F.

BIC's are legendary

For any smokers out there too, their lighters are amazing as well. Last ages

weldoninhio

clintondaly wrote: »

It should last about 2KM if you drew a line with it

I tried that a while ago. After 2km there was still plenty in the pen. Guy sitting beside me on the bus thought I was a weirdo though

Parchment

I actually was quite obsessed with finishing a biro in school - I would get one, mark the fullest point of the ink by "sawing" my ruler into the side of the pen so it would leave an indent. (the BIC ones that were transparent)

Then each Friday I would mark the level of the ink by the same method - until the pen was empty. I would have other pens in my pencil case to loan out to people but I kept my "special" pen to myself.

I am a functioning adult now.

Cee-Jay-Cee

A box of 50 biro's lasts about 6 months in my office (6 of us the office) I have thrown away biros as they ran out but most of them disappear or are stolen by folk from other offices.

BrokenArrows

Bics or get the **** out

RayM

R.F. wrote: »

BIC's are legendary

For any smokers out there too, their lighters are amazing as well. Last ages

Their disposable razors are great too. If you don't mind the sight of blood.

James Bond Junior

I don't take I've bought a pen since I've left school yet I'm never short of one around the house.

cml387

Don't get me started on the biro thing.

There used to be two types.

One was the old reliable Bic Crystal. You could see the ink. You could pull out the nib and tube and theoretically replace it with a new one (no one ever did, but it was the principal that was important).

Then there was a grey and blue one made by some cowboy outfit called Faber Castell.
Solid grey plastic with a blue top. Ink invisible, you had to take it on trust that there was any ink at all in the damned thing. Worse, it was completely sealed up.
These ones failed as regularly as night follows day and you know why?

The Bic had a little hole in the side to let the air in and regularise the flow from the nib.
Faber never did cotton on to that technology and hence your magnum opus always faded out into a pointless and inkless furrow on the page where the writing should be.

Capt'n Midnight

ANNOUNCER:
'The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages which simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.

One of these supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics, and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro-loss through out the galaxy, and eventually came up with a rather quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by Humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids, and super-intelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life-forms.

And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way. Slipping quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle. Responding to highly biroid-orientated stimuli, in fact, leading the Biro equivalent of the good life. And as theories go, this was all very fine and pleasant, until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet and to have worked there for a while, driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables. Where upon he was taken away, locked-up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public. When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet, they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true. Though he was later discovered to be lying. Meanwhile, on the surface of Magrathea, two suns have just set…
- Douglas Adams

Chain Smoker

I had one of those 4 colour bic ones that I decided would do me for a whole year of school as a challenge to myself. Probably wouldn't have kept at it if the pages of green and red weren't driving my teachers mad. iirc, there was still a little bit of red left at the end of the year.

could've given up on it way before that though, not sure. I feel like the general rule used to be about 4-6 weeks of fairly heavy usage would get you through a pen.

Jimmy Garlic

The staedtler pen is far superior to the bic pen.

jca

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

The staedtler pen is far superior to the bic pen.

Too posh, feckin 3rd level students trying to raise the tone...

clintondaly

The BIC is the working mans pen

gramar

I have chewed the shíte out of my pens long, long before they run out of ink.

fizzypish

gramar wrote: »

I have chewed the shíte out of my pens long, long before they run out of ink.

Thats why BIC's are great. You can chew on the end and it wont break (unless your an animal). Cheap pens ends will rupture and you'll get a mouth full of ink.

gramar

fizzypish wrote: »

Thats why BIC's are great. You can chew on the end and it wont break (unless your an animal). Cheap pens ends will rupture and you'll get a mouth full of ink.

You're clearly not doing it right. I'm only getting started on this one.

fizzypish

gramar wrote: »

You're clearly not doing it right. I'm only getting started on this one.

I'm a tip chewer. Imagine the pen like a piece of straw. Quiet impressive though sir!

GavRedKing

Thres about half a CM of ink left in the one I have on my desk in work. If I write an A4 page of notes a day its a lot so I'm surprised its survived this long without going missing or been left somewhere.

Kichote

Kichote wrote: »

..............

Have you ever seen one that was used until it ran out of ink?.............

I've used many ball point pens from new to when they ran out.
It's not the wonder of the world you think it is

kerryked

Was in the post office today and saw the exact same thing OP.

Didn't have my phone on me at the time but it was just as you described.

An old piece of white string, seemingly endless, ran down to some mysterious anchor at the back of the table. It was a Bic, couldn't tell what colour - the top of the biro was welded to the piece of string with what must have been 7 rolls of sellotape, now yellowing in it's old age, patched up over the years presumably.

And no - no sign of a drop of ink left in the pen.

aujopimur

The Bic ones have a great yoke on the cap for picking my ears.

corner of hells

My son has a bit of an obsession with the four colour bic pens and a few weeks ago he asked could could be but a box of them online.

Sure what harm could it be I thought and tossed the old credit card at him.

Turned out there was 250 pens in the box at about 1000 euro a box.

So , anyone need a nice four colour bic pen ?

kerryked

corner of hells wrote: »

My son has a bit of an obsession with the four colour bic pens and a few weeks ago he asked could could be but a box of them online.

Sure what harm could it be I thought and tossed the old credit card at him.

Turned out there was 250 pens in the box at about 1000 euro a box.

So , anyone need a nice four colour bic pen ?

Ha! Looks like Santa has been and gone to your house then!

Collie D

kerryked wrote: »

Ha! Looks like Santa has been and gone to your house then!

After blowing a grand on pens? He'd be out cleaning chimneys or picking a pocket or two until he'd paid it off if he was mine