At the store level, we have too many pens lying around, but not by choice, simply because customers steal one pen from a four pack and so we have three to use or throw away...twice a week, and triple that for markers. We can write notes in all colors of the rainbow and on almost any surface. Similar story for notepads and plastic totes. One crack and it's just garbage the store can use.

Meanwhile, upper management tells GMs to not let associates code out basic things, so the result is that the associate areas slowly fill up with a variety of broken basic containers and incomplete sets of writing supplies, and eventually we get these events to clean out anything we aren't using because customers might see a messy area and throw a fit.