A few weeks ago I came into my office to find a promotional pen lying on my desk. Apparently a company we deal with had dumped a load of free goodies on our team leader, who'd then gone round putting them on people's desks before they came in in the morning. Fair enough.

Uncommonly among promotional pens, this one was really quite nice. Wrote evenly and smoothly, didn't look cheap and plasticky. Lovely. Unfortunately, the company logo printed on it had failed to adhere to the surface of the pen, and began gradually flaking off and covering my desk in gunk. Just now I finally lost patience with it and rubbed off what remained of the logo, which only took me about thirty seconds with a dry tissue.

So now I have an unmarked really nice pen, which I got for free, and which is doing nothing whatsoever for the brand recognition of the company that gave it to me. You would think, since the logo was the entire point of the exercise from that company's point of view, that they might have devoted a little more attention to not making that the only bit they screwed up!

Not that I'm complaining; but that's precisely the point, that they've benefitted nobody but me when the clear intention was to benefit themselves. It makes me think they're both greedy and stupid. If they'd simply given me a free unmarked pen to start off with, I'd probably have thought they were generous and lovely…