Conference and exhibition crowds often exhibit strange behavior.

All of the attendees leave with a small collection of pens, each one inscribed with the name of a sponsoring company or venue.

The people working in the stands noticed that people so take the pens, so they feel an obligation to offer them. There may even be competition among the stands, as one exhibitor offers better or more expensive pens than another. People are more likely to take several gel pens than a simple ball-point pen.

Those pens are not likely to attract customers for those companies or to expand their customer base, which is ostensibly the goal of distributing them. They may not even be used, since people collect so many of them. However, the companies probably don't mind. After all, those pens are not expensive.

That should raise some interesting questions, but we'll flow with our train of thought:

• Why do people who attend a number of conferences still take those pens? Is it just because they are free?
• Why do computer enthusiasts, who rarely use pens, take so many of them?
• Why do large office-supply stores devote so much shelf and catalogue space to pens?

Let us clarify and elaborate on that last question:

Despite the large number of pens that are distributed at conferences, it is clear that businesses still buy them in large quantities. Is it possible that the senior purchasing agents or executives in charge of buying the pens never attend conferences? That's unlikely.

I therefore have an offer to make to the exclusive group of intelligent readers of this page.

I plan to attend more conferences. In addition to enlarging my already absurd collection of pents, they help me keep up with the latest developments in my field. I'll continue to collect more unnecessary pens at those conferences, since I will follow the usual crowd behavior. However, I'm not going to use most of those pens.

So, if you need a pen, don't buy one. That would be a waste of money. You can take one of mine.

Just keep your paws off my black gel pens with the rubber-grip handles.