International Day For Tolerance Promotional Pens

Last November, our boss gave us something that according to him was to commemorate an event, but to us meant the total opposite. He gave all the office staff customized promotional pens to celebrate the International Day for Tolerance. At first, I got furious about what he did, but something about it changed my mind. Here is what happened:

My boss was a foreign national from the Middle East. I used the term “was” because he’s American now. One Thursday morning, he gave out to each one of us those customized promotional ballpoint pens. A vast majority of the employees accepted it with a cold shoulder. You see, we’ve been asking for a raise in the last months, but he never even tried to consider our request.

The cold shoulder eventually turned into anger. During lunch, the employees had the consensus that those pens were made to insult the all the staff of the company. The idea was brought up because the pens had a statement saying “remember the victims” printed on them.

After we came from lunch, the boss talked to everybody. He said that he gave out those customized promotional high tech pens to remind people of the International Day for Tolerance. He added that coming from a war-stricken country, he would like to educate people of how destructive war is.

We were all awed and got teary-eyed with what he said, especially when he told stories of what he experienced during childhood. Apparently, he was only using the pens to teach us something. He showed us that how pens work was no different to how to make the office work for everybody. In the end, our raise will come soon, and that he was just waiting for the right time and enough resources.

Talk about a humbling experience.