Since I’ve been at the library a lot, I’ve noticed something. If you’ve ever been at the local library, you’ve noticed that wherever there is a catalog computer, there is a container of paper scraps and disturbingly sharp half-pencils right by the keyboard. For 9.63 years, I never paid any attention to them, but I finally wondered: Why didn’t any of the pencils get any shorter?
Then I realized the shocking reality: the imperfect pencils are taken away, leaving only the uniform 3-inch dwarves. I don’t know where they go. They could be discarded or ground up and remade into new half-pencils. I will try to investigate, but my time here is not long. And the librarians grow leery.
um…people steal them. I get the feeling that were you to take about 10-20 pencils off the top, you’d find a dull one or two. i think they just pour more on top of the others.