My Grumpy Coworker Left Pens on My Desk, Until the Night He Left His Marathon Medal on My Nightstand

The first time I truly registered Tim, he was vibrating. Not in a metaphorical sense. He stood by the massive window overlooking the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, his wiry frame practically thrumming with a restless energy that seemed entirely out of place in the muted gray landscape of our open-plan office. He was always just returning from a run or about to leave for one, and he carried the evidence on his skin: a faint sheen of sweat on his temples and the distinct, sharp scent of recent exertion.

I clutched my presentation printout, the paper already warm and pliant from my nervous grip. It was a good proposal, a damn good one. Creative, data-backed, with a narrative hook I’d spent two sleepless nights perfecting. All it needed was a sign-off from the analytics department, which, unfortunately, was him.

“Tim?” I said, approaching his self-contained bubble of kinetic energy.

He turned, and the full effect of him hit me. He looked like a sick Victorian child. It was the only way to describe it. He had a mop of unruly brown hair that flopped over his forehead, large, dark eyes that seemed too big for his narrow face, and a pallor that suggested he subsisted on a diet of weak tea and sorrow. The jarring contradiction was that this frail-looking creature was also a competitive runner, with lean, corded muscles visible in his forearms and calves. He and I were nearly the same height, but he held himself with an aloofness that made him seem taller, more distant.

“I just need you to look over the final numbers for the Q3 marketing push,” I said, extending the folder. “It should only take a second. I triple-checked the data against last year’s conversions.”

He didn’t take the folder. His gaze flickered over the cover for a fraction of a second before dismissing it entirely. He gave a single, curt shake of his head—a barely-there motion, more of a tremor than a decision. No words. No explanation. Just a silent, absolute negation.

Then, before I could form a protest, he was gone. He didn't walk, he sort of bounced on the balls of his feet, a weird, efficient jog-walk that carried him toward the elevators with unnerving speed. He left a ghost of himself behind in the air, that clean, salty smell of sweat that I was beginning to associate solely with him and my own rising irritation.

I stood there, folder still outstretched, feeling utterly dismissed. It wasn't just the rejection of my work, it was the complete lack of engagement. He hadn't even given me the courtesy of a bullshit corporate excuse. I was an obstacle he had simply sidestepped on his way to somewhere more important. I lowered my hand, my cheeks burning with a hot flush of anger. I looked at his empty space by the window, then down at my proposal. The prat. The skinny, sweaty, condescending prat.

I stewed for the rest of the afternoon, the rejection stinging more than I wanted to admit. I buried myself in other work, trying to channel my frustration into productivity, but my eyes kept flicking to his desk across the aisle. He’d returned at some point, materializing back at his station as silently as he’d disappeared. He was hunched over his keyboard, the only movement the frantic dance of his fingers across the keys. The intensity of his focus was almost as irritating as his earlier dismissal.

It was around four o’clock, during a lull in the office hum, that I noticed it. Sitting squarely in the middle of my otherwise organized desk blotter was a pen. It was a cheap, generic thing—a transparent blue plastic barrel, a flimsy cap, the logo of some regional bank faded on its side. It was utterly unremarkable, and it absolutely did not belong to me. My own pens were neatly arranged in a ceramic holder, all fine-tipped, black ink, a specific brand I was loyal to. This blue intruder was an anomaly.

My gaze shot across the aisle to Tim’s desk. It was a chaotic landscape of crumpled energy bar wrappers, spreadsheets printed on scrap paper, and at least a dozen identical, cheap-looking pens scattered like kindling. He’d obviously been at my desk. The thought sent a fresh wave of annoyance through me. It felt less like a gift and more like he was shedding his clutter onto my space, treating my desk like a public waste bin.

That was it. It was a small thing, a stupid pen, but it was the principle of it. He couldn’t dismiss my work and then treat my personal space like his own dumping ground. I snatched the pen from my blotter, its cheap plastic light and unsatisfying in my hand. I pushed back my chair with more force than necessary, the wheels scraping against the floor, and marched across the office.

He didn’t look up as I approached. He had a pair of simple white earbuds in, and his eyes were glued to a complex spreadsheet that seemed to cover two full monitors. He was a study in stillness, except for the slight, constant jiggle of his knee under the desk.

I stopped in front of his workspace, waiting. When he didn’t acknowledge my presence, I reached out and tapped the corner of his monitor.

His head snapped up, and he pulled one earbud out. His eyes, dark and unfocused for a second, finally landed on me. There was no recognition in them, just a blank sort of impatience, as if I were a pop-up ad he was waiting to close.

“You left this on my desk,” I said, my voice tight. I held out the blue pen between my thumb and forefinger.

He glanced at the pen, then back at his screen. Without looking at me again, he gave a small, lazy wave of his hand, a gesture of pure dismissal. “Keep it,” he mumbled, his voice flat. He put the earbud back in his ear, his attention already sucked back into the glowing grid of numbers on his monitor.

I stood there for a full ten seconds, my hand still outstretched, holding the pen. He had already forgotten I existed. The casual, thoughtless rejection was somehow more infuriating than the first one. I was an insect he had brushed away without a second thought. My jaw clenched. I curled my fingers around the pen, the flimsy plastic creaking under the pressure, and turned on my heel. The walk back to my desk felt twice as long, each step fueled by a simmering, impotent rage. I wasn't just annoyed anymore. I was officially on a mission to despise Tim.

The next day, the war went public. We were all crammed into the main conference room for the weekly marketing sync, a long table separating the various factions of the department. I was slated to present my revised proposal. After stewing all night, I had reworked the slides, fortified the data, and polished the narrative until it gleamed. It was better now, stronger. A small, spiteful part of me had done it purely to prove that silent, jogging jackass wrong.

Tim was seated directly opposite me, looking bored. He wasn't vibrating today. He was unnervingly still, a predator conserving energy, his long fingers steepled in front of him. He hadn't said a word to me all morning, which was standard, but now his silence felt heavy and deliberate in the enclosed space.

When my turn came, I stood and walked to the front of the room, my heels clicking on the polished concrete floor. I felt a surge of confidence as I began. The pitch was solid. I walked them through the campaign concept, my voice even and clear. I presented the numbers, the projections, the target demographics. I made eye contact with everyone, from our department head, Mark, to the junior associates. Everyone except Tim. I refused to look at him, refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me search for his approval. I was reaching my conclusion, the triumphant final slide displaying a robust projected ROI, when his voice cut through the room.

“On slide seventeen.”

It wasn’t loud, but it had the sharp, intrusive quality of breaking glass. I stopped mid-sentence. Every head turned towards him. He hadn’t raised his hand. He hadn’t waited for the Q&A. He just spoke, his tone flat and devoid of any emotion.

“The Y-axis on the demographic engagement chart is mislabeled,” he stated, not looking at me but at the screen, as if I were merely the operator of the slideshow. “It says ‘Weekly Impressions’ when the data reflects ‘Daily Unique Views.’ It skews the visual interpretation of the growth curve.”

The blood rushed to my face, hot and immediate. He was right, of course. It was a tiny, insignificant error—a typo made at two in the morning. It didn't change the numbers or the conclusion in any meaningful way, but he’d delivered the critique with the gravity of someone who had uncovered a massive corporate fraud. He wasn't trying to be helpful; he was deliberately trying to trip me up. He was making a point, and that point was that he was smarter, more meticulous, and that I had failed to meet his impossibly pedantic standards.

The silence in the room was suffocating. I could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on me, waiting for my reaction. Across the table, Chloe, my closest work friend, gave me a sympathetic wince. Mark, our boss, shifted uncomfortably in his chair, clearing his throat. The tension was a physical thing in the air, a thick, unpleasant hum that everyone could feel. He had singled me out, turning my presentation into a public shaming over a clerical error.

My hands felt cold, but my voice, when it came out, was steady. I forced myself to look directly at him. His dark eyes met mine, and they were completely unreadable, as blank and emotionless as a sheet of glass.

“Thank you for catching that typo, Tim,” I said, the words tasting like acid. “I’ll have the corrected deck sent out this afternoon. As the team can see, the underlying data points remain exactly the same and fully support the campaign’s projected success.”

I turned my back on him, addressing the rest of the room and wrapping up my final sentence with a composure I did not feel. When I sat down, my hands were trembling slightly beneath the polished surface of the table. Tim gave a single, small nod and looked down at the legal pad in front of him, already doodling in the margins as if the entire exchange had meant nothing. But I could see the other team members exchanging small, knowing glances. They saw it. They all saw it. It wasn’t just in my head anymore. This was war.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of controlled fury. I answered emails with clipped efficiency and filed reports with unnecessary force. Every so often, my eyes would drift across the aisle to where he sat, perfectly still, seemingly absorbed in his work. He never looked my way. He never acknowledged the grenade he’d casually rolled onto the conference room table. For him, the confrontation was over, a data point logged and forgotten. For me, it was a hot coal I was forced to carry in my gut for the rest of the day.

By five o’clock, I was more than ready to leave. The office was emptying out, the usual end-of-day chatter a welcome distraction. I packed my bag slowly, methodically, waiting until I saw Tim finally stand up. He stretched, a long, wiry extension of his limbs that looked almost painful, grabbed his running belt from a hook, and was gone without a word to anyone. He didn’t walk out; he moved with that silent, forward-drifting pace that was just short of a full jog, disappearing down the hallway like a ghost leaving its haunting grounds. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

I slung my tote bag over my shoulder, ready to flee. As I turned to push in my chair, I stopped. There, lying dead center on the black mesh seat, was another pen.

This one was different. It wasn't a cheap, disposable ballpoint. It was a black felt tip, the kind with a satisfyingly sharp point, a solid cap that snapped shut. A decent pen. My first thought was a fresh spike of anger. Was this a prize? A condescending reward for taking his public critique without screaming? My hand hovered over it, unsure if I wanted to pick it up or sweep it onto the floor.

What was this? What was his game? There was no note. No explanation. Just these strange, silent offerings. The blue pen had felt like him discarding his trash. This felt… intentional. More deliberate. And somehow, that was even more infuriating. It was a communication I couldn't decipher, a message sent in a language of office supplies that I didn't speak. I looked over at his now-empty desk, a mess of papers and a single, lonely-looking coffee mug. He was a complete and utter enigma, wrapped in Lycra and smelling faintly of exertion.

I snatched the felt-tip pen from the chair. In my other hand, I was still clutching the cheap blue one from yesterday, having forgotten to throw it away in my rage. I stood there in the quiet office, holding a pen in each hand. They felt like clues to a mystery I had no interest in solving. Evidence of his weirdness.

And that’s when the idea came to me. A small, bitter, and deeply satisfying thought. I wasn’t going to throw them away. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing my desk pristine and pen-free tomorrow. I was going to keep them.

I walked over to my filing cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer, rummaging behind a stack of old notebooks until my fingers closed around what I was looking for: a plain white ceramic mug, a freebie from some long-forgotten tech conference. It was perfect.

Back at my desk, I placed the mug next to my monitor, right in my line of sight. I took the cheap blue ballpoint and dropped it in. It landed with a hollow clatter. Then, I took the black felt tip and dropped it in beside the first one. Clack. The sound was final.

I stood back and looked at my creation. It was a sarcastic monument. A private little museum dedicated to the bizarre habits of Tim, the office prat. Each pen he left me would be another exhibit. I wouldn't let his strangeness get under my skin. Instead, I would collect it, display it, and let it serve as a daily reminder that the man was certifiably insane. A small, tight smile touched my lips. Let him bring on the pens. I had a collection to start.