Special Ordering from the UC Davis Bookstore

A few weeks ago, I fell in love with a pen. An Avery eGel Retractable pen to be exact. I have no idea how I became in possession of it but I am ever so grateful. Note taking in class and for homework became enjoyable because the pen writes so smoothly, does not bleed at all and the ink’s color is so rich. Now, I’ve never been one to be excited about buying writing utensils except the time in middle school when I HAD to have Paper Mate erasable pens. My family keeps a bag of free pens we’ve accumulated over the years and that has been my school supply source. It’s only natural that in my last year as a college student I become OBSESSED with a pen. I first checked out Target when I was doing other shopping errands and ended up buying a pack of gel pens from another brand that seemed comparable. Boy was that a disappointment – the pen bled so much my test paper looked like it was about to suffer from an oil spill. Then I checked out Office Max and to my surprise they did not have it either. They said I could have an order sent to the store but it was only sold in dozens. I loved the pen but did not want to make that kind of commitment yet. I searched online but did not want to fork over money for shipping. To my delight, a girl in my class last week asked what kind of pen I was using. I gladly let her try it out and right after she said that she would be down to split an online bulk order. Right after class I wanted to check one more place before resorting to buying online – the campus bookstore.

I looked and tried out their other gel pens but was not satisfied. I noticed there were lots of other pens dispersed throughout the store so I decided to go to the customer service desk to have them do a search. The girl who helped me said they did not have any in store and that Avery is more of a paper company. (That’s why the pens so hard to find!) She was very empathetic and nice and introduced me the bookstore’s catalog.

The Bookstore can special order all sorts of things – even medical supplies for the MedCenter.

I found it amusing there was a Breakroom section.

She found my pen! They also have it available in blue.

So I decided to order 5 more black pens and 2 blue pens to try. What’s awesome about special ordering at the bookstore  is you don’t have to pay for shipping. Special orders take around 2-3 business days to arrive.

They called me yesterday to say my order was in and I picked them up today after class. I was super happy because my original pen ran out of ink on Sunday – such perfect timing!

The blue is beautiful and I thought I’d doodle on my order form for you to take a look. I feel a little silly sharing this with you all but it’s the little things in life – right? Definitely check out the store catalog if you don’t find what you’re looking for in the bookstore. Do you have any favorite school supplies? Any purchases from our bookstore that you absolutely love? Let me know in the comments – I would love to try out other writing tools.