We have three kids in elementary school and yesterday I spent nearly 2 hours at Staples together with a bunch of other dazed and confused parents. The ritual of buying school supplies may have nostalgic value to some, but I find it appallingly inefficient. The ideal solution would be for the teachers to simply go ahead and order the supplies online and have them delivered to school. I suspect that if our entire school district signed up we could get a nice break from Staples. Short of that, instead of sending out a different list for each teacher with such cryptic lines as “One box of Expo Markers” (dry erase or wet erase? color or black? thick tip or thin tip? box of 5 or 10?), teachers should send out an email with links to the items on staples.com — nobody would be forced to buy there, but at least clicking through would establish clarity as to what they had in mind in the first place.