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.

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.