At the beginning of the school year, I needed to purchase supplies for my first grader. Fortunately the PTO at our school had a supply sale, so I didn’t have to go hunting all over town for the correct item. So off I went to purchase my supplies to find that the PTO had even prepackaged the supplies in a bag for me so all I had to do was pick up the bag and pay for it. I was in heaven! “What a great system,” I was thinking. However, I realized that the supplies must have weighed 10 pounds, and my daughter had to schlep them back to the school in her backpack. She was taking them right back to where I went to purchase them in the first place! Why couldn’t I have just sent in my check for the bag that was already prepared? Why did I have to take my time to drive to the school, wait in line to pay, drive home, load them on the back of my first grader and have her take them right back to the school where I had just purchased them? That seemed pretty inefficient to me. The system was great up to a point, and then it broke. (more…)