Getting school supplies for the primary grades is simple. Get the teacher’s list, take the kid to Walmart, and buy stuff.

Savant parents skip the field trip. They put the kid to bed, order the supplies on Amazon, and later take the child to Walgreens to pick out crayons so the kid feels “involved.”

Once your child has multiple teachers—and each teacher has very specific preferences—school supply shopping becomes complicated.

And expensive.

As you stare at the list and begin ranting about the cost of pencils, folders, and Kleenex, you suddenly realize something.

You’ve seen most of this stuff before.

At work.

You quickly scan the list and identify the items that definitely don’t exist in the office supply cabinet: compass, crayons, colored pencils, protractor, blunt-tip scissors, watercolor paints, book socks, and Crayola washable markers.

Everything else?

Definitely at the office.

Before leaving for work the next morning, you begin priming the parental rationalization machine.

“Work can afford a new hole puncher.”

“There are tons of extra pencils in the supply closet.”

“No one will notice if a single ream of paper disappears.”

Later that day you return home and notice that you accidentally dropped several office supplies into your bag.

You pause briefly to feel guilty about borrowing items from work.

The guilt fades quickly when you realize you saved enough money to buy your child the Cadillac of backpacks—an L.L. Bean model that will probably outlive the kid.

Suddenly, a straightforward old-school sin—stealing—transforms you into a parental savant.

Your kid gets great school supplies.

You save money.

And you discover something important about parenting:

Moral compasses are wildly overrated.