The Most Evil Product in My Classroom

Dear 3-M Research and Development Team,
   While I thoroughly appreciate many of your products, I feel obligated to inform you that pop-up dispenser Post-Its are officially the most evil office product ever created.  Allow me to elaborate.
   Firstly, you should know that thousands of pads of pop-up dispenser Post-Its have made their way into my classroom, posing as regular Post-Its.  It is there that I have discovered the multitude of ways in which you have clearly designed this product to be an abomination.
   The aforementioned evilness of the pop-up dispenser Post-Its may perhaps have been caused by an innocent mix-up between two R&D meetings, likely happening simultaneously at your fine company.  It would seem that the participants in the “Create Helpful Paper Product” session accidentally sat in on the “Create Uber-Distracting Paper Toy” meeting and vice versa.  In the future, I would recommend scheduling these meetings either on different floors or at different times.
   Though a simple confusion of meetings may have been the cause, I suspect there is a more sinister force at work, here.  I am inclined to believe that a team intentionally placed this product in the hands of children to cause them to spend 94 percent of their class time grasping a pad of Post-Its by the top sheet and letting the pad stretch down to the floor in a magnificent display of accordionism.  With such an object in the room, students’ brains have been turning to mush, as they can think of nothing else but getting their hands on the nearest expanding pad of Post-Its.
   I personally am not acquainted with anyone who even uses a pop-up dispenser for their Post-Its, but they must have quite the powerful lobby in order to flood the market with dispenser-friendly Post-Its to the annoyance of all other Post-It users and most especially to the annoyance of teachers.
   The only solutions I see are to either take this product off the market entirely, or perhaps to ban its use within 1,000 feet of a school zone.
              Sincerely,
                   Sarah Garb
                   Proponent of Non-Pop-Up Post-Its

6 comments:

Laura said...

I LOVE my post-it pop up dispenser. However, I feel your pain about the student's misuse of the refills. I have learned to go through all my post-its and take out the accordion ones for myself in order to avoid the frustration of students playing with them.

Laura said...

oops....students'

Sarah Garb said...

It really is just better to save up all those accordion ones for use by non-eight-year-old, trained professionals :) I wouldn't think that a pop-up dispenser would make my life noticeably easier than not having one, but now I'm kind of tempted to give it a try! I sure would never need refills....

Miss Angel said...

I've never seen those... but I can see how it would be tempting for kids to play with! Plus, I've always found post-its convenient and easy enough to use, without their having to "pop up" from anywhere! I can usually peel them off the pad on my own. I'm clever that way. ;)

Laura said...

You should check out the post-it article on Wonderopolis.org. There is a video with it that shows office workers playing with accordion post-its. It's fun, but you may not want to show it to your students. It might give them ideas!

Sarah Garb said...

Woah - that Wonderopolis video blew my mind with sticky notes! I am seriously tempted to try that..and the kids would go NUTS for it....but would cause complete chaos ;) Maybe they can try that at home!

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