If you are making badges you need a slot punch. This is not news to people who have been doing this for a while. For those of us getting into the business, it is good to know that this is apparently the unicorn of office supplies.

We looked them up on a couple of office supply store websites, and it looked like there should be at least one option available, but you can’t get to the specific store’s inventory. So we went to our local store and asked around. They found badge clips. They found printable badges. They had no idea what a slot punch was or could even fathom that there was such a device or what it could be used for (which is especially bad when holding badge clips). We departed hastily due to the need of the employee for learn about the 1 of the 6-2-1 rule in a way that allowed you to smell him at 15′.

The second store we went to was similarly pathetic. Not only could they not understand what we wanted (even while holding a badge holder with a slot pre-formed in it)… They tried to convince us that a regular hole punch was good enough and we should just buy the really expensive one so we can reliably punch a bunch of holes next to each other reliably. We cut out of there as soon as we could.

Eventually we bought one on amazon. So far so good.