Last week, I started a new temp assignment. Temp jobs often involve unpleasant work environments loaded with special challenges. I have worked temp jobs where I had nothing to do; not a fun way to spend an eight-hour day (less lunch). I have worked temp jobs where there was too much to do; usually an understaffed project with an insane deadline. I have also fielded assignments that involved performing tasks no one on the payroll wanted to do, jobs that were crazy to assign to someone with NO EXPERIENCE with the company. Once, I had a week-long assignment shredding highly sensitive financial reports for a Fortune 500 Company. The company knew nothing about me except my social security number and the “who should be called in emergency” contact I had to supply on their HR forms. Go figure.

So, I had hardly been at my new gig for more than thirty minutes – I had been walked around and introduced, shown the locations of the bathroom and break room, been given a map with building evacuation procedures then invited to my “cube” to wait for the IT guy – when I sneezed. I succumbed to one of those three-in- a-row types of fits when you can’t help but close your eyes and scrunch up your face.

Maybe I had stirred up dust while rifling through drawers that had been inactive for months. I am not sure, but my sneezes were uncontrollable. With eyes wide shut and a sort of groping hand, I reached out and — surprise – found a box of Kleenex®

I couldn’t believe it. Exactly what I needed. Exactly when I needed it. At a temp job.

I felt compelled to continue my exploration of what would be my daytime home for the next five weeks. I was amazed. In addition to a gray and white box of Kleenex, I saw:
• Two waste paper baskets under the desktop; one lined with dark brown polyethylene for real garbage along with a corrugated box for recycling paper.
• A low profile grayish two-drawer file cabinet on wheels. It had an orange and brown colored cushion on the top which could be used as a chair for visitors who came to my cube.
• A narrow dark gray metal standing closet, with three drawers for personal belongings and a tall compartment, big enough for a coat and standard sized umbrella.
• Four black file bins on my desktop, two 2-piece horizontal ones, one 7-piece vertical one (presumably seven for each day of the week), and one horizontal-vertical combo design.
• A View Sonic monitor on a swivel arm that could actually be adjusted to a position where I could read the 1792 entries on my spreadsheet.
• Two additional file holders, mounted on the wall just to the left of my monitor, for files I need to get to quickly.
• Two metal door storage areas, with locks, above my desk to the right of my monitor. An under-cabinet fluorescent mounted underneath one.
• An upholstered chair with back support and arm rests, on casters, capable of navigating a 360.
• A small white board near my closet, primary colored dry-erase markers and an elementary school style black felt eraser.
• Two light-weight head sets. They both worked, too.
• A stapler, tape dispenser, and Polycom office phone.
• 15 clear-headed push pins scattered against the cube wall to the right of my monitor.
• About 10’ of fake walnut grained desktop, nearly 6’ high walls/partitions, with shallow windows near the top on three sides affording me a view of one neighboring cubicle, the closest networked printer, and a corner window for the building where I could gauge the weather.

Wow, this is some place, I thought, though, I probably didn’t need two working headsets. Honestly, they had won me over with the box of Kleenex. I was aware of how grateful I felt that the office manager, or whoever it was that placed a box of tissues in my workspace, considered it, like a stapler or pad of post-its, a required office supply. Having a box of Kleenex within arm’s reach while a sneeze is gathering momentum is no small thing.