EXCEPTIONALLY SIMPLE

 By   Christina Starr

 I experienced something exceptional with a staffing recruitment firm, but it isn’t what  you would think. It isn’t the perfect job, it isn’t a new career, it isn’t even being  dependably placed in assignments that fulfill my skills and suit need for flexibility,  though that’s true. No, my exceptional experience is something far simpler than all of  that.

 Meeting with PD Bureau on a damp and dreary morning in downtown Toronto to  discuss possible positions, a men’s homeless shelter was gingerly proposed to me.  I theoretically understood poverty, homelessness, mental illness and substance  abuse, but the women at PD were careful to ask what I could tolerate. There may be  crack users right outside the door;  there will be some whose hygiene isn’t great. In  addition, this particular shelter manages a controlled drinking program for alcoholics:  clients are allowed a measured amount every day in an effort to avert binge-drinking or  ingestion of toxic substitute liquids, like mouthwash or hand soap

 Not your average filing and faxing. But as someone who’d worked for years with arts  groups and non-profits, I had feared I might lack the wardrobe or poise that corporate  clients would expect. Here was something I felt I could do.

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 Copyright Christina Starr