"Something For Stevie"
I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie.
His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good,
reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped
employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my
customers would react to Stevie.
He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features
and thick-tongued speech of Down Syndrome. I wasn't worried
about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't
generally care who buses tables as long as the meat loaf
platter is good and the pies are homemade. The four-wheeler
drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college
kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish
their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some
dreaded "truckstop germ;" the pairs of white shirted business
men on expense accounts who think every truckstop waitress
wants to be flirted with.
I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie
so I closely watched him for the first few weeks. I shouldn't
have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff
wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month
my truck regulars had adopted him as their official
truckstop mascot. After that, I really didn't care what the
rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a
21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and
eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties.
Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not
a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got
done with the table. Our only problem was convincing him
to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished.
He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from
one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table
was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and
carefully bus the dishes and glasses onto his cart
meticulously wipe the table up with a practice flourish
of his rag.
If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would
pucker with added concentration He took pride in doing
his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried
please each and every person he met. Over time, we learned
that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after
repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social
Security benifits in public housing two miles from the truckstop.
Their social worker, which stopped to check on him every so
often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money
was tight, and what I paid him was the probably the difference
between them being able to live together and Stevie being
sent to a group home.
That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning
last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed.
work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new
valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that
people with Down syndrome often had heart problems at a
early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good
chance he would come through the surgery in good shape
and be back at work in a few months.
A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning
when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery and
doing fine. Frannie, my head waitress, let out a war hoop and
did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.
Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at
the sight of the 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory
shimmy besides his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron
and shot Belle Ringer a withering look. He grinned. "OK, Frannie,
what was that all about?" He asked. "We just got word that Stevie
is out of surgery and going to be okay." "I was wondering where he
was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"
Frannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the other two drivers sitting
at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then signed.
"Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK," she said, "but I don't know
how he and his mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I
hear, they're barely getting by as it is." Belle Ringer nodded
thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables.
Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and
really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own
tables that day until we decided what to do. After the morning rush,
Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins
in her hand a funny look on her face. "What's up?" I asked.
"I didn't get that table where Belle Ringer and his friends were
sitting cleared off after they left, and Pony Pete and Tony Tipper
were sitting there when I got back to clean it off," she said, "This
was folded and tucked under a coffee cup." She handed the napkin
to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the
outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "Something For Stevie."
"Pony Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told
him about Stevie and his mom and everything, and Pete looked at
Tony, and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this."
She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something for Stevie"
scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its fold.
Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and
said simply "truckers."
That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day
Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said
he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work,
and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10 times
in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that
we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy.
I arranged to have his mother bring him to work, met them in the
parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back. Stevie
was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed
through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron
busing cart were waiting.
"Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother
by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebreate you
coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me." I led
them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room. I could feel
and hear the rest following behind as we marched through the dining
room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning
truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the
big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and
dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper
napkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess,"
I said. I tried to sound stern. Stevie looked at me, and then at his
mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "something for
Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell
onto the table. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins
peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or
scrawled on it. I turned to his mother. "There's more than $10,000 in
cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking.
companies that heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving."
Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and
shouting, and there were a few tears, as well. But you know what's
funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging
each other, Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy
clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.
Best worker I ever hired.
Author Unknown
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