If
this doesn't light your fire, your wood is wet. 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
Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers
because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the
meatloaf 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 "truck
stop germ" the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts
who think every truck stop 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 truck stop 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 peppershaker was exactly in its
place, not a breadcrumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done
with the table.. Our only problem was persuading 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 dishes and glasses onto his cart and
meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced 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 to 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 benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop.
Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often,
admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I
paid him was 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 Downs Syndrome often have heart
problems at an 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, the 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 this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside
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
sighed: "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 and 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 folds. 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. I then 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 and 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 celebrate your 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 of the
staff 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. Plant a seed and watch it grow.
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