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 "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 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 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. The 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 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 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, 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
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 Steve
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 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, 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 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 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, Steve, 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.
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