Stevie "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 Downs syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers
because truckers don't generally care who busses 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 "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 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 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 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 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 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 bussing 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, 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,
eachwith 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. [FLASH] [Toolbox]
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