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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
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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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.
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