Something For Stevie
By Dan AndersonI 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 "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 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 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 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 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 it's 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 possession. 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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He
who loses money loses much;
He
who loses a friend loses more;
He
who loses faith loses all.
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