Something For Stevie

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Little Valley Miniatures

"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
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 businessmen 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
a cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practised 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, 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
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 great 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 is 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 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 first 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 cheques 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.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

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