~Author Unknown~
I tried not to be biased in hiring a handicapped person,
but his placement counselor assured me that he would be
a good, reliable busboy.
I had never had a mentally-handicapped employee, and
I wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my
customers would react to Stevie. He was short, a little
dumpy, and had 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 attend 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 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, 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
had 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 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 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 your 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 processions.
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.
~Back to my Touching Stories Page~
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