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 truck stop 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, 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 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, 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 replacement 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.
Plant a seed and watch it grow.
At this point, you can bury
this inspirational message or forward
it fulfilling the need!
If you shed a tear,
hug yourself because you are
a compassionate person.
When you're lonely, I wish you LOVE.
When you're down, I wish you JOY.
When things get complicated, I wish you FAITH.
When things look empty, I wish you HOPE.
