"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 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 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 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 a 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 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 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.
Author Unknown
