STEVIE
Sometimes we just need to hear this stuff to get our lives back in order!
Tara
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
"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 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 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 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 whoop 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 . "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 twenty-dollar 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 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 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 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 andchecks 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
"Life is about people connecting with people, and making
a positive difference" "Take care of yourself, ... and those you love, ...
today, ... and ;everyday!"
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