Somthing For Stevie
Source of Recipe
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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 ofmy trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tablesas long as the meat loaf 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 secretlypolish 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 thosepeople would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him forthe first few weeks. I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had mystaff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month mytruck 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 orcoffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problemwas persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customerswere finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from onefoot 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 his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practicedflourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would puckerwith added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, andyou 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 theirSocial Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop.
The 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 himwas probably the difference between them being able to live together and Steviebeing sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomyplace that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Steviemissed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve orsomething put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downsyndrome often had heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, andthere was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape andbe 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 ourregular trucker customers, stared at the sight of the
50-year-old grandmother offour doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed herapron 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 waswondering 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 heis going to be OK", she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom aregoing to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely getting byas it is." Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off towait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboyto replace Steve 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 weresitting there when I got back to clean it off" she said. "This was foldedand 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 Itold him about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tonyand 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 itsfolds. 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 beencounting the days until the doctor said he could work, and itdidn'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 hisjob 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 andbusing 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 comingback, 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 marchedthrough the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth afterbooth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was coveredwith coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked ondozens of folded paper napkins.
"First thing you have to do, Steve, 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 tablewear 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 abut 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 allthe cups and dishes from the table. Best worker I ever hired.
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