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Articles: My Thoughts | Plant a seed and watch it grow.
- Mr. Siri Siri
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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 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 Steve so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Steve
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 Steve 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 the dishes and glasses onto
the 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
Steve 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 Steve 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.
Fannie, 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. Fannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot
Belle Ringer a withering look. He grinned.
'OK, Fannie, what was that all about?' he asked.
'We just got word that Steve 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?'
Fannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the other two
drivers sitting at his booth about Steve'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 Fannie hurried
off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had
time to round up a busboy to 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, Fannie 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 Steve'.
'Pony Pete asked me what that was all about,' she
said, 'so I told him about Steve and his Mom and
everything, and Pete looked at me and Tony looked at
Pete, and they ended up giving me this.' She handed
me another paper napkin that had 'Something For
Steve' scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were
tucked within its folds. Fannie 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 Steve 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.
Steve 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, Steve, 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, Steve, is clean up this
mess,' I said. I tried to sound stern. Steve looked at
me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the
napkins. It had 'Something for Steve' printed on the outside.
As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.
Steve 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, Steve, 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.
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