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 Downs 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 Downs Syndrome

often have 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,

the 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 this 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,

Continued for PB,

that's a great story!! thanks for posting that.

"i love those goofy bastards"

Funny movie!

Gulp..

French Canadian? [;)]

Nice story.

Kinda reminds me of this one:
[url]http://www.theonion.com/onion3702/burger_king_employee.html[/url]

...no I'm not.  It's just my allergies acting up again. [:I]

[url]http://www.snopes.com/glurge/stevie.htm[/url]

Stevie better be real because I'm Stevie.
CW