Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
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
businessmen 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 Nike's, 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 his 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 ocial 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 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 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
hoop and did a little dance 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 bussing 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 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, 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 bussing 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 really 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
The HartKeeper 
