Thursday May 10 2019

After lunch on Thursday; Effie and Roger were folding towels in the laundry room. 

“I’m going over to clean Bobbie’s room, Roger. You can go poke around in the garden if you want.”

Roger headed down the back stairs and made his way to the garden. He saw that Rocco and a couple of guys were on the far side of the garden, excavating a hole in the side of the seep slope there. He watched the big machine but stayed out of the way until the driver parked it and climbed out. Roger walked over to Rocco. “Hi Rocco, whatcha doin’ today?”

We’re making a root cellar for Bobbie. She found some plans in an old cookbook, of all places and we’re digging this cave and lining it with these big bricks. Then I’m building shelves and adding a nice heavy door and we can store veggies from the garden there.”

Roger grinned. “I can carry heavy bricks.”

“I don’t know, you’ll get all dirty.”

Roger was excited. This was the kind of work he liked doing. “I’ll go get changed and ask Effie If I can help you.”

“That sounds great Roger, come back when you can and we’ll be ready for ya.”

Roger started back up the hill, through the garden and walked through the parking lot towards the back door of the restaurant.

A lady stepped out of a parked car. “Hi there, I was wondering if you work here.”

“Yes Mam. I do laundry and help in the garden and I’m going to build a root cellar.”

“Really, you do a lot of work around here. Do you come here every day?”

“Yes, I come with my cousin and Drey; we all work here.”

“So you all live together, do you get some money to spend every week?

“It’s a good job. I get 300 dollars every week and I have a new bank account.”

“That’s nice, so tell me, what’s your name?

“My name is Roger Proust. You can call me Roger; Mr. Proust was my father.” And he laughed.

“It was nice to talk to you, Roger. I work for a magazine and I might mention you in an article I am writing about the motel.”

“Good bye.” Roger headed in the back door to change into his work clothes. After he was changed, he headed into the kitchen. “Hi Mark, I need some water and can you text Effie and ask her if it’s OK if I help Rocco this afternoon.”

“Sure thing. What are you going to help Rocco with?”

“I’m going to help him build the root cellar; that’s what I told the lady.”

“What lady Roger?” 

“The nice lady who is writing the story about the hotel.”

“Right on. Try and remember to bring the water bottle back, OK Buddy?”

Roger smiled and headed back out to help with the root cellar. He made his way down the hill and didn’t notice the lady that talked to him, walking behind him. She stopped at the top of the garden and watched him head over to the root cellar location.

“Hi Rocco, I’m back now and I have my steel toes and work clothes and I’m ready to help.”

“Right, we’ve got to get all those bricks into that cave we dug.”

“My Dad would use a wheel barrow for that.” Said Roger.

“Your Dad was a smart man and so are you Roger. I have a wheelbarrow in the back of my truck, I’ll get it.”

Rocco returned with the wheelbarrow and Roger began filling it. The woman at the top of the hill went away and the guys worked steadily all afternoon and got their root cellar constructed.

Friday morning, Bobbie and Johnny were enjoying their morning coffee when Bobbie decided to check her online motel comments. There were 20 new ones. She was confused and she clicked the first one: “You capitalist whore! Shame on you for building your wealth on the backs of disadvantaged kids and paying them peanuts.” It shared a link to the Scandals are Us website. Bobbie was more confused than shocked and she clicked the link to the article.

She saw a beautiful picture of the motel with the title: New Owner of the Waterwheel Motel abuses Mentally Disabled Workers and Pays Less than Minimum Wage. There were several pictures of Roger, two of which were of him loading bricks into a wheelbarrow. Subtitled; Back Breaking Work for Slave Wages.

She was still shocked and confused and she gave her phone to Johnny.

“Bobbie this is crazy. When were these pictures taken? That picture of the motel is right off the website; Quinn took it. Was someone here yesterday?”

There was a knock at the door and Trixie and Quinn rushed in. “Have you seen this Bobbie?”

“The reporter from the Scandals are Us website said she wanted to review the motel and I said sure, we’re an open book. I don’t understand why she did this. And why does she think we underpay and overwork Roger?”

Mark was standing in the doorway. “Roger said he talked to her yesterday. He likely told her he makes 300 dollars a week. He’s proud of that and is always saying it to me. I know it’s because that’s net income and some of his salary goes to that disability retirement thing and some goes to Effie for rent and food.”

Trixie frowned. “If he net’s more than 20K, he looses government grants. Roger’s getting the optimum salary for his situation and because of that, he earns less than minimum wage.” This chick is off base with the reporting but she’s right that he’s below minimum wage.”

“So if you follow the government guidelines you can’t work full time? We should head over to their head office and complain to the editor.”

“That will make things worse Bobbie, haven’t you done enough?” Grumbled Trixie.

“The Scandal are us Website is hosted in a different place all together. They will never recant and article if they don’t have to. I’ll delete all the comments on our site referencing the article and hope people lose interest.” Said Quinn.

The comments were deleted but Bobbie couldn’t let it alone. Against Trixie’s advice She called the reporter, she had the number on her phone, and left a message. “That article you posted is a bit misleading, we don’t pay Roger below the poverty level at all. He just told you about his allowance from his legal guardian. You got the wrong idea and ran with it.” Bobbie never heard back.

Bobby felt so bad. She invited the fox into her hen-house and may have hurt Roger in the process.

She didn’t talk to Trixie until Sunday night. Trixie called. “Why don’t you come over for dinner and we can talk about a few things. I’m sorry I was grumpy with you.”

Bobbie agreed and arrived at Thurston manor at 5.

Trixie pulled her into the den. I wrote a piece in the Post about how the federal disability grant limits you to 20K a year and that means you can’t work full time and earn a minimum wage. It’s not fair. What we could do for Roger is put him on a 4 day work week and pay him minimum wage, essentially the same salary he earns now and that would be fine.”

“Oh Trixie that’s the perfect solution. We should have been doing that all along.”