I looked at Brent for a long time.

Part of me wanted to say no. To send him to the used lot on Van Buren Street.

But I remembered being thirty years old with six hundred dollars in the bank, begging people for a chance. Somebody gave me one.

“Here's the deal,” I said. “You start on Monday. Same training as everyone else. Same pay. Same route a new driver gets. Downtown Phoenix, in July.”

He nodded.

“And you wear the uniform,” I said. “Brown shorts. Steel-toe boots. Orange polo shirt. Every single day.”

I slid a shirt across the table. Orange. Faded a little from the wash. Callahan Freight on the pocket.

Brent picked it up. He held it in his hands and looked at it.

“The same shirt,” he said quietly.

“The same shirt.”

He was a slow driver at first. He got lost. He got sunburned. He complained.

Then, about three months in, something changed.

I got an email from a customer on his route. An old lady in Tempe.

Your driver Brent carried my groceries up three flights of stairs because the elevator was broken. He wouldn't take a tip. He said someone once taught him that everybody deserves to be treated like a customer. Please thank him.

I printed it out and put it on the depot noticeboard.