And it worked.

That is the part that still moves me when I look at the quarterly reports Arthur brings me.

In a single ninety-day stretch, the fund covered emergency rent for thirty-four waitstaff employees who would otherwise have lost their homes.

It provided short-term legal grants for workers fighting unlawful deductions from their pay.

And it fully reimbursed dozens, dozens, of young servers who had been forced, exactly as I had been forced, by cruel or lazy management, to pay for walkouts and unpaid checks out of their own pockets.

Every one of those reimbursements was a person like me, on a night like mine, who instead of emptying their envelope into a manager’s hand got a quiet message from a foundation they had never heard of, telling them it was covered, they were covered, they were not alone.