- A 92-year-old worker at a Wendy’s restaurant in Ohio says she won’t quit anytime soon.
- “I’m going to stay as long as I can,” she told The Parkersburg News and Sentinel.
- Workers aged 65 and over make up just 3.1% of the restaurant industry, per federal data.
A 92-year-old woman who works at a Wendy’s restaurant in Ohio says she doesn’t plan on quitting anytime soon.
“I’m going to stay as long as I can,” Susie Kelly told The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She works at a restaurant in Marietta, a small city in southeast Ohio on the border with West Virginia.
“I do the work for my own therapy, because if I didn’t have something to get out and go I would just sit at home,” Kelly said. “It puts me out among people.”
Kelly, who has worked at the restaurant since it opened in the early 2000s after pivoting from home healthcare, cleans the tables, washes trays, and cleans the restrooms but doesn’t help prepare food, The News and Sentinel reported.
“I try to keep things straightened up,” Kelly told the publication. “I talk with the people who come in.”
“She interacts with everyone in the dining room, cleans the tables and carries little mints around,” District Manager Jason Blair told The News and Sentinel. “She wouldn’t walk past a person and not say hello.
“Things would run so much smoother if there were more people like her,” General Manager Nina Male told the outlet.
The US has an aging population. As of 2020, 16.8% of the total population, or around 55.8 million people, were aged 65 or over, per Census Bureau data. Around 2.5 million were aged 90 or over.
The restaurant industry typically attracts younger workers, which could be because of the physical demands of the roles alongside the scheduling that often requires weekend and evening work.
The average age for workers in the industry is 29.5 years, according to 2022 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and workers aged 65 and over make up just 3.1% of the industry.
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