Loraine Maurer is not your average 94-year-old. For the past 44 years, the great-grandmother of seven has worked at the McDonald’s restaurant in Evansville, Ind., bringing cheerful service and inspiration to countless customers.
Maurer credits these loyal customers with getting her through the toughest moment in her life, when she lost her husband, Kenneth, in 1980, ABC News reported.
“They were my live savers when I lost my husband,” Maurer told ABC. “The customers helped.”
Though she’s considered retiring in the past, Maurer, known simply as “Miss Loraine” to colleagues and customers, says she can’t imagine ever giving up her two-day-a-week shift.
“I would miss it too much,” she told ABC. “I don’t want to get depressed and it’s not that I don’t look forward to going to work. … It’s not a job.”
But to the rest of us, it certainly seems like a job.
“I get in here at 5 o’clock when they open. I have to get up at three,” Maurer casually told one customer.
Slate magazine’s Heather Schwedel noted what many people were thinking after hearing this incredible woman’s story: “This hard-working, dedicated woman is making the rest of us look like slackers.”
“We want to barely earn our health insurance, malinger through two weeks of vacation a year, and retire the second we’re eligible so we can start draining the Medicaid and Social Security coffers,” Schwedel added.
The grace and dignity with which Loraine Maurer approaches her job is certainly exceptional, but it doesn’t have to be. If anything, Maurer is an example of how it’s never too late to invest in one’s community and build a career around serving others instead of oneself.
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