CHANGING WORKPLACE
Senior citizens are replacing teenagers as fast-food workers
Carolina. He’s in charge of 13 employees, having worked his way up from a cleaning and dishwashing job he started about four years ago and sometimes works as many as 70 hours a week when it’s busy. Williams is a retired construction worker and had never worked at a restaurant before but was bored staying at home.
“It’s fun for a while, not getting up, not having to punch a clock, not having to get out of bed and grind every day,” he says. “But after working all your life, sitting around got old. There’s only so many trips to Walmart you can take. I just enjoy Church’s Chicken. I enjoy the atmosphere, I enjoy the people.”
Hiring seniors is a good deal for fast-food chains. They get years of experience for the same wages — an industry median of $9.81 an hour last year, according to the BLS — they would pay someone decades younger. This is a considerable benefit in an industry under pressure from rising transportation and raw material costs.
James Gray from Calibrate Coaching says older people are also a good deal financially because they aren’t always looking to move up and earn more.
They’re not “necessarily looking for a VP or an executive position or looking to make a ton of money,” he says.
Seniors typically have more developed social skills than kids who grew up online and often would rather not be bothered with real-world interactions. At Church’s Chicken, Williams coaches his younger co-workers on the niceties of workplace decorum.
“A lot of times with the younger kids now, they can be very disrespectful,” he says. “So you have to coach them and tell them, ‘This is your job, this is not the street.’”
AARP has become a veritable recruiting hub for the industry. In June, American Blue Ribbon Holdings, which owns several casual dining chains, paid $3,500 to list hourly and management jobs on the nonprofit’s website and hired five people for its Bakers Square and Village Inn dining brands. Bob Evans, a 500-plus-store sit-down chain that serves pot roast, biscuits and other homey fare, also recently advertised with AARP. Older hires typically work as hosts who seat customers and are “a nice fit with our brand,” says John Carothers, senior vice president of human resources.