93-Year-Old Wendy's Employee Still Hard At Work
Joel Presson, 93, has worked at Wendy's for the last 25 years.
— -- Not many people reach the age of 93, let alone make it to work every day.
Enter Joel Presson, who has been an Oxford, Ohio, Wendy’s employee for 25 years and counting.
“He’s pretty much an ambassador for us,” Oxford Wendy’s operator Mo Murphy told ABC News. “He talks to customers and a lot of them come in here just to see him.”
Presson got his start in the restaurant industry at just nine years old, and he worked at restaurants off and on until he joined Wendy’s in 1989 at 67 years old.
“I was hungry and didn’t want to get any hungrier,” he bluntly told ABC News. “The founder of our company of course was Dave Thomas, and I read his books and liked the style. We were a people business as much as a restaurant business and it gave me a chance to meet with the people out front and I worked on the floor and I gave service.”
After working alone on his father’s farm as a child, Presson swore to himself he’d never work alone again.
“When you’re working on a one-horse farm, nobody but you and the mule can talk to each other,” he said.
Presson fills his days with a variety of responsibilities, but mainly chatting with the customers and getting drink refills.
“He does a little bit of everything, anywhere form filling ice bins to taking out the trash and mopping floors to prepping product for us,” Murphy said. “But the most important thing he does is taking care of the customers. He works the dining room for us, greeting customers and getting drinks for them. He’s really a public relations person for us. He does remarkable for 93 years old.”
Presson said he has no plans to stop anytime soon.
“I’m grateful for the years I’ve had and been able to work. You hope that you can do it because if you can keep active, that’s the only way,” he said. “I love the people here, and I don’t feel like a real fast food place, although we really are. But the food we have is, in my opinion, better than most restaurants. I eat any of it as long as my teeth will let me do the job.”