A 90-year-old woman has officially retired from her retail job after having never missed a day of work for the past 74 years.
Melba Mebane recently celebrated her retirement after completing her last day of work at a Dillard’s department store in Tyler, Texas.
While speaking to KLTV 7, she revealed that started working for the retail giant, which used to be a Mayer & Schmidt, in 1949 when she was 17 years old.
She began her job as an elevator operator and eventually moved to men’s clothing department and cosmetology section of the store, which was acquired by Dillard’s in 1956.
Mebane was known for having never even called in sick once and showing showing up to work everyday with a smile.
She told KLTV 7 she was overjoyed to have worked with ‘great ladies who love to eat, laugh, and cut up’ and said:
I loved everybody there, and I love to go to work everyday.
The store manager of Dillard’s in Tyler, James Saenz, told Fox News:
Melba sets the tone for everything, every expectation, every customer service quality that we look for in a luxury experience. She provides all of it to the team. Can you imagine how many people she coached and taught and trained to aspire to be more?’
Her son, Terry Mebane, shared with Fox News Digital about his mother’s daily work routine:
She’s a grinder. The store would open at 10 and she wanted her parking spot, so she got there between 9 o’clock and 9:15.
Terry continued:
She was the first person in the door and had her counter ready. She did the prep work. She only took 30 minutes for lunch. She brought her lunch, went upstairs to eat lunch in 25 minutes, and then she was back on the floor because she knew that people often took off [during] their lunch hour to come to the mall to buy what they were going [to] buy, and she didn’t want to miss her opportunity.
Terry also said that even when her mother reached her 70s and 80s, she was still set on working 40 hours a week:
So she was working four eight-hour days, literally in her 70s and 80s. During the winter, if it was bad weather, I simply took her to work and picked her up so that she didn’t have to drive in snow or rain or anything like that.
However, he said that Melba decided to retire from Dillard’s at 90 years old as she has experienced some health issues.
Source : https://9gag.com