This Woman Is the Longest-Serving Fast-Food Employee In History

Every once in a while, an incredibly long-tenured fast-food employee is picked out for distinction via news article. The result is a more-than-well-earned honor, but there’s also a weird dichotomy at play, especially today. At the same time that fast-food workers are used as a punching bag for the dangers of a life wasted to the young, these dedicated workers are applauded for their contributions to Big Hamburger. Similarly dissonant, the same people who get so mad their mouth fills with frothy spittle when someone suggests paying McDonald’s workers a cent over minimum wage line up to salute the work of their longest-tenured employees.

Fittingly, McDonald’s is home to, at least through research without explicit access to employee rolls, the longest serving fast-food worker I can find. 

Now, before you get all pedantic about it, there's no way I’m bestowing this honor upon Ray Kroc, or another founder. They don’t need any more ego-stroking from their Gulfstreams. I am instead going to speak about a lovely 75-year-old lady named Barbara Cramer, who has worked primarily at the Ft. Pierce McDonald’s location in West Palm Beach for a little over 53 years. 

Apparently, McDonald’s hasn’t been the center of just her work life either, as she met both of her late husbands under the Golden Arches. And according to Cramer herself, she loves working there and has no plans to stop.

I wholly applaud her following her bliss, even if it’s one surrounded by aerosolized sodium. At the same time, hey, McDonald’s, can we get her maybe a little more than media coverage? At the very least get her a gold Rolex with the arches on it like companies used to give out when retirement was a thing. 

Speaking of which, I’m not going to rant on and on about how she should have been long retired, given that she’s the one who wants to keep supplying fries to the community, though I would like to visit and see this McDonald’s that someone can spend most days inside of for 53 years without wanting to leave. Most McDonald’s I’ve been in start to feel like a menacing sort of Star Wars cantina after about 35 minutes.

If nothing else, give Barbara her own menu item. You have to imagine that she’s eaten enough shift meals to have cooked up some sort of incredible customized burger order. For context, when she started in 1970, the Big Mac was only three years old. It’s time to hand her the canvas and introduce the Big Barb.