"Some ask me to say a prayer, and I do."

"My customers are my life," says Loraine Maurer, a mother of four from Evansville, Indiana. "They're friends, not just customers." And it's true. She has gone to ballgames with them and traveled with them. She knows their kids. "Some ask me to say a prayer, and I do," she says. During winter months, her customers offer to pick her up for work and take her home. Recently she turned 94, and was honored with a special cake for working 44 years at McDonalds restaurants. She currently works every Friday and Saturday during breakfast at the Green River location. "I get in here at 5 o'clock when they open," she says "I have to get up at three."

                                                                                                 Alex Slitz/Courier Press
Maurer has a loyal following of customers who like to have her take their order. They know that if something comes from the grill and it's not perfect, she'll send it back for them. Over the decades, she has eaten from the McDonalds menu during every shift she worked. Her favorite meal is the fish sandwich, "but now I work mornings and there isn't anything I don't like." On the extremely rare days when she misses a shift because of illness, her co-workers take food to her house. But at the end of the day, it's not food that keeps Maurer working. "The people, the clientele, that's why I stuck with it," she says.