Also depending on the environment, it could be Played for Laughs to try and prove a point to their younger whippersnapper relatives or friends who think they're incapable of doing the job, and usually are, or Played for Drama due to the senior losing their pension or if they do still have a pension, but due to the 2008 Great Recession, it's not enough to live on and they have no choice but to go back to work.
See also Old Retainer, Old Cop, Young Cop and Old Soldier (the strictly military version). An inversion of this trope is Reluctant Retiree. Compare and contrast Mandatory Unretirement, when someone goes back to the exact job they quit (while this trope has more to do with an older person or elder taking any job available). May be prone to Experience Entitlement if he doesn't want to change the way things have been done for years.
Keep in mind that their age must be lampshaded or otherwise relevant to the plot to be considered an example. If a person just so happens to be the oldest employee with a company but it's seldom commented on, then it's not an example of this trope. To qualify as this trope, it can't be a field where people are often older than average.note Also consider that the character doesn't need to be a senior citizen; a 30-year-old delivering newspapers by bike (typically a job done by a schoolchild) would count.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A Super Bowl 2018 commercial for E-Trade had a group of elderly people going to work in generally unsuitable jobs (such as a lifeguard, a firefighter and a DJ) due to not having enough money to retire.
- A 1980s era McDonald's commercial titled "The New Kid" featured an elderly man nervous about his first day as a cashier, only for him to be sharp as a tack and popular with both his coworkers and the customers.
Film — Live-Action
- In American Beauty, Lester quits his advertising job and takes up working at the local burger joint (explaining he wants "the least possible amount of responsibility"). He's easily 20+ years older than the other employees, including the managers, and has to defend his prior fast food service experience because it was decades earlier.
- Godmothered: Inverted. Eleanor is young and all the other fairy godmothers are old. Due to her lack of experience, her magic frequently goes wrong, so she is less suited for the job than the other fairy godmothers.
- In Good Burger, Abe Vigoda works at the titular restaurant despite being at least 40 or 50 years older than any other employee there.
Literature
- Germinal: veteran miner Vincent Maheu, who, at 58, has worked since nearly half a century in the Montsou mine.
- Going Postal:
- Junior Postman Groat is, in fact, the oldest employee still serving at the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, but the Post Office has been without a Postmaster for so long that there was nobody to promote him.
- Also are the other, even older postmen who induct Moist as Postmaster General, and later still Anghammarad, a golem several thousand years old whose last job was delivering a message to an island that sank into the sea (and is waiting for it to come back up, carving the message into a new clay tablet when the old one crumbles) and who gets given the rank of Extremely Senior Postman.
Live-Action Television
- In Are You Being Served?, Mr. Grainger was a 40-year veteran employee and was much older than most of his co-workers. Many of his jokes are about how he should have retired years ago, and his tendency to fall asleep on the job. After Arthur Brough who played him died, the writers tried to replace the character with many similar characters (Mr. Tebbs, Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Grossman, and Mr. Klein), but none of the replacements lasted more than one season.
- Cold Case episode "The Dealer" goes into the sexist world of car dealers to try and solve the 1981 murder of a young mother. In addition to interviewing the former coworkers, detectives soon learn that it's also a pretty racist and ageist environment and one of few people who still worked at the dealership in question, a middle-aged man, killed the woman out of jealousy and the heat of the moment.
- A The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode has Will trying to get on the air at a news station and asking an elderly man for help. He then replies, "I'm an 80-year-old pushing a mail cart. Do I look like I could help you?"
- The Golden Girls:
- An early episode has Rose, who had just lost her late husband's pension after his company went out of business, searching for employment. Even after much rejection, she ends up as a waitress at a diner (although this is retconned out of existence and she is instead a grief counselor and eventually gets a job as a consumers' reporter).
- A Played for Laughs version has Sophia taking a few jobs in the food service, first as a server at a pirate-themed seafood restaurant and then as a country-themed grocery store where she and two elderly girlfriends contront their Mean Boss for being insensitive to their schedules, who happens to be the one friend's teenaged grandson (played by a young Scott Menville!)
- It's a Living follows the five waitresses at a posh California restaurant, and their senior supervisor, Nancy Beebe. When the girls whine that Nancy's cracking the whip too hard, a contest is held to see who can generate the most tips that evening. Nancy wins handily, even bringing water to an exhausted Dot. The girls are better at dishing gossip and drama than serving entrees.
- An earlier episode had Nancy end up getting fired by the women's sexist and ageist corporate manager and her working as a waitress at a seedy diner to make ends meet. When it was pointed out that discriminating against her due to age is illegal and the women manage to get audio evidence of the guy's behavior and views, he soon hires her back while he gets reported to his bosses.
- Mama's Family episode "Have It Mama's Way" has Thelma and Bubba both getting jobs at a fast food restaurant. While the latter is good at his job due to be quick and courteous with customers, the former is, well, Mama.
- Creed from The Office (US) is much older than the rest of his co-workers, and occasionally shows signs of going senile. Though, somewhat of a subversion since he never actually applied for a job and just walked into the building one day, pretended to be working, and continued to do so for years.
- Superstore: The octogenarian Myrtle is the superstore's longest-serving employee. Her old age is mainly used for humor, as she is a Scatterbrained Senior Racist Grandma who still has to restock shelves and push carts like everyone else. Despite this, the store managers are reluctant to fire her in Season 3 because she's been working for the store for so long.
Video Games
- In No Delivery, one of the NPCs you can meet is an old lady in a wheelchair who spends her time in the employee lounge. She's referred to as "Senior Staff". can remember specific events much better than other characters, and ends up as one of the player's summons, where her attacks revolve around using a shot gun.
Visual Novels
- In the Ace Attorney series, Wendy Oldbag is an elderly security guard. Even she doesn't know how old she is.
- In Double Homework, Mr. Adler is about to semi-retire when his “successor” as school counselor disappears.
Western Animation
- In Dan Vs.. episode the Gigundo mart Dan encounters A greeter so old he fought in "SanJuanHill".
- In The Simpsons episode, "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", the subplot has Grampa Simpson going to work at Krusty Burger to try and reclaim his dignity and to feel young. Given it's the Simpsons patriarch, he does terribly to the point of being unsure if they sold french fries.
