If idleness is the devil’s playground, then the Prince of Darkness can take his ball and go home as far as Margaret Zempter is concerned.
Having worked 14 years in sales at JCPenney and then in quality control for a hotel that eventually closed, Margaret retired at age 62. She unretired two weeks later.
“I couldn’t take the retirement,” she said. “I have to be busy. I can’t be idle at all.”
Instead, on April 14, 1994, she joined the “phone room” at what was then Connells Flowers. Margaret, who turned 81 in December 2012, works close to 30 hours per week at Connells Maple Lee in Bexley.
“She’s always telling me she wants more hours,” quipped store manager Roger Morgan.
While most of her time is spent working the phones, Margaret said she does a little bit of everything: watering plants, arranging and processing flowers, cleaning up when co-workers finish with their work.
“I love people,” Margaret said. “I love my phone customers. I love my people I work with in all the stores.”
She has helped at Powell and Grove City on occasion, you see.
She still drives to work from her residence, a senior community in Columbus. She cooks and bakes: lots of desserts, she said, macaroni and cheese, meat loaf.
She has four grown children, three of whom live in the Columbus area, the fourth approximately 90 miles south in her native Scioto County. Her former husband’s Air Force career meant family moves to Cheyenne, Wyo., Boston, Plattsburg, N.Y.
These days, Margaret doesn’t travel much, unless you count her activity at work. She’s particularly fond of the year-end holidays.
The yuletide makes people happy, she said, and “there’s not one minute that you aren’t busy, and I love that.”