Wilma waitressed for 47 years. She worked in gas station restaurants in the 40's, carhops in the 50s and coffee shops after that. At 74, she's vibrant and has more energy than many people half her age.

...a nice life...
I'm telling you, this is a waitress that's got a very nice life for herself. And I've always said since I was a young girl, "It's not how much money you make; it's how you manage what you make." You can work with somebody who's making 3x as much as you but if they're going to blow it on vacations and furs, you're gonna end up better off than they are. Hey, I've seen it. I've worked right along side people who to this day don't have a home, and they made just as much money as I did. And I've had my home since 1951.

...waitressing stigma...
People think you're stupid because you're a waitress. They think that you have no education and couldn't do anything else. I didn't have a college education, I could have had it if I wanted to work for it later on, but I happened to like waitressing, so I stayed with it. But there are many waitresses that are in it today because of the money and they're well educated. You may not find them at Sears Fine Foods, but you'll find them in the hotels and the places where you're making a lot of money.

...the cast of Friends...
You know the kids on that TV show Friends? I fed them one Sunday and they were so rude -- every single one of them. They were mad at first because we had a line halfway around the block and they had to wait in it. They thought because of who they were, that they could jump to the front of the line and you couldn't do that at Sears. Everybody was treated the same. They made me feel worse than anyone ever had. I can't even think of another time when anyone was so disrespectful. So I just treated them the same way they treated me...and they stiffed me. But I could care less, just as long as I never had to wait on them again.

...the union...
The union, made a big, big, big difference. In the beginning I was taking the orders and doing the cooking, cashiering, mopping the floors...well you didn't have to do that when the union took over. The union was a big help in bringing about the middle class here. Otherwise we would have been rich and poor like a lot of the other nations are. They're trying to break the unions. And that's why Bush is allowing all of these companies to send their work overseas and supporting child labor and abusing employees by not giving them any money. Servers at Sears now are going to have to pay their own health and welfare and they just announced that they were going to have to pay for their meals. With the union, we could have 3 meals a day. I wouldn't want to work for somebody that's not union.