It definitely sounds like your friend is feeling a lot of pressure over there. While restaurant jobs are fairy easy to attain, even during ones forties, there's really not much of a future in that business once one gets older. Even though your friend is still relatively young, she should go back to school for a nice career change so she'd be working more with a mixed age group instead, and folks she can relate to. Not only that, once one hits their 60s they often have back ailments, flat feet, and tire more easily too. Restaurant biz is soo stressful too. (been there, done that, and hopefully NEVER AGAIN!) Plus when it gets busy everyones personality conflicts bust out like a walking time bomb waiting to explode. She doesn't need that! If she's running errands for her younger co-workers she needs to simply put them in their place! As far as fillers go, those aren't healthy and there are many complaints (unadvertised) abt those! She should accept her age and count each day as a blessing. To be honest, all the "beautiful" women in their 40s, 30s and fifties often look much prettier than many of the twenty year olds. I'm talking abt the 20-somethings that are fat or just plain unattractive. She should seriously be thinking of a big career move and just do it! She doesn't want to end up in some greasy diner, ick!

Nicer restaurants tend to hire younger people because of their energy and youthfulness. I worked at a nice sushi restaurant as a hostess and most of the waitresses were early mid twenties as well as the bus boys. By law restaurants cannot discriminate according to age and if someone feels discriminated against they can sue if they have a liable cause. In a lower class restaurant such as denny's, ihop, golden corral etc. I have noticed they are definitely not biased towards younger waitresses.

I do think that the work place especially in higher class restaurants want a certain appealing appearance to create the best atmosphere and experience possible for customers.

When I began working at the aforementioned restaurant my then manager told me after hiring me, "You're lucky you're pretty because I had my choices narrowed down to two people and the other hostess had far more hostessing experience than you." If you ever confronted a manager or owner about age related work bias naturally they will deny all allegations being that they could get in serious trouble.

As for your friend, It is true about younger aged people discriminating against older people simply because they may feel that they may have to pick up their slack or even because they feel they can't relate to them. If she feels this way maybe she should speak to her manager or a HR person to help resolve the issue.