Workplace advice: Pasture time for old, gray colleague?

Q: A seventy-something co-worker, "Susan," has worked in our government agency for more than four decades (we have no mandatory retirement age). She religiously works a 12-hour day, five days per week, despite some recent health issues. Her job does not require more than 40 hours per week; I think the extra hours are to compensate for time she spends on nonwork activities.

Susan's social life revolves around the office. She organizes work lunches and parties, buys all the celebratory cards for co-workers on the staff's behalf, collects holiday tips for our cleaning staff, etc.

Over the past few years, the quality and quantity of Susan's work output have decreased, although she still performs at a satisfactory level. Despite some not-so-subtle suggestions by her new boss that she must be seriously considering retiring, Susan says she's "never going to retire." Many younger, capable colleagues in the office are champing at the bit to be promoted and take on more responsibility, and they think that old-timers such as Susan are standing in their way.

As a longtime colleague of Susan's, I've been asked by her boss to feel out whether she really means to leave the office only if "taken out in an ambulance or a coffin" (the boss's words). I agree that it is probably time for her to retire (she is financially well off), but I also know she gets great satisfaction from her work. Should I broach the subject with Susan as a caring co-worker?

A: So Susan should retire because she ... puts in more hours than her job warrants? Does "only" satisfactory work? Doesn't need the money? Try telling that to the 2016 presidential candidates who are or would become septuagenarians while sitting in the White House.

I realize Susan isn't being paid to plan parties and payrolls have no margin for pity. No doubt her boss can find legally sound reasons to herd her onto the knacker's wagon. But if the primary reason is to make room for someone younger, that smells like a steaming heap of age discrimination.

I hear often from skilled, energetic senior workers put out to pasture before their time to graze on their stunted retirement investments along the dry riverbed of the over-40 job market. It's a waste of institutional knowledge and perspective that young mustangs could benefit from.

As a caring co-worker, you could introduce Susan to people and activities that would give her a sense of purpose and continuity outside the office. If her boss asks whether you've interrogated her, simply say, "As far as I know, she still has no plans to retire, and I don't know how to ask again without sounding like I'm targeting her age." Translation: I want no part of this rodeo.