Every day for the past 43 years, Ginette Nicolle has risen before the sun, donned her crisp white uniform with the black-and-white checked apron and reported to work at Du-Par’s Restaurant & Bakery.

She has poured thousands of cups of coffee, hoisted thousands more plates laden with rib-sticking, American-style food and trekked so many miles in her practical white shoes that she could have circled the world a time or two.

Nicolle, 70, is an anomaly in this work world where the typical employee sticks with a job for about 3.5 years. While high-tech workers jump from job to job every other year, people like Nicolle have a certain stick-to-itiveness that for some seems to defies logic. Why would anyone remain in the same unglamorous job for countless years earning a salary that barely keeps up with inflation?

There are several reasons, experts say. Limited educational levels, security, full benefits, flexibility, and good employers can keep laborers toiling away for decades in relative happiness.

Nicolle is not alone at Du-Par’s when it comes to long years of loyal service. Doris Perez, a cashier at the outside pie counter, has been with the restaurant for 34 years. The 66-year-old loves being at the Farmers Market location, where she stands outside in her white uniform and jaunty red cap and attends to the customers, many of whom she knows on a first-name basis. “The job is great,” she said, as she walked over to wait on two women deciding which cream pies they would buy. “Between you and me, I’d be bored if I had to work inside the restaurant. Out here I have the air and a little more time to know the customers.”

Perez, originally from Ireland, knows about job ennui. One of her first employers was a bank where she worked as a teller for four years. She was bored stiff.

While selling pies for 34 years might seem like a dead-end career for many, for others it’s just fine.

Optimal stimulation

Steve Berglas, who teaches entrepreneurial psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School, explains that people seek various kinds of challenges in their daily work life.

“People differ in their need for stimulation on the job. It’s like we have extroverts and we have introverts when it comes to personalities. There are workers whose temperament demands low stimulus. Others need high stimulus,” he said. “What you would hope for in a blue-collar worker is someone who has a low-stimulus temperament.”

That might be true for people like Alan Romansky, who has helped support three sons by working as a maintenance man for 27 years at the Farmers Market. Dressed in a beige uniform, his job is to change lights bulbs, do errands and roam the market making sure things are working and clean. His job is not particularly demanding, but he has stuck around for various reasons. He does different kinds of tasks. He isn’t micro-managed by a lurking supervising. He’s outside at the market, and he enjoys interacting with tourists from around the world.

“You’re not confined,” he explained. “But if you told me I was going to be working here for 27 years, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

For many workers, sticking with the same job is clearly a skills issue. Most long-term, blue-collar employees have only a high school diploma, if that.

Educational levels are a good indicator about what kind of job people will land and stay with. “The job market in the United States seems to be increasingly bifurcated,” said Ed Lawler, a professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business. “I think the gap between those who don’t finish high school and those who do is growing more. If you haven’t completed high school, it is virtually impossible to move into upper-skilled work.”

That is the case of Antonia Hernandez, a sample maker at women’s wear manufacturer Karen Kane Inc. in Vernon. Hernandez, 38, didn’t finish high school and still speaks limited English. Her sister, who used to work at Karen Kane, told her about the job. Hernandez has been there for 18 years, primarily behind a sewing machine making clothing samples.

Treated like family

She likes her job, the people she works with and her employers, Lonnie and Karen Kane. The Kanes, she said, have been very kind and generous, even loaning her money when times were tough after her husband was laid off for a while. He is now working as a truck driver.

Earning $11.25 an hour plus full benefits, she and her husband have been able to buy two houses in East L.A. and save money for their two young children’s future. She also has medical benefits, which for many workers is as good as gold.

Hernandez said that at this stage of her career, she probably couldn’t find another job that pays as well or has as many benefits, including four weeks of paid vacation. Plus her job varies with the change in the fashion season and new styles.

Variety is important, experts said, to keeping a job interesting and a worker on the job.

“A white-collar executive in a repetitive job is more likely to suffer psychological burnout more than a woodworker if the woodworker is doing different projects,” said psychologist Berglas, who has just finished writing a new book called “Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout.” “An airline pilot making $150,000 to $200,000 a year has a job that is just as boring as that of a bus driver.”

Another key to keeping employees is giving them some autonomy and not being a nit-picking micro-manager. Blue-collar workers who are left relatively free to toil away at their own pace with some flexibility are extremely content. That’s what has kept Maricruz Rojas in her job for 15 years as a cleaning lady in Long Beach for Molly Maid, a homecleaning service.

“I like the freedom we have,’ she said without pausing a beat to explain why she has stayed with her seemingly mundane work. “I talk to the customers. They ask me how I’m doing, how I’m feeling. They’re pretty nice.”

Her $600 a week salary helps her and her husband support their four children. “I think I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life. Every time I go to a house I feel like it is my own customer.”