Joe Wilkinson worked for Paramount for 40 years. He wanted to work until he was 70.

“I want to work and I’m able to work,” he says.

But he’s not working. He’s collecting unemployment. His four decades of experience got the heave in October when he was called in on his first day back from vacation and told his job was being eliminated.

That wasn’t the worst of it. He was told he’d receive three weeks’ pay, about $3,000, in severance.

He has a problem with that, with $3,000 after 40 years on the job. He calls it a slap in the face.

“I was shocked, totally shocked. After 40 years of being here, they can’t offer me anything else?”

Not only was the paltry offer an insult, but in order to get the $3,000 he had to sign a release saying he would not talk about it.

He’s talking about it. He’s 66 years old and looking for work. And he’s angry about having all those years so coldly and abruptly devalued.

He was in his mid-20s when he went to work for Paramount Restaurant Supply. He did the heavy lifting for a lot of years, then moved up to manager in the shipping, warehouse and installation departments. At one time, he had 25 people working under him.

“It was a very good company to work for,” he says. “It was a challenge for me and I like a challenge.”

If you’ve ever downed a Bavarian Crème and a large regular at a Dunkin’ Donuts, you might have sat in the middle of Joe Wilkinson’s work. Paramount, which is now located in Warren, does a lot of the interior work in the doughnut shops — counters, coffee equipment, display cases, shelves.

At the time he lost his job, Wilkinson was working on new kitchens at the Shipyard campus of Johnson & Wales University.

He remembers asking if there was a company policy on working past 65. He says he never received an answer.

So he decided to work because that’s what he prefers to do. And he knew the job. He says that on the day he was cleaning out his desk, he helped out a coworker who had taken over his work and had some questions.

Six other people lost their jobs when he did, says Wilkinson. Two of them were clerks in their 70s.

It’s not as if Joe is left at home in Warwick with nothing to do. He’s thinking about starting up his flea market business again. There’s all that stuff in the basement and the garage. And he’s helping his wife, Ruth, with her Avon business. There are eight grandchildren.

And there’s Joe’s work with the Rhode Island Shriners. He’s a past potentate, and he points proudly to the Shriners’ work with burn victims, some of them from the Station nightclub fire, and with dyslexic children.

He has things to do. But he can’t just leave all those years of work stamped with such a cheesy dismissal. He’s a working man and he’s been given no good reason why he can’t be working still.

It is not a question of legality. It’s not really a question of money. It’s a question of respecting a person’s work and giving it proper value.

“It’s a matter of decency and civility,” says Brooks Magratten. “A fellow has given his life to a company and to toss him out with three weeks’ pay … ”

Magratten is Wilkinson’s lawyer. He’s trying to work something out with Paramount.

“We’re hoping the company will treat Joe more equitably.”

Paramount officials did not respond to a request for comment. But the company did improve the severance package.

It sent Wilkinson a $100 gift certificate to The Capital Grille.

bkerr@projo.com