MZ-S Auto Exposure Lock Misworded?

Just purchased the MZ-S (love it!) However, in the manual, it illustrates auto exposure lock by taking a photo of a girl on a big street ...trees, houses etc ...it shows how to zoom in on the girl in order to achieve proper exposure on her, hit the AE-L, then is SHOWS you zoom back out to once again include the trees etc .. and then take the shot. However...my testing proves that the AE-L will not work if you zoom in and out. The asterick only shows in viewfinder, if you remain at the same focal length you were at when you locked exposure. Is the manual misworded? Leading us to believe the AE-L works during zooming? or is my camera malfunctioning? AE-L works fine when no zooming is involved, and I guess my tendency is to believe the manual is just poorly expressed. Insight?

It works on mine. You will get a change to the exposure if your lens has a variable aperture because the aperture will be smaller at the telephoto end. For example the 24-90mm I tried it on is f/4.5 at the 90mm setting and when you zoom back it changes to f/3.5.