Maggie Perkins, a former teacher who left her job in 2020, says that working at Costco has massively improved her life.
Maggie Perkins quit her teaching job in 2020 after two years of “quiet quitting” because “the conditions were not sustainable to have a quality of life.”
She worked as a public and private school teacher in Georgia and Florida for five years, teaching students from sixth-grade through high school. She said while passionate about teaching, she was burnt out and working 60-hour weeks for under $50,000 for five years.
Having grown up going to Costcos, Perkins applied for a job at her local Costco as soon as she heard a new one was being built in her town. She now works in the membership department and is loving it.
She shared her story to TikTok and has garnered over 4 million views since posting the video in December.
She said that as a teacher, she spent most days “surviving every moment.” However, she now enjoys a better pace of work life and is not sick or exhausted like she used to be.
In a more recent post, Perkins said that she no longer fears for her life or lies awake at night. She had pursued a PhD at the University of Georgia while teaching, but now she is focused on her current career.
In an interview with Fox, Perkins said that her passion for teaching couldn’t pay her bills or help her sleep at night when she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
@millennialmsfrizz I used to be a teacher and now I work at Costco. This is my first year not having a winter break. I do not miss it at all. My pace of my work life now is so much better, I am not sick or exhausted like I used to be when I was a teacher. When I was a teacher I used my winter break basically to recover and go into the next semester of just surviving. #f#formerteachert#teacherquittokc#costcotiktokr#retailworkere#exteachertiktokc#careertransitiont#teachersonbreak ♬ original sound – Millennial Ms. Frizzle