Teacher quits job and finds happiness in new role at Costco, says 'everything is better'

According to Vox, 44% of all teachers leave the profession within five years of starting their jobs. The Wall Street Journal reports that at least 300,000 public-school teachers and other staff left the field between February 2020 and May 2022, per CNBC make it. Additional work hours and fewer resources are making teachers stressed, leading to burnout. The education industry has hence been losing workers. One of them is a woman who goes by the online handle millennial_msfrizzle. She recently quit her job and from what we can see, she seems happier than ever. 

According to Distractify, Maggie explains why she chose to leave her teaching job for a job at Costco in her video. She claims that, despite working through the holiday rush and working longer hours for more days a week, she doesn't feel as exhausted as she did when she was an educator. The caption for the video reads, "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." 

In another video, she walks out of the Costco where she works, still wearing her name tag, and approaches her car. She says, "I used to be a teacher, now I work at Costco. This is my first ever year not having a winter break and how do I feel? I feel great." She continued, "I just worked Christmas Eve, here's some cookies, also my manager gave me this cute Costco backpack and yeah I mean I just worked 7 days straight including Christmas Eve and I feel fine. As a teacher it was like, like I was just surviving every moment." 

"I've been working retail for this full season in my first year not teaching and I've never had this type of energy — everything is better... I am better now than I have been in my livable memory."

In a follow-up video, she also stated that while working at Costco, she realised that during her teacher certification, she never once had a mentor or supervisor, such as a Principal, demonstrate how to manage a classroom or prepare a lesson, which made her feel unsupported.However, at Costco, she stated that her managers can perform almost every aspect of the job and shift from managerial duties to stepping in on the register and assisting a customer, selling a membership, or doing anything else that is required on the floor. They give her a greater sense of assistance if she needs help with any aspect of her job.

Some work environments are just toxic or not suitable for us. As per KQED, while many instructors said that they enjoyed their jobs, burnout was the most common reason for them to consider quitting or eventually handing in their resignation. Maggie's happiness in a new role proves that we can feel better in job roles more suited to our personalities.