In 2022, 31-year-old Maggie Perkins quit her eight-year teaching job and got a job at Costco. She doesn’t regret the decision, and she’s never been happier. Here’s a look at a day in the life working at Costco.
The headline is really misleading. She now works for Costco corporate doing marketing training. The typical store employee is still around $18/hour.
Downvoting you, because you are mischaracterizing the article content.
The first half of it describes how she started there and the regular positions she had, before she moved up and into the teaching position she has at corporate office, which is similar to the teaching position she had before; both are of a teaching.
From the article…
At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher. I put in 40-hour workweeks, five days a week, and got a $1-per-hour raise when I hit 1,000 hours.
How TF am I mischaracterizing it? The teacher in this story got a pay bump by taking a marketing job with Costco corporate, not by working in the warehouse. The headline implies that she got a raise by working for her local Costco. That’s misleading.
Well then in that case your reading comprehension is pretty bad.
In September 2022, I started full-time on the memberships team at a new warehouse in Athens, Georgia. I had two 15-minute breaks, and 30 minutes for lunch. Otherwise, I was on my feet all day.
At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher. I put in 40-hour workweeks, five days a week, and got a $1-per-hour raise when I hit 1,000 hours.
The article also describes how she worked in the bakery.
My reading comprehension is fine. Do you understand the difference between the headline and the article?
To recap, my critique is that the headline obscures the real story – that she got a raise by getting a corporate job. “Works at Costco” clearly implies working at a store, not corporate.
Doing training in the corporate offices of a for-profit company is going to pay more than a school teacher. This shouldn’t be news to anyone.
Just because a person is “teaching” doesn’t mean it’s the same job for the same pay. Someone teaching scrum to a bunch of software engineers at Google is going to make a hell of a lot more than someone teaching kids about geography. The corporate teacher can frame themselves as leading to the company making more money and cutting costs, while the geography teacher is an expense to the tax payers and has to argue for the long-term good of an educated population, which is a much harder sell to people with short term thinking and limited resources.
School teachers often get physically and verbally abused by both parents and students, with the abusers getting little to no reprocussions. In a corporate environment that would get you fired or arrested.
Except that we have education requirements for teachers, and retail will hire just about anyone.
The reason teachers aren’t paid well is because we have a culture of funding public services like absolute shit. So despite low supply and high demand for teachers, we just keep adding more and more kids to each teacher, and giving them less and less supplies to work with. While letting wages stagnate.
People need to stop applying free-market thinking to our public services.
My school district is one of the few that pays a competitive wage to be private industry to their teachers in the U.S. The local teacher unions are extremely strong and have had numerous strikes over the years.
They unionized the non-certificated staff and they have gone on strike as well.
This past summer they were getting 100+ applicants for every open teacher position. Every open position is filled easily.
Exactly. Just to hammer home your point about free-market thinking on public services, corporate education explicitly tries to be competitive to acquire the best talent. Even if we match the corpo wages for public education, they would just increase it again to be more competitive. It’s a fools errand to play the market with our public services. Education is a fundamental institution in our society. We know they are lacking resources, so we should increase their allocation. It really doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
Just because its obvious doesn’t mean its not also bullshit.
Education is the single most important thing affecting a societies longevity and well-being. If the people responsible for that education aren’t able to support themselves, it erodes the very foundation of the country.
Whether or not it affects the bottom line of an investment firm may be an important metric to you but it doesn’t necessarily mean what’s best for everyone.
Downvoting you, because you are mischaracterizing the article content.
The first half of it describes how she started there and the regular positions she had, before she moved up and into the teaching position she has at corporate office, which is similar to the teaching position she had before; both are of a teaching.
From the article…
How TF am I mischaracterizing it? The teacher in this story got a pay bump by taking a marketing job with Costco corporate, not by working in the warehouse. The headline implies that she got a raise by working for her local Costco. That’s misleading.
Well then in that case your reading comprehension is pretty bad.
The article also describes how she worked in the bakery.
My reading comprehension is fine. Do you understand the difference between the headline and the article?
To recap, my critique is that the headline obscures the real story – that she got a raise by getting a corporate job. “Works at Costco” clearly implies working at a store, not corporate.
Doing training in the corporate offices of a for-profit company is going to pay more than a school teacher. This shouldn’t be news to anyone.
Just because a person is “teaching” doesn’t mean it’s the same job for the same pay. Someone teaching scrum to a bunch of software engineers at Google is going to make a hell of a lot more than someone teaching kids about geography. The corporate teacher can frame themselves as leading to the company making more money and cutting costs, while the geography teacher is an expense to the tax payers and has to argue for the long-term good of an educated population, which is a much harder sell to people with short term thinking and limited resources.
School teachers often get physically and verbally abused by both parents and students, with the abusers getting little to no reprocussions. In a corporate environment that would get you fired or arrested.
Yes. But that’s not how salaries are determined. Based on that teachers and front-facing retail workers would be the highest paid jobs
Except that we have education requirements for teachers, and retail will hire just about anyone.
The reason teachers aren’t paid well is because we have a culture of funding public services like absolute shit. So despite low supply and high demand for teachers, we just keep adding more and more kids to each teacher, and giving them less and less supplies to work with. While letting wages stagnate.
People need to stop applying free-market thinking to our public services.
My school district is one of the few that pays a competitive wage to be private industry to their teachers in the U.S. The local teacher unions are extremely strong and have had numerous strikes over the years.
They unionized the non-certificated staff and they have gone on strike as well.
This past summer they were getting 100+ applicants for every open teacher position. Every open position is filled easily.
I assume not a conservative state, and in an area with affluent people?
West coast with a mixed demographic. About 50% of the district qualifies for reduced or free lunches. About 1/3 of the schools are title 1.
Exactly. Just to hammer home your point about free-market thinking on public services, corporate education explicitly tries to be competitive to acquire the best talent. Even if we match the corpo wages for public education, they would just increase it again to be more competitive. It’s a fools errand to play the market with our public services. Education is a fundamental institution in our society. We know they are lacking resources, so we should increase their allocation. It really doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
Just because its obvious doesn’t mean its not also bullshit.
Education is the single most important thing affecting a societies longevity and well-being. If the people responsible for that education aren’t able to support themselves, it erodes the very foundation of the country.
Whether or not it affects the bottom line of an investment firm may be an important metric to you but it doesn’t necessarily mean what’s best for everyone.
I didn’t say it’s what’s most important to me, I’m just following the money.
Thats what most capitalists do, and is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Maybe stop looking at what makes the greatest fiscal value and you might start seeing why people are complaining about.
I get why people complain about it. I’m explaining it for people who complain who don’t understand why things are the way they are.
I agree that teachers are underpaid. You can stop acting like we’re enemies on this. Not everything has to be an argument.
And the first half of the article? When you keep describing again and again is the latter half.
The whole article is about somebody’s career profession change and advancement, not just change.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with this distinction.