MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Dad laid off due to pandemic lands Costco dream job after daughter’s viral plea reaches CEO

After Rebecca Mix’s dad Jeff was laid off following job cuts, he was not ready to retire and even planned on what he wanted to do next -- work at Costco

The pandemic was not easy on anyone. Thousands across the country fell victim to job cuts, layoffs, some lost their small businesses, while others lost their only source of income. One such case was that of Rebecca Mix’s 58-year-old father Jeff who was laid off from his last job due to coronavirus-related cutbacks. But a now-viral tweet changed everything for the better. 

After Jeff was laid off following the job cuts, he was not ready to retire. And he had even planned on what he was going to do next - he wanted to work at Costco. 

So his daughter Rebecca took to Twitter to put the plea out into the universe. "My dad has been laid off due to covid and now that he's vaccinated he's itching to go back to work, so i told him i'd help him with his resume. i asked him where he wants to work, and he said, SO earnestly, 'costco seems like a nice place' i'm gonna cry lol," she wrote in a tweet on May 7, 2021. 

"He's informed he'd also like to work for ups or fedex, because he 'doesn't want to sit all day.' if you're in metro detroit & you have anything to do with hiring for costco, ups, or fedex, lmk? my dad is a very nice man who will work obnoxiously & is painfully helpful lol," she added in the tweets. 

Rebecca also tweeted, "he's had the same email since before i was born and it is painfully dad-like and cannot go on a resume so i am making him a new one. i was teasing him and said i was going to make his email 'pleasehiremydad @ gmail' and he goes 'hey, that'd get my attention!'" She also said how her boyfriend helped her out with the tweets. "My boyfriend owns a cleaning company and stares at resumes all day so he agreed to help me make my dad's Stand Out. together, our united team will get jeff a job at costco. i am manifesting."

She also let her dad's personality shine through in the tweets. "He is but a constantly cheerful man, extremely good at making nachos, who merely dreams of working for costco. costco ik ur not on twitter but if you see this please don’t let him down my dad is very nice. look at how proud he is."

Thousands of people retweeted Rebecca's plea. At the time of writing this story, the tweet had been retweeted 1.7K times and liked 7.4K times. "Mix’s messages somehow hit the radar of Costco CEO Craig Jelinek, who contacted several store managers close to Jeff’s Michigan home, requesting they bring him in for an interview. One of those managers reached out to Rebecca via Facebook to let her know her serendipitous tweet had hit its mark in a big way."

Just weeks later, she took to Twitter to post an update. After thousands of shares and retweets, Jeff's plea was granted. The viral tweets caught Costco CEO Craig Jelinek's eye and he got in touch with store mangers close to Jeff's Michigan home to set up an interview. 

Rebecca then posted the DM message a Costco manager shared with her. "GUYS OH MY GOD????????????" she wrote, shocked that it happened. The DM was for checking about Jeff's interview process and more. 

"I called my dad, who didn’t answer, texted him a screenshot, and called him again. As someone who only FaceTimes by accident, he didn’t really understand why I was freaking out," Rebecca recalled in an article for The Guardian. "The sheer ridiculousness of a random tweet making it to the desk of the Costco chief executive mostly escaped him."

On June 9, 2021, she posted an image of her father's new identity card. 

“The past year has not been a kind one to my family,” Rebecca wrote in the article for the publication. “Like many, we didn’t emerge from the pandemic without the loss of loved ones. It’s a gift to have this odd, wonderful, weird spark of joy amid a time of grief and chaos.”