Primary Purpose
If you are a seeker of impossible challenges, someone who likes to lose the game before it begins, or just your average masochist, then we hope that you will apply to join our family on our adventure to the end of the world.
We are a growing family Oops, pre-pandemic slip: We are a family with no intention of adding another child into this hell-world. A family of four—no more and hopefully no less by the time you accept the position, and we are desperately seeking Susan. Ha!
You’re probably too young to get that reference, but this is the perfect time to tell you that one of your duties will be to laugh at all of our jokes. Your primary purpose, however, will be to manage household anxiety levels with accurate readings and appropriate (legal-ish) interventions.
Qualifications
Chipper Attitude: Do people still use that word? I miss it. It reminds me of simpler times when the world was only grappling with its imminent demise via global warming or the next world war. We need more chipper. Let’s bring it back.
Cross-Generational Competence: Know when to keep the kids out of my “home office,” which is actually my reading nook (a chair in my bedroom with a lap desk on it that I prop my computer on for mandatory zoom meetings). But also know when it’s appropriate for the whole family to stop and participate in a TikTok dance challenge.
Social Media Savvy: Regardless of our anxiety level we need you to send a “Keep calm and carry on” message to the rest of the world. We are quarantining our asses off! Living our best lives! Slay-ing! Killing it! That TikTok dance challenge you filmed? Time to post it, but only if it makes me look cool and not like a middle-aged person facing an existential crisis. I’m Facebook friends with my boss, so take some flattering shots of me working in my “home office.” (You can crop the wine glass out later.) Inspirational messages posted to Instagram every few days. Something like, “When life gives you lemons, make vodka lemon drops and drink them until you can’t even taste lemons anymore, just the taste of your own bile rising to drown out your feelings.”
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Mixing the perfect sugar-free, freshly-squeezed-from-organic-limes margarita. Except when anxiety levels are nearing the point of no return and need a very fast intervention like canned wine or a whiskey neat. Please note, alcoholic drinks should be watered down when more than three have been imbibed or the imbiber is under the age of fourteen.
Accurately assessing anxiety temperatures. When you overhear things like, “We are doing fine. I’m enjoying the extra time with my family,” that it is a code red, threat level 1 response requiring immediate attention (see above). TV is an appropriate anxiety-reduction tool for this unless you discover levels spiking from too much news consumption.
Noticing when family members begin disregarding necessary hygiene practices, like brushing their teeth or applying soap and water to their bodies. (Please note: Not brushing hair or wearing the same clothes for days represents healthy levels of anxiety and requires no action.)
Spewing soothing aphorisms like, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone,” when you find family members crying in their rooms or “Children should be seen and not heard,” if the kids try to speak to an adult between 6:00 AM – 5:00 PM And of course, “Eat to live; don't live to eat,” when you find one of us in our pantry binging chocolate in the dark.
Listening and responding to the children when they speak. They have been ignored for months and crave human interaction with people who will look them in the eyes and who don’t “talk” to them while staring into the abyss of a computer screen while mumbling “uh-huh” in an insincere, sing-songy way.
Minimum Job Requirement
If you have got this far and are planning to continue reading, you have met the minimum job requirement, which is a deeply problematic drive to “fix” things, a trait often seen in educators and healthcare workers.
Working Conditions
Tense. Often vacillating between oppressively quiet to hysterically delusional with no in-between.
How to Apply
As soon as possible, please respond by phone call, tweet, TikTok video, Zoom meeting, text, or just show up on our doorstep where I’ve left gloves, a face mask, hand sanitizer, and an emergency box of wine for you.