Employ all the mothers!

I was rejected last week, and it fucking stung. I’m not too proud to say that I cried, and stomped around, and ate all the biscuits. I got sad, and then I got angry, and then I got bitter, and then I got jealous, and now I’m okay, cos I cried on my husband’s shoulder at 11 o’clock last night and told him I felt like a big old ball of rejection, and he gave me a squeeze and said that I’m a super-cool human, and that good things happen to super-cool humans. I needed to hear that. And he better be right.

A few days ago, you see, I got told that I didn’t get that job that I really, really wanted. The job that I didn’t have a Plan B for. The job whose interview I smashed, and which I was so fucking qualified for, and which I would have loved so much. I came – apparently – a very, very close second, and only missed out on the top spot because another candidate had more ‘digital’ experience than me.

Ouch.

This is the bit I’m having trouble with. This is the bit that reminds me that I’m an old bird in a young chick’s world. While I was off breeding small humans, the world kept on turning, apparently, and my industry changed, and now I’ve got a decade of catching up to do. I’m having trouble dealing with this.

I’ve tried my best to keep up, I really have, but I haven’t been properly employed – by an employer, with holiday pay, superannuation schemes and paid fag breaks – since 2005, when Ben was born. I’ve worked since then – I’ve worked almost constantly, even in hospital waiting for my babies to be born – but always for myself, in my pyjamas. And now that I’m ready to go back into the workforce proper, I find that I’m kinda outdated, and a little bit past my sell-by date. You’ll forgive me if this makes me feel like shit, I’m sure.

The thing, employers are missing a fucking trick. Mothers, you see, make the best employees. I’m generalising here, obviously – the crack whores and the slack asses would probably be pretty unreliable, truth be told – but for the most part, we mothers have accrued a set of skills and experiences that make us almost unfeasibly employable. I look back to what I was like pre-children, and while I had fewer grey hairs and a slightly more enthusiastic spring in my step, I was a dim-wit. I mean, I’m still a dim-wit, but a slightly more productive dim-wit. Back then, I pissed about. I procrastinated. I spent more time buttering my toast and looking for Nokia phone chargers than I did actually working. And this was BEFORE Facebook.

These days, I’d be so glad to be out of the house, to be drinking a hot coffee without a small child dunking their custard cream into it, and to be oiling my underused brain cogs, that I’d be employee of the month consistently and without fail. I’d arrive early and stay late. I would accomplish a super-human amount in my working hours. Just look at what I can get done while my children are distracted by Play School! In those 27 precious minutes I have time to tend to my in-grown hairs, scrape the morning’s Weetabix off the walls/ceiling, reply to the texts and Facebook messages that I’d forgotten were ever sent, and hang out the three loads of washing that are starting to smell in the laundry basket.

I wouldn’t get involved in office politics, either, because who gives a shit if someone keeps nicking the chocolate digestives out of the communal biscuit tin and not washing their teaspoon – I’ve got three kids at home who blow their noses on underpants and wipe their arses on the white towels. I know what’s important in life, and it’s not the fucking teaspoons. I’d probably have snot on my shoulder and shit on my shoe (or the other way round, whatever), but I’d still be the best person for the job.

I should definitely use this as my covering letter for the next job I apply for, shouldn’t I?