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Life

11th Jan 2020

The CEO of Spanx just shared a hilarious post on why everyone should hire working mothers

Trine Jensen-Burke

Because mums are amazing.

No, really, they are. And I don’t think you can fully appreciate just how amazing mums really are until you are in the trenches of motherhood yourself. I know for sure this was the case for me. Until I had juggled it all, sick days and schedules and potty training and deadlines and vaccines and work meetings. I have conducted phone interviews while simultaneously walking around the block to get my child to sleep in her buggy, I have styled interior shoots with a teething baby on my hip (literally, throughout the entire day). I dropped and collected at playdates and hockey practises and whenever I had a moment in the car while waiting for people coming or going, replied to work e-mails or ordered groceries I knew we needed.

In short, I am a mum, a working mum with a million balls in the air at any given moment, and I think we are all in the same boat.

I recently came across a post by Spanx CEO Sara Blakely, where she touches on this very thing – arguing her case as to why working mums are the best employees you’ll ever have —by using her own hilariously clever handling of a situation as an example.

 

Sara, her husband and their four(!) kids were on holidays in Florida, and in the middle of driving their rental car, the mumpreneur had to pull over to the side of the road to take a conference call.

I mean; it’s the classic working mum scenario: tending to work obligations when you’re with your family. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned.

Sharing what happened, the mum-of-four writes:

“No pen. Lip liner will have to do! Of course, I had everything in my purse (two small cars, a flashlight, diapers, wipes, snacks, army men, and even Buzz Lightyear), but NO PEN! And, my meeting ID number and host code kept changing…“ she wrote on LinkedIn. One of her kids even asked her, “Mommy, why are you writing on your leg when you told us we can’t write on ourselves?”

Sounds familiar? I know.

Still, even without pen and paper, Blakely managed, and believes it’s because the very nature of working motherhood requires her to think on her feet.

“The struggle is real. The juggle is real. This is why everyone should hire working mothers. They are put in crazy situations all the time and are forced to problem-solve,” she wrote. “They are some of my most resourceful employees.”

After posting her musings on working motherhood to LinkedIn, the post quickly went viral with over 30,000 interactions, and working mums all over the world relating.

“Thanks for sharing—turning a moment where we would feel frazzled and unorganized into strength, and showing value in adaptation and juggling!” one LinkedIn user wrote. “I can really sympathize with this today. After spending the night nursing my daughter with a stomach bug, three changes of PJs, two changes of bedding, three towels and cleaning the bathroom twice, I have spent the morning taking calls and answering emails while working my way through five machine loads of sick-stained washing! Glad to know I’m not the only one who feels in utter chaos at times.”

I literally could not agree more. Because, yes, while being a mum means I will always have something more important than work in my life, it has also made me a better employee. I am more organised than I have ever been – because I have to be. I always have solutions, and I have learned to manage everything with a bit of flexibility, a sense of humour and clever, structured planning.