Only Superwoman could combine the roles of secretary and housewife
Last week, I saw a job vacancy being advertised for a personal assistant for the chief executive of a Welsh company.
The advert called for someone flexible, hands-on and capable of multitasking, willing to work long and sometimes odd hours to meet the needs of the CEO.
As you’d expect for a PA, the job responsibilities listed included managing diaries, organising meetings and appointments, minute-taking, typing and compiling of reports, presentations and correspondence. However, duties outside the normal scope of a PA role were also listed, including co-ordination of family and personal tasks for the CEO as and when required, including collecting and dropping off children; organising the cleaning and maintenance of the CEO’s house; laundry drop-off and collections; dog-walking and sitting; and the collection and drop-off of the CEO to and from functions.
Top of the list of key skills required was being “discretional”. I had to look that word up. It means “available for use at the discretion of the user”.
Is there anything wrong with advertising a job vacancy like this? Back in the 1950s, a CEO would have had a secretary at work handling appointments and typing letters and reports and a wife at home sorting out the cleaning, childcare, laundry and dogwalking.
Now wives work too, sometimes as CEOs themselves, and all working people know that there are not enough hours in the day to get all the domestic chores done around the working week. Many of us pay for extra help of some sort at home – cleaners, ironing services, childminders or au pairs, after-school clubs and dog-walkers. Many of us also have administrative or secretarial support at work. It makes sense, doesn’t it, to have one employee doing all of this? One person you know and trust who understands both the work pressures and the domestic pressures and can help with it all, as you direct?
Actually, my initial thoughts when I first read the advert was that it was a wind-up, designed to go viral on social media, maybe as an advertising campaign for a company offering various types of outsourced domestic help on an agency basis, as and when required.
Because otherwise, how many people would have all the skills needed to do this job? Or being more specific, how many women? Because there are still very few men who undertake the necessary qualifica-
MARKET REPORT Asda
A round of profit-taking took the shine out of global stocks on yesterday, sending the FTSE 100 into the red. London’s blue chip index ended the day down 0.5% or 40.51 points at 7,502.69 points, but fared better than its continental peers.
Across Europe, the French CAC 40 and German DAX closed the session lower by 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively.
In currency markets, the pound was also taking a hit, down 0.1% against the US dollar at 1.356 and falling 0.2% versus the euro to 1.133.
In UK stocks, fell 98p to 1,302.5p after warning on its full year sales outlook in the wake of a mixed performance in the first quarter, with underlying revenues falling flat.
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amid concerns that the deal will create “local monopolies” in the UK.
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The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were up 14p at 490p,
up 140p at 6,108p, 24.5p at 1,723p, and
16.5p at 1,296.5p.
The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were down 98p at 1,302.5p, down 141.5p at 1,894.5p, down 10.10p at 232.15p, and down 11.8p at 278.8p. up up tions to be PAs or childcare workers, let alone both. And this job needs a multi-talented woman, able to move seamlessly from compiling reports and typing minutes in the office to nipping over to the boss’ house at the speed of light to put the hoover over and pick up his children from school.
Some nights she may need to then return to work to drive the boss to a business dinner and collect him at the end of the night, having presumably signed her opt-out from the Working Time Regulations and the 48-hour week while she waited in the car.
She’d probably have to have no young children herself, as I can’t see how she would be able to work the flexible and potentially long hours this job requires if she had school-age children of her own.
In fact, I can think of only one person who could do everything this job requires. Superwoman.