Louisa Simmonds

Picture found on babble.com

It seemed appropriate on Mothers Day for me to agree to a performance review done by the teens. 

I admit that I felt quietly confident. The hastily scribbled Mother’s Day note, the late and drooping petrol station flowers and the child who didn’t turn up until mid-afternoon on my special day had all proved that they obviously love me a lot!

And I know that as mothers we beat ourselves up about not doing a good job with the spawn but, ultimately, we can only do our best. Sometimes a thinking-on-your-feet approach to parenting can have benefits to our kids …like backbone development.

So here are my results:

Current Responsibilities:

Cook, cleaner, taxi service, counsellor, referee, dog-walker, therapist, smoothie-maker, mediator…..(shall I go on?)

New Responsibilities Since Last Review:

Drug sniffer, HSC tutor, surrogate mother to boyfriend, wannabe Masterchef to all the stragglers and travellers that come to the hostel, towel retriever, school advocate, teenage doormat.

Performance Assessment

1. Evaluation of Your Performance – There has been some improvement in you ‘not losing the plot irrationally every time we breathe’ and the day-to-day running of the hostel. The board has noticed a laxness in certain areas of cleaning, cooking and domestic chores, though, due to your prioritisation of your personal interests, like writing and eating chocolate. The board had reached the decision that new recipes should not be attempted for the foreseeable future.

1. Areas of Exceptional Performance – Your Chocolate Refrigerator cake and peanut butter smoothie, extermination of cockroaches and moths (without squealing), calling the decision on the maximum time-lapse between bed linen changes for health and safety reasons, reading English texts in appropriately stupid accents, as a secondary source of wardrobe, make-up and tampons and boyfriend/friend advice.

1. Areas of Performance needing improvement – The board would like to see an acknowledgement from the employee that she is now too old to shop in surf shops now, ogle men under the age of thirty, write to Chris Hemsworth’s fan club and dance awkwardly at live music gigs.

English: Chris Hemsworth at the 2010 San Deigo Comic-Con International. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The washing turnaround could be improved and if the employee could make a different meal for each employer (without throwing a hissy fit) every night, the board would be appreciative. The employee should make a renewed effort to be out of her dressing gown by 10am or when the employer’s friends visit. On this point, the employee needs to understand that the employer’s friends are not the HER friends.

Professional Development Plan for 2014:

Expectations and Goals for Upcoming Review Period as part of your professional development:

The employee should dress appropriately for her age and her role.

The employee should stop at two glasses of wine per evening so that the highly successful 24hr taxi service can be reinstated.

The employee should walk at least ten steps behind her employer in public and if the employer sees someone they know, the employee should disappear.

The employee should know intuitively when it is the right time to leave the employer’s parties.

The employee should be aware of her employer’s policy regarding sexual harassment of young, attractive men and should stop objectifying them and feeding them up.

The employee is to finish her project of writing her book (FINALLY!) so that the employer can be cared for properly.

The use of social media in the workplace is frowned upon and should certainly not be prioritised above responsibilities to the employer.

The employee should refrain from commenting on the Facebook pages of the employer and stop reading their phone texts.

Presentation is important to the employer and the employee should present correctly and stop wearing sports clothes to the office when a) it is not dress-down Friday or b) she is not doing any sport.

Overall Rating: 3.5

Employee Comment: Meh!

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