Working from home often appears more glamorous on paper than in reality. Sure, the commute is short. The coffee supply is often endless, as is the snacking (thanks, Ubereats!).
But sporting pajamas during work hours may seem like a big perk, one of the biggest drawbacks to working from home is uncooperative colleagues, aka “your family”.
Trying to juggle work responsibilities while simultaneously wrangling kids is not for the faint of heart… but it also looks pretty damn funny from the outside, apparently.
A little girl’s video clip of her imitating her mother working from home has gone viral because not only is it hilarious, but also relatable AF.
Mom Colleen Chulis of Albemarle County, VA, knows all too well that when it comes to working from home with kids, the struggle is real.
Chulis works in sales at Regulated Industries, SAP SuccessFactors, and like many other parents this year, has been working virtually from home. And while adapting your job to a virtual environment has its own learning curves, doing your job virtually while still being MOM at home with kids has a much steeper learning curve!
Being a mom that works from home with kids can be messy, loud, stressful, & often just plain dysfunctional. We feel your pain, Colleen.
But it’s also pretty damn funny when your 8-year-old daughter shows the world precisely what that looks like.
Colleen’s daughter Adelle asked for permission to make a video depicting “mom while working from home”. And as Colleen explained on her LinkedIn page,
I wasn’t sure what to expect. This was the first and only take. I figured many of you might relate (and laugh) with the snapping and the multi-tasking.
Multi-tasking? Sounds familiar… so does the snapping.
Note that Colleen didn’t mention yelling, so she’s clearly navigating working from home better than *some of us*.
(*Me. It’s me. So.much.YELLING.*)
The clip opens with Adelle seated at her mom’s home office desk, typing away furiously while reaching for her ringing cell phone.
And as she picks up the call & greets “Jennifer”, Adelle snaps her fingers frantically:
… which every parent knows is the universal sign to children to gets to stepping; Mom needs quiet, so make yourself scarce.
(Unless, of course, I’m snapping at my kids, which is apparently the universal sign for: “I’m on the phone; please decorate the walls with some stick figures. In Sharpie, of course.”)
More snapping ensures, and at a quicker pace because some kind of work event is being scheduled. As Adelle begins to input the item into her computer via keyboard, she shakes her head ruefully,
Yeah, so, um…. yeah, the dog is very crazy, so… yeah, I know what you mean.
Because it’s not just KIDS that Colleen apparently has to contend with while at “work”, but pets, too.
As any pet owner knows, pets are right up there with kids in terms of their notoriety for disrupting phone calls. Or any work at all, actually.
While holding the cell phone, and writing notes, and snapping at kids (and probably dogs, too) off-camera, Adelle’s next words ring painfully true:
Haha, yeah… it’s hard to multi-task, you know? Haha…
TRUE THAT, baby girl.
Adelle’s mom character is a pro at charming her phone pal as she chuckles along to the convo, even using that tone all of us moms use that’s a standard part of our “phone persona”:
It’s going very well, and everything’s GOOD! So…
Her voice rises in pitch on “GOOD”- we all know that one.
It’s the high-pitched “GOOD!” when someone asks how things are going, because why not just keep it simple & respond with “GOOD!” instead of the real answer, which is more like,
“I can’t hear a thing because my kids are fighting, the dog just crapped in the hallway, virtual learning is HELL, and I want to burn this whole house down.”
(Just me?)
Back to the multi-tasking; while juggling notes & making polite chitchat, Adelle pauses the convo long enough to cover the phone to tell the kids:
Guys *snap, snap* guys, you HAVE to go upstairs and get ready!
Ready for what? Adelle doesn’t say, but because she’s Mom, there’s an ENDLESS list of places to go, errands to run, & tasks still on the To-Do list.
And all of that is happening while Mom is at “work”. Not that the families of most work-from-home moms ever seems to truly get that, do they?
The clip concludes with Adelle frantically typing away & adjusting her camera as she quickly tells the kids,
Guys- I’m in a Zoom call; please leave- and do not come in!
Oh, how WFH moms feel seen in this moment.
Attempting to engage in a professional Zoom call while kids are at home is like trying to stuff an octopus into a paper bag: messy, difficult, and POINTLESS.
While Adelle definitely seemed to nail her own mother’s work demeanor, many parents also find it relatable AF.
The video has garnered over 12 million views since Colleen first posted it on LinkedIn, and over 200K views on YouTube.
Colleen took the amusing depiction of herself in stride, finding the same humor in it that all of us in her position can relate to in the fresh hell that is pandemic working-from-home-with-kids:
This just kind of made fun of the whole situation, so a lot of people saw themselves in the video and I think just it made a lot of people laugh.
Same, girl. SAME. Props to both Colleen & Adelle for the laughs, because it’s better to laugh about the stress than to cry, right (sometimes both)?!