A viral advert for a nanny by California CEO has gone viral for its long list of requirements – all for a salary dependent on experience, naturally

Must ski, cook and know Excel: is this the most demanding ad for a nanny ever?

If you want to be a nanny for a CEO these days, you’d better be a top-rate chef, professional athlete and stunt driver – all for a salary dependent on experience, naturally.

This viral advert for a nanny has had people laughing, potentially because of just how much its creator, a California mother who is a CEO and entrepreneur, is willing to ask for. And yes, the ad is real – we reached out to the Calendar, the company which posted the ad, to confirm it.

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Needs Excel skills (for extravagant vacations)

A mother’s love knows no bounds, and in this case that includes word count: the nearly 2,000-word job description requests applications from someone with a good degree, great executive functioning and very good Excel skills (and that’s just for starters).

These skills will come in handy for vacation research, which needs to be “populated into a simple Excel spreadsheet”, as well as vacation expenses (ditto). The nanny also needs to “compare and make recommendations regarding using credit card points to booking vacations versus paying cash”.

Needs university degree (for difficult math questions)

Of course there is no reason why a nanny should not be highly educated – but this mom seems to have forgotten the difference between a college degree and an elementary education. “University degree or equivalent knowledge,” the ad says – so that people can work out difficult questions like “how long will it take us to drive to the snow if it’s 150 miles and we go 50 miles an hour?”

Needs leadership, strategy and people skills (that means being able to make friends)

These will be especially useful in facilitating conversations with all the CEO’s other underlings, including an au pair, a property manager and a gardener/handyman – prompting the question: is CEO just shorthand for oil tycoon?

In an amazing feat of corporate speak, she describes making friends with other parents as “building alliances” and calls being able to read “understanding information at a summary level”. An example of understanding information at summary level can be found in the ad: “Can read articles about eating beef and increases in breast cancer and can understand … i.e., beef is bad, fish and vegetables are good.”

Needs to be a great cook (organic only and lots of fish, please)

The nanny will need to be able to cook organic foods that meet the family’s allergy requirements, which only include avoiding cow and goat dairy, chicken eggs, green beans and watermelon. (On the plus side, they can eat duck eggs.)

This mother seems to have an obsession with fish, by the way. In one example, she asks the nanny to “play math games with them such as ‘how much fish should we buy today for five of us?’”, furthering stereotypes that math is no fun. In another, she says: “Correctly quantify how much fish to purchase for five people, for example, or how much chicken for 15.”

Needs to be an athlete (includes river swimming, skiing and doing pushups)

The nanny should also be athletic. Like, really athletic. They need to like river swimming, body surfing and be able to do calisthenics with the kids (“sit ups, lunges, squats, pushups”). This begs the question: are these really children, or does this parent have two middle-aged tech-bro sons living in her mansion who are in need of a personal trainer?

Those are just the non-mountain sports, by the way. Other requirements of the nanny include being a professional stunt driver (“Experienced snow driving”, “experience mountain driving (preferred)”, “experience driving in other countries”) – as well as an intermediate skier and an experienced mountain hiker.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking: when a man outsources his childcare, nobody bats an eyelid – and here we are laughing at a single mom who made it and just wants to lean in. That’s a fair point – but it shouldn’t make us feel any less bad for the nanny.